Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
A SUSTAINABLE APROACH BY USING 3D PRINTING POLYLACTIC ACID PLA RESIDUES AS MATRIX OF GRAPHENE NANOCOMPOSITE
Submission Author:
Gabriel da Cunha Cotrim , DF
Co-Authors:
Gabriel da Cunha Cotrim, Maria del Pilar Hidalgo Falla, Sandra Luz
Presenter: Gabriel da Cunha Cotrim
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-0903
Abstract
The manufacturing and material shaping industry is experiencing a gradual transformation with the diffusion of Industry 4.0 technologies. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a technology revolutionizing this industry by enabling agile techniques, customization, and complex geometries. Among the various AM techniques, 3D printing by melting and material deposition (FDM) is a popular and cost-effective technique that involves the superimposition of layers of thermoplastics to form the desired geometry. Polylactic acid (PLA) is the most used polymer in FDM, owing to its ease of printing, biodegradability, and mechanical properties, making this material very useful to the industry. As several studies in the literature demonstrate, PLA also serves as a matrix material in nanocomposites. One such reinforcement material that can be used in PLA nanocomposites is graphene, which is a relatively new nanomaterial. Graphene is a simple sheet of graphite with exceptional properties that can improve the behavior of its polymeric matrix, such as electrical conductivity and increased mechanical strength. This study aimed to develop a sustainable approach to utilizing PLA residues from 3D printing by incorporating graphene as a reinforcement material. In this work, several PLA residues were aggregated and ground and then mixed with a twin-screw extruder at 190 ºC with 0.18% by weight of graphene. After mixing, the materials were injected in the form of specimens for tensile tests, and the materials were also characterized by thermogravimetry (TG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and infrared spectroscopy with Fourier transform (FTIR). The study found that adding 0.18 w% graphene to PLA residues did not significantly affect the mechanical behavior of the samples. Furthermore, the presence of graphene was confirmed by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Also, the thermal behavior was not affected by the graphene addition, and no conductive properties were added to the nanocomposite. These results have important implications for developing sustainable and high-performance materials for the manufacturing industry.
Keywords
PLA, graphene, Nanomaterials, Additive manufacturing, Recycling, 3D printing, FDM
