Superalloys, powders, process monitoring in additive manufacturing

Abstract

Abstract Additive manufacturing in aerospace industry play a key role not only in design, but also material selection. Nickel based super alloys play a crucial role in these applications. Understanding the background of these alloys and strengthening mechanisms including challenges associated are presented. Also, powder is a predominant feed stock in metal additive manufacturing process and understanding powder is crucial to maintaining quality parts. An overview of powder properties and a way to characterize aging of powder is also presented. To close the loop, quality assurance is an important part of aerospace production. In process monitoring tools can now capture the sensitivities of the additive manufacturing process and also reduce costs dramatically by doing in situ inspection. To close the loop, how these tools can be implemented in quality assurance is presented and these tools will provide the opportunity to develop closed loop systems in the near future.