PLA-polylactic acid

[Anonymous]

 Hi,

I'm using Inventor 2018 and I can't find PLA(polylactic acid) in materials. I want to simulate my model in FEM. Is any option to add this material to library (but not creating my own material)? Maybe I can't find in library. Any suggestions?

[blair]

You should be able to find the material properties here: http://www.matweb.com

You will need to add/create a new material in your Materials library.

[kelly.young]

@Anonymous there are many like plastics in the material list, but that is not one of them out of the box.

Like @blair mentioned MatWeb would be a great reference for you.

Another avenue would be to contact the manufacturer and request the information, they should be able to supply it to you fairly quickly.

Once you have it here are the instructions for creating your own custom material:

To Create a Material

To Create a Material Library

To Duplicate a Material

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

I would love to have an easier solution to this like other software do.

By having Matweb create the material database input from their database for us.

I see Autodesk Algor and Ansys on the list, but not Inventor.

http://www.matweb.com/membership/benefits.aspx

Matweb feature overview

[Anonymous]

I completely agree... given a lot of students use PLA in their 3d printers, not having PLA is a huge oversight on the part of Autodesk.  It once took me an hour to look up the units and convert them into a format Inventor can use. Why have ABS and not PLA?

[JDMather]

If you go into the plastics environment of Inventor you can search for information on thousands of plastics.

Including shrinkage properties, thermal, mechanical...

[leowarren34]

I think it is an oversight but ABS used to be very common, I hope it arrives in IV 2020...

[Anonymous]

May someone please link settings that actually work for PLA printed plastics?

This is the only profile for this type of PLA on matweb and it does not give any of the values you need to input into inventor.

[ToddHarris7556]

One important consideration that I think is worth keeping in mind:

Trying to do FEA on a 3D printed model should be taken with an extremely large grain of salt. 

I would assume that the reason that ABS is available is that it's used primarily as an injection-molded material. This has process variability to be sure, but can be considered much closer to a homogenous piece with more isotropic properties.  FDM, by it's nature, depends on adhesion between multiple layers of material that are fused essentially by gravity and heat.

What sort of printer are you using? How accurate is the hot end temperature control? What size nozzle? What's the environmental control near the print head? Did a cool breeze just blow through the room? What are the effects of any of these variables on the overall strength? I don't know, either - but I'd be willing to bet they have an effect. 

Doing FEA on composite layups, the math becomes complex very quickly. Personally, I don't know how meaningful simulation on PLA parts really is, only because it's probably dependent on all of the above variables much more than the material properties itself. It would be interesting, but I wouldn't trust it very far in an engineering sense. 

I'm not saying it can't be done. Just raising at least a yellow flag to be careful about using a $500 printer to print PLA parts and assuming they're good 'because the FEA said so'. 

[mikeumus · Accepted solution]

This may not have all the properties but good for newbies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLRbowucVAE