Preliminary Tensile Investigation of FDM Printed PLA/Coconut Wood Composite

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is a technique in additive manufacturing that has been used to produce various components using a variety of materials for a broad range of applications adapting layer-by-layer deposition process. Thermoplastic polymers are commonly used raw material that comes in the form of a filament. Coconut wood is highly recognized for its naturally affable ecological components, thermal resilience, and corrosion resistance. However, PLA's qualities embedded in coconut wood remain inadequate. The objective of this analysis is to investigate and analyze the tensile properties of the 3D printed specimens with varying infill percentages (25, 50, and 75%) and the infill patterns (grid, rectilinear, concentric, honeycomb, and triangle) on coconut wood reinforced PLA using the FDM technique. The specimen is printed in accordance with the ASTM standard for tensile testing, which is ASTM D638 type 1. Following that, the tensile properties of the PLA and PLA/Coconut wood were analyzed. The results demonstrate that the concentric infill pattern with a 75% infill percentage provides the strongest structure in PLA and PLA/Coconut wood composites. The PLA has a maximum tensile strength of 37.55 MPa, whereas the PLA/Coconut wood has 19.35 MPa. PLA has a maximum elastic modulus of 1.148 GPa, while the PLA/Coconut wood composite has a maximum elastic modulus of 1.121 GPa. PLA has a yield strength of 23.33 MPa, while the PLA/Coconut wood composite has a yield strength of 15.33 MPa in tensile testing. Meanwhile, the grid pattern has the weakest properties for both materials.