Abstract
Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the common methods among the Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. In this study, hemp fiber, a sustainable, and fast degraded material introduced and mixed with fresh Polylactic Acid (PLA) filament with 3 wt%, 7.5 wt%, and 10 wt% to improve the drawbacks of pure PLA filament and sustain its required properties. The results from the fatigue testing of pure PLA, and various hemp-fiber infused PLA indicated that increasing the wt% content of a hemp fiber infused PLA specimen at a certain point does increase the ultimate bending stress as well as the overall fatigue life of a pure PLA specimen. The 10 wt% hemp fiber specimens provided a 7.32% increase in the mean ultimate flexural strength over pure PLA. The mean of Young’s modulus also increased by 10.65% for the 10 wt% hemp fiber specimen and by 23.05% for the 7.5 wt% hemp fiber specimen over PLA. The 10 wt% hemp fiber specimens also provided a 4.05% increase in fatigue life over PLA. The 3 wt% did not provide a significant improvement in the study. These findings provide insight into the AM processes and lead to the development of environment-friendly composites in the industries.
