Additive manufacturing (AM) refers to a wide variety of manufacturing processes for rapid prototyping and production of final and semi-final products. In opposite to conventional orsubtractive processes, in additive manufacturing, the material is gradually added layer by layer to form the parts. AM enables the fabrication of complex parts which were impossible or not costeffective to manufacture with the traditional processes. Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is basedon the melting of a polymeric filament in an extruder; the filament is then deposited layer by layerto manufacture the final parts. Despite growing interest from industries and a large audience inrecent years, these manufacturing processes are still not well mastered, especially for not mass produced polymers. In this thesis, we will take an insight into the printability of PEEK(Polyetheretherketone). The aim is to find the printing conditions to obtain the best quality of theprinted parts by FFF process. In the first step, we have determined the polymer properties influencing the quality of the printed parts by FFF. The rheological properties, the surface tension,the thermal conductivity and thermal expansion have been determined experimentally. Then, thecoalescence phenomenon of the polymeric filaments has been studied by experimental, analyticaland numerical simulation. Furthermore, the stability of the filament and its flow properties when itexits from the extruder in the FFF process has been determined by experimental, analytical andnumerical simulation. Then, we have focused on the determination of the die swelling of PEEKextrudate. Lastly, the kinetics of isothermal and non-isothermal crystallization of PEEK has beenstudied by experimental study. The kinetics of crystallization has been applied to FFF process bynumerical simulation in order to determine the optimum environment temperature to control thecrystallization of printed parts. The crystallization of PEEK reaches its maximum value (about22%) of crystallization during the deposition
