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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mech. Eng.
Sec. Digital Manufacturing
Volume 10 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmech.2024.1452778
This article is part of the Research Topic Design and Microstructure Control of Additively Manufactured Mechanical Metamaterials View all articles

Upcycling end-of-life carbon fiber in high-performance CFRP composite by material extrusion additive manufacturing process

Provisionally accepted
Muhammad Ateeq Muhammad Ateeq 1Aamer Nazir Aamer Nazir 2*
  • 1 Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China
  • 2 King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Each year, a significant amount of waste is produced from carbon fiber polymer composites at the end of its lifecycle due to extensive use across various applications. Utilizing regenerative carbon fiber as a feedstock material offers a promising and sustainable approach to additive manufacturing based on materials. This study proposed the additive manufacturing of recycled carbon fiber with a polyamide-12 polymer composite. Filaments of recycled carbon fiber reinforced polyamide-12 (rCF-PA12) with different recycled carbon fiber contents (0%, 10%, and 15% by weight) in the polyamide-12 matrix are developed. These filaments are utilized for 3D printing specimens using various infill density parameters (80% and 100%) on a fused deposition modeling 3D printer. The study examined how the fiber content and infill densities influenced the flexural performance of the printed specimens. Notably, the part containing 15 wt.% recycled carbon fiber (rCF) composites showed a significant improvement in flexural performance due to enhanced interface bonding and effective fiber alignment. The results indicated that reinforcing the printed part with 10% and 15 wt.% recycled carbon fiber (rCF) improved the flexural properties by 49.86% and 91.75%, respectively, compared to the unreinforced printed part under the same infill density and printing parameters. The investigation shows that the additive manufacturing-based technique presents a potential approach to use CFRP waste and manufacture high-performance engineering economic and environmentally friendly industrial applications with the complicated design using the different polymer matrices.

    Keywords: Recycled carbon fiber, recycled carbon fiber reinforced polyamide-12 composite, Additive manufacturing, Flexural properties, Fused deposition modeling

    Received: 21 Jun 2024; Accepted: 13 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ateeq and Nazir. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Aamer Nazir, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.