Numerical simulations on the Polyjet process

Additive manufacturing is becoming an increasingly popular technology due to the possibility of building complex parts automatically with little constraints on shape. Parts can be manufactured onsite and lead times are reducable. Polyjet process is one such additive manfacturing process which was developed by the company Stratasys which has the capability to produce multiple - material composites. It boats a roughness close to injection moulded parts. Despite the potentials, the current use has been limited to rapid prototyping. The interest of the company is to use this techology in crititical applications for example plaster casts , prosthetic legs etc. In the following project, we have worked on to simulate the overall properties of the polyjet composite and study the trends at varying the volume proportions of materials and studying the effect of the inclusion mechanical properties on the overall properties of the composite. We have used the Mean Field approach and the Full Field Approach (Finite Element Method) to study the overall properties and done comparisions between them.