Procesado y caracterización de formulaciones industriales de poliésteres alifáticos mediante tecnologías de inyección y fabricación aditiva
- Autores: Juan Ivorra Martínez
- Directores de la Tesis: Teodomiro Boronat Vitoria (dir. tes.), Rafael Antonio Balart Gimeno (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de València ( España ) en 2023
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Pedro Enrique Sanchez Jimenez (presid.), Pablo Díaz García (secret.), Miguel Fernando Aldás Carrasco (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería y Producción Industrial por la Universitat Politècnica de València
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: RiuNet
- Resumen
The main objective of this thesis is to obtain aliphatic polyesters with improved properties for their application in industrial processes by applying conventional polymer processing techniques such as injection moulding and additive manufacturing. In order to reach the aforementioned objective several strategies are proposed such as the incorporation of natural origin plasticizing additives, the incorporation of natural fillers, the development of polymer blends and the incorporation of additives for the medical sector.
The first stage of this research consists in the study of aliphatic polyesters from polyhydroxyalkanoates - PHA. The modifications made to those polymers have been the introduction of almond shell wastes to produce composites, the development of binary blends with poly(¿-caprolactone) to improve ductile properties and the addition of different plasticizers derived from terpenoids, more specifically geraniol esters. In this first stage, injection-moulding is proposed to obtain all the properties and features of the formulations after the aforementioned modifications.
Afterwards, the use of these polyhydroxyalkanoates in the medical sector due to they are biocompatible and resorbable, is proposed. First, the effect of the parameters to be used in additive manufacturing of PHA is analysed. These polymers possess a very narrow processing window and a great sensitiveness to the degree of crystallinity depending on the cooling conditions. The incorporation of osteoconductive additives such as hydroxyapatite is of great interest for the improvement of the bone regeneration process, so it is considered as an additive of PHA for medical applications. It is for this reason that in the first work, injection moulding is used for determining the effect of nanohydroxyapatite have on the polymer matrix. Then, the developed formulations are used in 3D printing to assess the feasibility of this technology for the medical sector by obtaining scaffolds structures that can be used in bone regeneration processes.
Finally, poly(lactic acid) - PLA is processed by injection-moulding and additive manufacturing to assess the feasibility of these techniques. PLA is a cost-effective aliphatic polyester with balanced properties; nevertheless, it shows high intrinsic brittleness. Therefore, the use of natural plasticizers derived from esters of itaconic acid are of especial interest for the development of formulations with improved toughness. Additionally, PLA is a material with a great interest in additive manufacturing. The use of different patterns and infills used in 3D printing play a key role on mechanical behavior of the 3D-printed components, which is also related to the overall 3D-printing time. One of the interesting applications of additive manufacturing with PLA, is the production of medical devices with the ability to be progressively reabsorbed by the human body. In this sense, the design and validation of a femur fixing prosthesis is proposed.
