Characterization of PLA and design of a 3D printed wing

Abstract: This report describes the structural design of a wing for a Vertical Take Off  and Landing drone, in which all the structure will be built by fused deposition modeling of polylactic acid (PLA). To perform this de-sign, the material used is first characterized in different orientations using tensile stress tests, Image Correlation and MATLAB. These properties are then input in a MATLAB program specially developed for this project to obtain the optimum skin and spar thickness in the wing for certain fight conditions. Results are finally verified with a 3D model in CAD and scaled wings in bending tests.