Breakthrough Printing 3D Carbon Fiber Composites



Breakthrough Printing 3D Carbon Fiber Composites
Researchers recently printed 3D carbon fiber composites offering greater control and optimization of the lighter-weight, yet stronger-than-steel material.
Technology Briefing

Transcript


Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Lab recently became the first to 3D print aerospace-grade carbon fiber composites. This breakthrough opens the door to greater control and optimization of the lighter-weight, yet stronger-than-steel material. The research, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports represents a "significant advance" in the development of micro-extrusion 3D printing techniques for carbon fiber.

For years, the engineers mantra has been 'if you could make everything out of carbon fiber, you would, 'it's potentially the ultimate material. And it has been "waiting in the wings" because it's so difficult to fabricate into complex shapes.

Why? Because carbon fiber is a lightweight, yet stiff and strong material with a high resistance to temperature. That makes the composite material popular in the aerospace, defense, and automotive industries, as well as sports such as surfing and motorcycle racing.

Carbon fiber composites are typically fabricated one of two ways, by physically winding the filaments around a mandrel, or weaving the fibers together like a wicker basket, resulting in finished products that are limited to either flat or cylindrical shapes. Fabricators also tend to overcompensate with material due to performance concerns, making the parts heavier, costlier, and more wasteful than necessary.

But now, with 3D printing, you can potentially make anything out of carbon fiber.

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab researchers reported printing several complex 3D structures through a modified Direct Ink Writing 3D printing process. The team also developed and patented a new chemistry that can cure the material in seconds instead of hours, and they used the Lab's high-performance computing capabilities to develop accurate models of the flow of carbon fiber filaments.

They were able to get past the problem of printer clogging by using simulation, in large part because of computational modeling performed on supercomputers. A team of computational engineers needed to simulate thousands of carbon fibers as they emerged from the ink nozzle to find out how to best align them during the process.

Theresulting ability to 3D print carbon fiber offers new degrees of freedom. The resultant material, can be used to make:
  • High-performance airplane wings.
  • Satellite components that are insulated on one side and don't need to be rotated in space.
  • Wearables that can draw heat from the body but don't allow it in.
A big breakthrough for this technology is the development of custom carbon fiber-filled inks with thermoset matrix materials. For example, epoxy and cyanate ester, which were carefully designed for this printing process, also provide enhanced mechanical and thermal performance compared to thermoplastic counterparts that are found in other commercially available carbon fiber 3D printing technologies, such as nylon and ABS.

The direct ink writing process also makes it possible to print parts with all the carbon fibers going the same direction within the microstructures, allowing them to outperform similar materials created with other methods done with random alignment. This process also uses two-thirds less carbon fiber to get the same material properties from the finished part.

The researchers will next turn their attention to optimizing the process, figuring out the best places to lay down the carbon fiber to maximize performance. There have been discussions with commercial, aerospace and defense partners to move forward on future development of the technology.



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