Pla scaffolds manufactured by 3d printing techniques: methodology to develop an orthotropic behavior model of the material

Abstract

Scaffolds, in biomedical terms, are porous three-dimensional structures whose main function is to provide a place to house living tissue cells. A scaffold must be biocompatible, biodegradable, having adequate porosity and being easy to manufacture. In this case, for its manufacture, 3D printing techniques have been chosen, specifically fused deposition modeling (FDM), and polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable polymer, has been chosen as the material. common in 3D printing. Tensile tests were carried out on specimens made of PLA by FDM, which were printed in three different orientations: orientation 1 (O1), orientation 2 (O2) and orientation 3 (O3). The O3 orientation is characterized by having the printing direction aligned with the length of the specimen. Pore size, geometric pattern, and printing properties were held constant across all test specimens to
ensure comparable results. An important finding was that the O3 print orientation showed significant variation in the elastic modulus, in this direction. To address this variation, a orthotropic material model was proposed. In addition, the ANSYS software was used to perform numerical simulations and validate the experimental results. These simulations showed a good correlation with the data obtained in the laboratory.