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In-Situ Printing of Conductive Poly-lactic Acid (cPLA) Strain Sensors Embedded into Additively Manufactured Parts using Fused Deposition Modeling

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology has been around for decades, but until recently, they have been expensive, relatively large, and not available to most institution. Increased technological advances in 3D printing and awareness throughout industry, universities and even hobbyist has put increasing demand to substitute AM parts in place of traditionally manufactured (subtractive) designs; however, there is a large variability of part quality and mechanical behavior due to the inherent printing process, which must be understood before AM parts are used for load bearing and overall structural designs.

This research detailed in this thesis paper presents a technique to additively manufacture conductive polymer strain sensors into 3D printed polymer-based in order to measure internal strains. Methods to assemble the coupons for data acquisition and tensile loading and unloading are also detailed in this report. Several variables are explored in order to understand the effects of user-defined printing parameters on the strain sensor sensitivity, and stability while being subjected to unidirectional tension loading.

Findings from this study report that there is a strong correlation between part, or coupon strain and resistance measured by the conductive strain sensor. Although several variables were explored in this study, the gauge factor and repeatability varied significantly, thus preventing clear definition between changing variables and the measured results.

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