Comparison of Tensile Strength of 3D Printed Elastomeric Dogbones Following Hydrocarbon Environmental Exposure

Additive manufacturing continues to advance as a technology. One aspect of additive technologies that has seen recent change has been in the types of materials that may be 3D printed. Elastomeric materials, including thermoplastic elastomers, are printed by fused deposition technology. These samples were printed on a Prusa Mk2S MMU using gcode generated with Slic3r Prusa Edition at a 0.2 mm layer height. The future of many products including consumer products, biomedical applications and aerospace depends on the degree to which these types of materials may be successfully printed. The current research focuses on degradation effects of exposure of thermoplastic elastomeric dogbones to hydrogen gas and to alcohol vapor. Dogbones were printed, and variously exposed to gaseous hydrogen and hydrocarbon vapors and then pulled in tension to failure. The data does not appear to preliminarily indicate a degradation in ultimate tensile strength or time to failure. Future work will include testing more specimens and determining if a secondary effect, such as strain rate, exists