Investigation on the tribological behavior and wear mechanism of parts processed by fused deposition additive manufacturing process

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is a process for producing three dimensional products by layer by layer deposition directly from a digital file, becoming, more exciting among researchers from academia and industry in recent years. However, there is currently a lack of basic knowledge about the effect of multiple processing parameters on the wear behavior of FDM manufactured parts. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of different FDM fabrication parameters on the tribological behavior and wear mechanism of processed prototypes using definitive screening design and partial least squares regression. The FDM process parameters considered for experiments are layer thickness, air gap, raster angle, build orientation, road width and number of contours. The study of worn surfaces morphology was also conducted by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In this study, the FDM process parameters are optimized using Nelder-Mead simplex method to minimize the wear rate and findings were validated by confirmation experiment. The results demonstrate that the FDM process parameters greatly affect the wear behavior of the manufactured parts due to the various microstructural modifications during manufacturing process that cause the changes in the wear properties, which is totally accordant to practical observation. The experimental results indicate that the wear rate of the FDM manufactured parts decreases with the decrease in layer thickness and build orientation, but with the increase in raster angle and air gap. It is found that the lowest and highest values for both road width and number of contours produce high wear rates compared to the wear rates at the center level of those parameters. This study provides useful guides for practical selection of FDM fabrication parameters to improve the tribological properties.