Mechanical and fatigue behaviour of polyamide 12 processed via injection moulding and selective laser sintering. Analysis based on Kitagawa-Takahashi diagrams

This work deals with the mechanical and fatigue behaviour of polyamide 12 processed via Se-lective Laser Sintering and Injection Moulding. Apart from the analysis regarding the influence of the manufacturing technique, the effect of the layer orientation with respect to the direction of the applied load will be also analysed, since the additive manufacturing technique is a layer-wise technology that can induce anisotropy in the material. An extensive experimental program was carried out to determine the tensile, fracture, fatigue life and fatigue crack growth behaviours. The main novelty of this work lies, for the first time in polymers, in the use of the perspective of the Kitagawa-Takahashi diagrams for infinite fatigue life and by analogy their extension to failure.