An Experimental and Numerical Effort on the Vibration Behavior of Additively Manufactured Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol Components

Abstract

The importance of recycling engineering components and thus obtaining low-cost production solutions has become prominent in today's world. In this study, the mechanical and dynamic behaviors of three-dimensional-printed recycled polyethylene terephthalate glycol (RePET-G) beams were investigated numerically and experimentally for the first time in the literature. Initially, the governing equations of the beams were determined according to the Bernoulli-Euler beam theory, and these equations were numerically solved using the differential quadrature method and ANSYS program. Subsequently, to validate the accuracy of the numerical models, the obtained natural frequencies were compared with experimental results. It was observed that the numerical results showed good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, the effects of beam length, infill rate, and building direction on the natural frequencies of RePET-G beams were investigated. The outcomes showed that as the beam length changed, natural frequencies were significantly affected. Increasing the infill rate, especially for beams with vertical building direction, from 20% to 100% led to a slight decrease in the natural frequency values of the structure. Moreover, it was found that for beams with an infill rate of 100%, the natural frequency values obtained in the horizontal building direction were higher than those obtained in the vertical building direction.