Investigation of mixed mode I and II fracture mechanical behaviour of SLS printed IASCB specimens by digital image correlation

Abstract

This work focuses on the fracture mechanics properties of polyamide (PA) for selective laser sintering (SLS) and investigates the capability of additive manufacturing process to build 3D artificial cracks, otherwise impossible to create by classic methods. IASCB semi-circular specimen with tilted crack subjected to asymmetric three-point bend loading were tested in order to cover a wide range of stress intensity factors (KI, KII and mixed modes) and T-stress. Moreover, Digital Image correlation (DIC) technique was used by full strain field analysis with the purpose of evaluating the fracture behaviour