Small buffers manufactured by fused deposition modelling and thermoplastic elastomer filament
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Maritime University of Szczecin, Wały Chrobrego 1/2, 70-500 Szczecin, Poland
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Jacek Wojnowski
Maritime University of Szczecin, Wały Chrobrego 1/2, 70-500 Szczecin, Poland
Adv. Sci. Technol. Res. J. 2025; 19(5):307-320
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ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are an excellent tool for shaping the properties and producing prototypes of innovative parts and devices. The scarcity of research on bumpers made from thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) prompted efforts to expand the available knowledge. The aim of the study was to determine the influence of the hardness of the filament material, the number of walls and the fill density on the determined characteristics, i.e. maximum forces, plastic deformation, absorbed energy (EA), hysteresis and specific damping capacity (SDC) of cylindrical-shaped bumpers with a volume of 1 cm3. The bumpers were subjected to uniaxial compression tests to deformations ranging from 0 to 70%. The above parameters of the buffers were determined by numerical integration of the relevant sections of the compression force vs displacement characteristics. The results show a non-linear dependence of the analysed parameters as a function of strain. It turned out that the type of the material had the greatest effect on the determined characteristics, followed by the filling density and the number of buffer walls was the smallest. The highest levels of technical performance were exhibited by a bumper made from a higher hardness filament, with a wall count of 8 and 100% infill density. The bumper made of the thermoplastic elastomer UNIFLEX 120, with a wall number of 8 and a filling density of 100%, showed the highest values of characteristics; the maximum force was 6.640 kN, the EA was 3.58 J, the maximum hysteresis was 1.82 J, with a plastic deformation of 38.6% for 70% deformation. The other types of bumpers, which differed in the type of filament material, number of walls and filling density, showed lower values of mechanical characteristics.