Material Extrusion

This chapter reviews the physics and modeling of the material extrusion (ME) additive manufacturing process. It also reviews available analytical and numerical models to provide a base for a better understanding of ME with this fact in mind that none of these models have been customized for highly filled composite filaments. In addition to the analytical models, computational fluid dynamics tools have been used to model the extrusion of single‐phase polymers. The available models are focused on different parts of the extrusion process, such as the liquefier dynamics, extrusion, deposition, and healing. Given the complex nature of the extrusion process involving multiple physics and nonlinear relationships, the numerical computations can become expensive in terms of time. Although most of the models are mainly customized for the conventional polymer‐based ME process, with adequate consideration and experimentally identified metal filament properties, the polymer‐based models would be good platforms for modeling of metal ME.