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Often described as the “third industrial revolution” and compared to the Internet with respect to its disruptive impact on our day-to-day life, Additive Manufacturing (or 3D Printing) is changing the industrial landscape worldwide, particularly in high-end technology sectors, including space, aerospace, racing and medical applications. The course will provide the student with a very deep understanding of the different Additive Manufacturing technologies and their industrial applications with focus on space and aerospace. A wide range of materials will be presented ranging from conventional and non-conventional metals, polymers, ceramics and geopolymers (e. g. moon regolith) and even covering living cells and human organs. All the currently open technical challenges of this revolutionary technology will be presented. Moreover, the course will be complemented with “real-life” case studies from the aerospace sector. The case studies will cover real design developments from concept phase to in-orbit space flight as well as failure investigations on real components and units.
Detailed Programme:
- Detailed overview of all currently existing Additive Manufacturing Technologies used on:
o Metals (conventional and non-conventional)
o Polymers
o Composite Materials
o Ceramics and Glasses
o Living Cells/Human Organs
- Description of all benefits per domain of application of the above mentioned technologies
- Detailed overview of the open technical challenges, including:
o Dimensional Challenges (small/large scale manufacturing)
o Design Challenges (Design tools/design guidelines yet not established, etc.)
o Manufacturing Challenges (starting from materials supply chain up to manufacturing stability, pre-/in-/post-processing, etc.)
o Qualification/Verification challenges (mechanical characterisation, Non-Destructive Investigation, in-situ monitoring, etc.)
o Standardisation challenges
- Case studies (2 to 3) providing deep understanding of the end-to-end design/manufacturing process:
o Design/topology optimisation (bionic design)
o AM technology selection
o AM process parameters optimisation
o Mechanical characterisation (static, fatigue, microstructure, NDI, computer tomography, eddy current, etc.)
o Manufacturing of the breadboard
o Full scale testing
o In-flight verification
- What happens when it goes wrong?:
o Failure investigation case studies (2 to 3)
o Usual “illnesses” of Additive Manufacturing
o The future developments in Additive Manufacturing
o 4D Printing
o Industry 4.0
The course will offer a unique opportunity to acquire a deep understanding of all currently state of the art Additive Manufacturing technologies used on high-end industrial sectors. Each manufacturing process used on metals (conventional and non-conventional), polymers, composite materials, ceramics and glasses, living cells/human organs will be described in detail. Every process will be analysed in terms of main applications for which the process offers the ideal performances as well as all associated benefits, advantages and drawbacks.
The course will subsequently address all currently open technical challenges. In fact, Additive Manufacturing is showing great potential on a very large number of space and aerospace applications, however open challenges have been identified. These include design aspects and associated design rules for AM. Manufacturing challenges start with the raw material procurement and control (powder-screening methods, procurement specification and verification requirements). On the manufacturing process itself, process stability and its monitoring/controlling, the understanding of changes of process and parameters impact on final product play the major role. Moreover, space qualification and validation routes will be addressed. Lastly, standardisation will be presented in order to facilitate the market uptake of 3D printing and promote its innovation potential to industrial competitiveness.
Once the student will be fully aware of all currently available technologies their benefits and drawback as well as the main open challenges, real life case studies (mainly from the space and aerospace domain) will be presented. The objective of this part of the course is to provide the student with a current industrial implementation approach of Additive Manufacturing on high quality products. Real spacecraft, satellites, rockets or aircraft parts end-to-end design/manufacturing process will be shown. Starting with the design/topology optimisation (bionic design), moving to the selection of the ideal Additive Manufacturing technology up to the optimisation of the process parameters, the mechanical characterisation (static, fatigue, microstructure, NDI, computer tomography, eddy current, etc.) and the production of a breadboard to be full scale tested and then flown in orbit. Moreover, the course will also provide case studies and examples of failure investigations on real components
Lastly, the course will provide an outlook on the future developments related to Additive Manufacturing, including the 4D printing as well as the industry 4.0 developments.
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Inglese