Fabrication and characterization of plastics with electrical and magnetic properties

In this work, PLA with electrical and magnetic properties are fabricated, and a neural network is also developed to estimate the parameters required to fabricate a given composite PLA with unique electrical and magnetic properties. Carbon and iron particles are used as electrical and magnetic reinforcements during the fabrication of the composite PLA plastics. The properties of the composites are characterized using an impedance analyzer. The characterization data from the experiment show that the conductivity and magnetic properties of the pure PLA are improved by combining it with carbon and iron particles. Furthermore, it is observed that, at a certain weight percent of carbon, the conductivity threshold is reached. Therefore, any further increase in carbon does not significantly improve the conductivity of the composite PLA. In addition, the developed neural network is able to estimate the parameters required to fabricate a given composite PLA with acceptable accuracy. Between 80 and 90% of the neural network predicted quantity of particle required to fabricate a PLA with unique properties are within an error of ± 10% of the actual quantity used in the experiment.