Aircraft landing gear and other safety-critical aluminium parts could soon be printed on demand, skipping the lengthy heat treatments that currently make additive manufacturing impractical for aviation. The problem is that laser-based 3D printing creates uneven heating, leaving aluminium parts with a patchy internal structure and inconsistent mechanical properties. To fix this, manufacturers must run expensive, time-consuming heat treatments to homogenise the metal—a step that cancels out many of the cost and weight benefits of printing parts to shape. This project will test a special aluminium alloy, Aheadd CP1, designed by Constellium to work with laser printing from the start. Researchers at Cambridge and the National Centre for Additive Manufacturing will first develop printing conditions that produce microstructures easily corrected by standard heat treatments, then aim for parts that need no post-processing at all. If successful, Airbus could certify printed aluminium components such as topology-optimised landing gears, cutting aircraft weight and reducing the roughly 20% of transport emissions that come from moving heavy metal parts. The work also moves fundamental microstructure-control strategies from the lab bench toward industrial production at technology readiness levels 4 to 6.
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Context Transportation accounts for 1/5th of global CO2 emissions from energy and about 20% of that could be reduced through lightweighting of metallic components. A promising strategy to achieve that is to use net-shape manufacturing processes—such as additive manufacturing (AM)—to re-design parts with optimised geometry and to employ low density materials, such as aluminium (Al) alloys. The main problem with this strategy, however, is that Al parts made by AM exhibit sub-optimal properties, which hinder their certification and use in safety-critical applications, such as in aviation. The connection enabled by this project This project will promote collaborative work between the University of Cambridge (UoC) and the National Centre for Additive Manufacturing (NCAM) as part of the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) to devise scalable AM processes for lightweight Al structures that are of interest to their industrial members, such as Airbus. The project will capitalize on the microstructure control strategies developed by the UoC research group, which will be applied to an alloy system selected by the MTC and which will be scaled up for technology validation (TRL4-6). As such, this project aims to bridge the gap between fundamental research and industrial application and—by working with Airbus—to promote the adoption of AM for sustainable aviation. The challenge addressed Laser-based AM processes typically yield builds with heterogeneous microstructure and anisotropic properties. This is due to the variable and directional thermal flux experienced by the material during AM. As a result, AM parts must undergo involved and costly heat treatments aimed at homogenising their microstructure to bring their properties within specifications. This additional hurdle hampers the adoption of AM by the industry, offsetting the potential of this technology for lightweighting and thus for reducing carbon emissions in transportation. Aims and objectives This project will directly address the above challenge. Focusing on a special Al alloy—called Aheadd® CP1 (developed by Constellium)—which has been designed specifically for laser-based AM, the research team will demonstrate the ability to make samples and miniaturized parts with controlled microstructure and mechanical properties (including yield stress, impact energy, and fracture toughness), which are within the specifications set by Airbus. The work will consist of two consecutive steps: i) inducing microstructures that can be homogenised via traditional heat treatments, thus streamlining the production of Al parts by AM, and ii) producing parts that exhibit the desired, homogeneous microstructure in their as-built condition, and thus require no additional heat treatment whatsoever. Potential applications and benefits The direct beneficiary of the work is Airbus. The company has great interest in using AM technology to optimise the geometry of Al parts used in aircraft. However, the involved and costly post-processing required to certify parts has offset the adoption of AM significantly so far. One potential application of this project outcomes is in the manufacturing of topology-optimised, high-strength landing gears in civil aircraft. The project will also benefit the team at UoC, who will be able to translate their materials processing strategies and microstructure designs from the lab to real-world applications.
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