Design and Material Performance for Lightweight in Powder Bed Metal Additive Manufacturing

Research Project, 2018 – 2021

The project addresses how to realise design features that must be controlled to facilitate optimised product design and manufacturability towards light weight design when applying powder bed laser fusion. The detailed control of microstructure and surface characteristics considered as prime goal of the project is not included in current design strategies for AM. The approach is to first fabricate designed test specimens that will be evaluated with respect to local and global microstructure, mechanical performance and surface properties. In the next phase, physical demonstrators will be fabricated and evaluated providing insight how the identified role of local microstructure, wall thickness, build orientation and surface properties can be controlled for such demonstrators. Hence, the project provides not only innovation height in this respect, but it also constitutes a must if at light weight design involving advanced products are to be fabricated with best possible performance and robustness. The project will as secondary effect, also provide added information regarding material behaviour for some common materials (316L, Ni-base alloy and Al-alloy) of interest in AM for which powder and materials solution are feasible for industrial use and implementation. In the project, three RTOs with capabilities of printing all AM-materials in their machines and evaluate these, one powder supplier and three qualified potential users of AM-products.