Investigations on Hot-Formed Plastic Parts Made by Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

With the need of lightweight materials in the aerospace industry, extensive research has been carried out on carbon fiber reinforced composites due to their high strength-to-weight ratio. The state-of-the-art technology allows carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic parts to be manufactured by additive manufacturing. This study focuses on the investigations on the mechanical properties and the hot forming ability of additively manufactured short carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic parts. The aim of the study is to investigate, if it is possible to develop an advantageous additive manufacturing process for producing aircraft parts, in which tooling costs and overall manufacturing time can be reduced. Tensile tests, annealing tests, hot forming tests, thermogravimetric analysis, and scanning electron microscope analysis are performed to gain an insight into the properties of the additively manufactured short carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic parts. A fuselage clip from Airbus A320 is selected for a case study to assess whether the conventional aluminum clip can be replaced by a short carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic clip made by additive manufacturing. Results show that the additively manufactured clip is able to replace the aluminum clip, but with a lower safety factor. Further research has to be conducted with consideration of fatigue loading for a more realistic evaluation of the additive manufacturing method for aircraft parts.