Feasibility Study of Extrusion Based Additive Manufacturing Process for Creating Biomimetic Microchannel Network
Abstract
Fabrication of micro-scaled 3-dimensional channels to produce a vascular network
of capillaries through a sacrificial material approach has been achieved using traditional
methods such as casting, lithography, etc. Casting produces a randomly aligned capillary
network which provides no predominant direction for flow; this depends on how the
sacrificial material settles during the process. Lithography is not known to produce
encapsulated channels in a 3D matrix and generally works over the surface or exposed
area of the material. Adopting an extrusion-based additive manufacturing method assists
the production of aligned capillaries predominantly in the direction of extrusion. This
work attempts to characterize the degree of alignment of the fibers of sacrificial material
(sugar) in an extruded matrix of PDMS (Sylgard 184™). The goal of this research work
is to understand the alignment of sacrificial material fibers in a viscous two-phase
extrudable material. Finding an appropriate material combination is under the future scope
of this research. Experiments were conducted for identifying a suitable composition of
sugar fibers and resin that can be extruded at different pressures to obtain an observable
network of fibers under the microscope. Multiple methods of fiber mixing were explored
for uniform dispersion and a standard operating procedure for the fiber-silicon extrusion
has been proposed. Images of extruded samples for different process parameters were
analyzed statistically to quantify the alignment of fibers. A full factorial analysis of
experimental design was performed to establish the effect of extrusion pressure and
convergence angle at extrusion on the alignment of extruded fibers.
Citation
Tare, Shrivatsa Milind (2021). Feasibility Study of Extrusion Based Additive Manufacturing Process for Creating Biomimetic Microchannel Network. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /196397.