Page 280 - IJB-9-4

International Journal of Bioprinting

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Study on 3D printing process of continuous

polyglycolic acid fiber-reinforced polylactic acid
degradable composites

Patiguli Aihemaiti , Ru Jia , Wurikaixi Aiyiti*, Houfeng Jiang, Ayiguli Kasimu
†
†
School of Mechanical Engineering, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830000, PR China

Abstract

A continuous polyglycolic acid (PGA) fiber-reinforced polylactic acid (PLA)
degradable composite was proposed for application in biodegradable load-bearing
bone implant. The fused deposition modeling (FDM) process was used to fabricate
composite specimens. The influences of the printing process parameters, such as
layer thickness, printing spacing, printing speed, and filament feeding speed on the
mechanical properties of the PGA fiber-reinforced PLA composites, were studied.
The thermal properties of the PGA fiber and PLA matrix were investigated by using
differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The
internal defects of the as-fabricated specimens were characterized by the micro-X-
ray 3D imaging system. During the tensile experiment, a full-field strain measurement
system was used to detect the strain map and analysis the fracture mode of the
specimens. A digital microscope and field emission electron scanning microscopy
† These authors contributed equally
to this work. were used to observe the interface bonding between fiber and matrix and fracture
morphologies of the specimens. The experimental results showed that the tensile
*Corresponding author: strength of specimens was related to their fiber content and porosity. The printing
Wurikaixi Aiyiti
(wurikaixi@xju.edu.cn) layer thickness and printing spacing had significant impacts on the fiber content. The
printing speed did not affect the fiber content but had a slight effect on the tensile
Citation: Aihemaiti P, Jia R, Aiyiti W,
et al., 2023, Study on 3D printing strength. Reducing the printing spacing and layer thickness could increase the fiber
process of continuous polyglycolic content. The tensile strength (along the fiber direction) of the specimen with 77.8%
acid fiber-reinforced polylactic acid fiber content and 1.82% porosity was the highest, reaching 209.32 ± 8.37 MPa, which
degradable composites.
Int J Bioprint, 9(4): 734 is higher than the tensile strength of the cortical bone and polyether ether ketone
https://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.734 (PEEK), indicating that the continuous PGA fiber-reinforced PLA composite has great
Received: December 07, 2022 potential in the manufacture of biodegradable load-bearing bone implants.
Accepted: March 07, 2023
Published Online: April 19, 2023
Keywords: 3D printing; Continuous fiber-reinforced composites; Biodegradable
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). implants; Mechanical properties
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, 1. Introduction
provided the original work is
properly cited. The combination of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology and advanced design
Publisher’s Note: Whioce technologies, such as reverse engineering, computer-aided design (CAD), topology
Publishing remains neutral with optimization design, has very obvious advantages in the field of customized load-bearing
regard to jurisdictional claims in [1-4]
published maps and institutional bone implant manufacturing . Load-bearing implants are commonly fabricated with
affiliations. metal materials such as titanium [5,6] and tantalum [7,8] or high-performance polymers

Volume 9 Issue 4 (2023) 272 https://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.734