DISTOPIA - Distorting the Aerospace Manufacturing Boundaries: Operational Integration of Autonomy on Titanium
In today's highly competitive manufacturing environment, industries are seeking ways to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, while maintaining and improving product quality. Directed Energy Deposition (DED), is such a cost-effective Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology, which has gained increasing attention in various industries, particularly aerospace. DED AM can offer greater flexibility and higher efficiency by overcoming the component size limitation of powder bed fusion AM, while minimising carbon footprint due to lower waste, reducing material costs and part lead times. DED can offer more competitive pricing and faster turnaround times especially for high value materials such as Ti6Al4V.
Existing Approach & Limitations
Wire-based DED AM of Ti6Al4V is industrially carried out with solid wires, derived from wrought material specifications. However, due to the heating regime in AM, components produced by solid wires suffer from large columnar grains, leading to loss of the grain boundary strengthening and anisotropic mechanical properties, with a significant reduction in tensile ductility in the transverse direction as well as diminished fatigue life.
Furthermore, the quality control of DED during the deposition can be challenging due to the several sets of parameters required to be controlled, and the necessity to monitor the melt pool continuously to prevent the formation of potential defects, such as porosity and cracking.
As such, the commercial adoption of DED is currently limited by several factors:
High capital investment cost,
Control software for builds to its qualification,
Lack of reliability,
Lack of standardised procedures, and
Need for skilled operators.
The traditional approach (in repair operation) needs to fix process parameters for each case and perform laborious destructive/non-destructive tests, to achieve relevant performance qualification. Furthermore, these methods may not be suitable for repairing the end-of-life geometries and materials. This presents a major challenge for the development of cost-effective repair solutions.
DISTOPIA Disruption
DISTOPIA will address these challenges and demonstrate the viability of a cost-effective and "Ready-to-Use" (RtU) plasma arc-wire DED (p-DED) system. It will enable a first-time-right approach for manufacture, repair/remanufacturing of critical Ti6Al4V Grade 5 components. It will comprise a modular system, demonstrated in manufacturing of large-scale parts for one repair and two remanufacturing use cases.
Key enabling technologies developed in DISTOPIA have potential to achieve breakthrough digital validation/qualification by listening to the "voices of the process". This will enable the UK partners in DISTOPIA to gain a crucial competitive advantage in bringing the RtU-DED system to market.
