RT journal article
T1 Product Design by Additive Manufacturing for Water Environments: Study of Degradation and Absorption Behavior of PLA and PETG
A1 Moreno Nieto, Francisco Daniel
A1 Alonso García, María
A1 Pardo Vicente, Miguel Ángel
A1 Rodríguez Parada, María Lucía
A2 Ingeniería Mecánica y Diseño Industrial
K1 additive manufacturing
K1 degradation
K1 PLA
K1 PETG
K1 absorption
K1 product design
AB Additive manufacturing technologies are shifting from rapid prototyping technologies to end use or final parts production. Polymeric material extrusion processes have been broadly addressed with a specific definition of all parameters and variables for all different of technologies approaches and materials. Recycled polymeric materials have been studied due to the growing importance of the environmental awareness of the contemporary society. Beside this, little specific research has been found in product development applications for AM where the printed parts are in highly moisture environments or surrounded by water, but polymers have been for long used in such industries with conventional manufacturing approaches. This work focuses on the analysis and comparison of two different additively manufactured polymers printed by fused filament fabrication (FFF) processes using desktop-size printers to be applied for product design. The polymers used have been a recycled material: polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) and polylactic acid (PLA). Degradation and water absorption behaviors of both materials are presented, analyzed and discussed in this paper, where different samples have been immersed in saturated solutions of water with maritime salt and sugar together with a control sample immersed in distilled water. The samples have been dimensionally and weight-controlled weekly as well as microscopically analyzed to understand degradation and absorption processes that appear in the fully saturated solutions. The results revealed how the absorption process is stabilized after a reduced number of weeks for both materials and how the degradation process is more remarked in the PLA material due to its organic nature.
PB MDPI
SN 2073-4360
YR 2021
FD 2021-04
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/24921
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/24921
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 21-sep-2026