Mechanical Property Comparison of Hemp and Flax Fiber Reinforced Polylactic Acid versus Additive-Enhanced and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polylactic Acid in Fused Deposition Modeling

Martin-Compaired, Clara Luna (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Lemmi, Tsegaye ; Miralbes, Ramon (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Ranz, David (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is a common additive manufacturing (AM) tech-nology. This study compares PLA reinforced with natural fibers (hemp, flax) tomodified PLAs: PLA Plus (additive-enhanced) and PLA CF (synthetic carbon-fiberreinforced). Mechanical behavior is assessed via tensile, compression, and impacttests, complemented by microscopy-based microstructural analysis to evaluate per-formance differences in detail experimentally. The findings of the study indicatethat, in impact and compression tests, PLA Plus offers the best performance, show-ing a 15.278 KJ/m2 in the average energy per surface for the impact test and, anelastic modulus of 1.69 GPa and yield stress of 85.7MPa, while PLA hemp exhibitedvalues that were either equal to or highly comparable to those obtained by PLA CF.In the tensile tests, the PLA CF shows the best results, the modulus value obtainedwas 6.69 GPa, exhibiting a modulus value that was 146.30% higher than that of thePLA hemp and 167.37% higher than that of the PLA flax. Finally, a thoroughexamination of the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images revealed that theobserved properties could be attributed to a reduced number of bubbles anda higher proportion of reinforcement fibers when compared to the natural fibers(NF) filaments examined.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1080/15440478.2026.2619884

Año: 2026

Publicado en: JOURNAL OF NATURAL FIBERS 23, 1 (2026), 2619884 [18 pp.]
ISSN: 1544-0478

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/101079009/EU/SUSTainable industrial DESIGN of TEXtile structures for composites/SustDesignTex

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Expresión Gráfica en Ing. (Dpto. Ingeniería Diseño Fabri.)