Improvement of 3D printing polymer simulations considering converting G-code to Abaqus

This paper describes a new approach to simulate mechanical testing for 3D printing materials with the FDM process. A developed tool to convert G-code files used in the FDM process into Abaqus scripts was used in the engineering simulation package, allowing engineers and manufacturers to import the real geometries of samples for numerical simulations in terms of optimization of 3D manufacturing processes and improve their numerical manufacturing procedures, leading to faster and higher quality production. A comparative study was made between the geometries generated with the slicer software and those generated by our tool, confirming the tool’s accuracy in generating the exact geometries. Then, a tensile test simulation was also performed on a standard printed specimen (ISO527-2) with a single layer and multiple orientations (0\(^{\circ }\), 45\(^{\circ }\), and 90\(^{\circ }\)). Showing that the simulation results and the experiment are consistent, a correlation exceeding 90% is demonstrated. It offers an improved simulation outcome.