Abstract
The emergence of smart materials coupled with additive manufacturing technology has provided competitive advantages over traditional manufacturing systems in terms of manufacturing flexibility, product functionality, and the ability to switch between multiple phases under given external stimuli. Although the fabricability of shape memory materials has been widely explored in stereolithography systems, the shape memory performance of printed smart structures has not been extensively studied. More specifically, in current literature, the printing process is mainly considered independent of material characteristics, and a lack of information is reported on how the printing parameters affect the shape fixity and free recovery performance of the printed parts. Therefore, this work is dedicated to experimentally investigating the influences of parameters from both the stereolithography printing process and thermomechanical process (i.e., shape programming and free recovery) on the shape memory properties. Five parameters, including layer thickness, scan speed, maximum programmed angle, hold time, and recovery time, are experimentally analyzed for their impacts on the shape morphing capabilities. According to the results of this study, a variation of 14.33% on the free recovery ratio can be observed when the scan speed is altered. In addition, the printing process parameters exhibit high levels of dominance in affecting the shape memory performance over parameters involved in the thermomechanical process, such as hold time and maximum programmed angle.
