Numerical simulation of compression and tensile tests on thermoplastics: A meshless approach

Thermoplastics, such as the polypropylene, often have different behaviours when subjected to traction or compression loads. Thermoplastics are also used in additive manufacturing processes, such as the fused filament fabrication, allowing to build complex structures possessing structural elements with an intricate internal architecture (foams and functionally graded material deposition). Thus, yield criterions have to be appropriately chosen in order to capture the homogenised material non-linear behaviour. In this work, polypropylene regular specimens are discretised and analysed assuming traction and compression tests. The non-linear elastoplastic analyses are performed considering three distinct discrete numerical approaches. Thus, the stress–strain curves obtained using two different meshless methods and the finite element method are compared with experimental data. In the end, a comparative study is performed between the results obtained using meshless methods and the finite element method, and the accuracy of the meshless methods is demonstrated.