Investigation of bending properties of continuous fiber reinforced resin T-beams made by 3D printing

In the study, method of 3D printing is adopted to make continuous fiber reinforced resin T-beams, presenting a new approach to the fabrication of beam structure for building, aviation, shipbuilding and other fields. The effects of the height of the rib as well as deposited space on the bending performance of printed T-beam were investigated. Specifically, bending damage modes were analyzed, and the bending process was monitored through acoustic emission. The results show that, the bending strength and modulus increase distinctly with the decrease of the deposited space. The bending strength and modulus can reach a maximum of 315 MPa and 16 GPa respectively. The bending damage mode of the 3D printed T-beam is the fracture of the outer part of the middle part of the rib followed by delamination of the rib. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce the multidimensional variables to three principal components. Furthermore, the three principal components were classified into 5 categories based on the k-means clustering algorithm to analysis bending damage process of T-beam.