STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FABRICATION PARAMETERS ON THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOURS OF PARTICLES

While research into the mechanical characteristics of 3D-printed PLA/chitosan composite has been reported, optimizing and assessing the importance of the composite's manufacturing parameters has yet to be done. The purpose of this work is to explain how the mechanical responses of a 3D-printed chitosan/PLA scaffold are affected by the fabrication parameters used, how these responses may be adjusted, and how much of an effect this has. Based on the design concerns of the prior work, a L9 (3**3) orthogonal array was used for Taguchi-grey relational analysis. Predictedly, as the chitosan weight % increased, the mechanical responsiveness of the composite decreased. However, the mechanical response of the composite improved with an increase in infill density and annealing temperature. The optimal conditions were 1 weight percent chitosan, 100 percent infill density, and 70 degrees Celsius for the annealing process. The found optimum parameters did not match those predicted in the earlier research. The current research used multiple response optimization, which was not used in the prior study, which is the root cause of the discrepancy. In addition, it was shown that the infill density contributed 95.88% of the total variation in the success of a 3D printed chitosan/PLA scaffold with mechanical enhancements. Morphological analysis shed light on the substantial relevance of the infill density. The statistical verification study also found that the experimental multiple mechanical responses were statistically consistent with the expected response within a 95% confidence range. The anticipated optimum parameters are effective in the composite manufacturing, as shown by the confidence analysis. Therefore, it can be inferred that mechanically improved 3D printed chitosan/PLA scaffold may be fabricated with high infill density, a small quantity of chitosan, and a lower annealing temperature.