Continuous carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic (C-CFRTP) composites have been broadly applied in key industries due to their excellent material properties. Fused filament fabrication (FFF), as a material extrusion additive manufacturing (AM) technology, can be applied to fabricate C-CFRTP parts with complex structures. However, the underlying fiber-matrix impregnation behavior during FFF of C-CFRTP composites, which is a key factor to bridge process parameters and mechanical properties, is still unknown. In this paper, we developed a theoretical model to discern the impregnation process at different parametric conditions. The microscopic measurement of continuous carbon fiber reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) specimens was conducted to characterize the impregnation percentage for the model verification. The results indicated that almost all predicted values agreed well with the experimental results. Additionally, the increase in impregnation percentage was found to improve the tensile strength. The findings in this work provide insights into the process-impregnation-property relationship and promote the effective FFF fabrication of C-CFRTP components.

连续碳纤维增强热塑性塑料（C-CFRTP）复合材料因其优异的材料性能而被广泛应用于关键行业。熔融长丝制造（FFF）作为一种材料挤压增材制造（AM）技术，可用于制造结构复杂的C-CFRTP零件。然而，在C-CFRTP复合材料的FFF过程中潜在的纤维基质浸渍行为仍然是未知的，这是桥接工艺参数和机械性能的关键因素。在本文中，我们建立了一个理论模型来识别不同参数条件下的浸渍过程。进行了连续碳纤维增强聚乳酸（PLA）标本的显微测量，以表征浸渍百分比，以进行模型验证。结果表明，几乎所有预测值均与实验结果吻合良好。另外，发现浸渍百分比的增加改善了拉伸强度。这项工作中的发现提供了对过程-浸渍-性质关系的见解，并促进了C-CFRTP组件的有效FFF制造。