In recent years, additive manufacturing has expanded to include traditional prototyping technologies like fused deposition modeling. The limitation in bridging the gap between prototyping and manufacturing is the limited access to specialty feedstocks. One application, in particular, that would benefit from this manufacturing method is the development of structural energetics. However, the addition of metallic fuel particles sharply increases viscosity, making processing a challenge. In previous work, poly(lactic acid) (PLA) was melt blended with poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and nanoscale aluminum (nAl) to resolve the sharp viscosity increases. Due to the poor solubility of PLA in PVDF, island-in-sea domains were present. The phase separation of PLA in PVDF had an insignificant influence on improving the surface energy of the binary blend. A resolution to this is to replace PLA with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). PMMA exhibits markedly better solubility and decreased viscosity, melting temperature, and degree of crystallinity at much lower weight concentrations than PLA. When PMMA is added to PVDF, due to their solubility, the surface energy decreases which enhances the surface area weld. The composites were successfully printed at 85 wt% concentrations of PVDF at 50°C below typical processing temperature. The purpose of this study is to investigate thermal performance and the processiblity of these composites for use in fused deposition modeling.

Thermal and rheological response of metallized PVDF/PMMA composites with nanoscale and microscale aluminum

255th National Meeting (2018)

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