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The finite element method has had a great contribution to the advancement of
computational methods, and is still widely used in industry today. The FEM provides
cheap and simple solutions to solving problems, and this is apparent by the amount
of software readily available that is cheap and reliable. Almost thirty years of
uninterrupted development, it can be said that the finite element method has now
reached the stage where no additional breakthrough may be expected. However, the
potential of the method attracts renewed applications as new processes are
developed with time. For example, the development of rapid prototyping
technologies, and in particular, the rapid manufacturing approaches, where end use
parts are produced directly from CAD files, necessitate the use of advanced
techniques such as the finite element methods in order to be able to understand the
process attributes thoroughly. This has naturally attracted the attention of some
researchers into using FEA to better understand both micro and macro
characteristics of several RP processes.
Mostafa et al [35] conducted 2D and 3D numerical analysis of melt flow behaviour of
a representative ABS-iron composite through the 90-degree bent tube of the liquefier
head of the fused deposition modelling process using ANSYS finite element
package. Main flow parameters including temperature, velocity, and pressure drop
have been investigated. Filaments of the filled ABS have been fabricated and
characterised to verify the possibility of prototyping using the new material on an
existing FDM machine. The results of the analysis were found to be in good
correlation with experimental data and the flow behaviour was sufficiently predicted.
Non-random porous ceramic material structures are fabricated by fused deposition
and a novel technique is presented to model the compressive strength behaviour of
such materials [36]. Elastic interactions between pores have been considered and
the finite element method is used to numerically evaluate the same for the stress
fields developed. The FEM results are found to correlate quantitatively with uniaxial
compression experimental data of non-random porous ceramics of different
porosities. Variable volume fraction porosities were achieved by varying horizontal
pore-pore interactions for constant pore shapes and sizes. Effective elastic
interactions between pores have been considered between interacting micro-pores
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