The elastic response of homogeneous isotropic materials is most commonly represented by their Young's modulus (E), but geometric variability associated with additive manufacturing results in materials that are neither homogeneous nor isotropic. Here we investigated methods to estimate the effective elastic modulus (E_eff) of samples fabricated by fused filament fabrication. We conducted finite element analysis (FEA) on printed samples based on material properties and CT-scanned geometries. The analysis revealed how the layer structure of a specimen altered the internal stress distribution and the resulting E_eff. We also investigated different empirical methods to estimate E_eff as guides. We envision the findings from our study can provide guidelines for modulus estimation of as-printed specimens, with the potential of applying to other extrusion-based additive manufacturing technologies.

均质各向同性材料的弹性响应通常由其杨氏模量 (E) 表示，但与增材制造相关的几何变异会导致材料既不均质也不各向同性。在这里，我们研究了估计熔丝制造样品的有效弹性模量 ( E _eff ) 的方法。我们根据材料特性和 CT 扫描几何形状对打印样品进行了有限元分析 (FEA)。分析揭示了样本的层结构如何改变内应力分布以及由此产生的E _eff 。我们还研究了不同的经验方法来估计E _eff作为指导。我们预计我们的研究结果可以为打印样本的模量估计提供指导，并有可能应用于其他基于挤出的增材制造技术。