The Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) is developing innovative methods in the SONRISA project to test the quality of metallic 3D printed components faster, more reliably, and more cost-effectively. The goal is to make the testing of additively manufactured components in aviation more efficient and thus enable the broader use of such parts. Due to their optimized weight, these components also help reduce fuel consumption and emissions.
In the future, airplanes are to be made lighter to save fuel and protect the climate. Additive manufacturing plays an important role in this. It allows for the production of particularly complex, but also lighter metal components, such as highly efficient heat exchangers. In aviation, every weight saving counts, as airplanes are in use for several decades.
However, despite their potential advantages, additive manufacturing is still only slowly being adopted in aviation. The reason: No other industry has higher safety requirements. Every safety-critical component must be able to be continuously tested for defects before it is installed. However, this is still a very time- and cost-intensive process in 3D printing. The components are usually very delicate and individually designed. Possible defects such as tiny pores or cracks are not visible from the outside, and conventional testing methods reach their limits here.
Quality control in the printing process
This is where the SONRISA collaborative project comes in: The team is developing a digital method that allows the quality of a 3D-printed component to be monitored and evaluated during the manufacturing process. This way, potential errors can be detected early, and subsequent tests can be reduced. 'We want to make the manufacturing process more transparent and recognize during production whether a component meets the high requirements of aviation,' says Gunther Mohr, project manager for SONRISA at BAM. 'This saves time, costs, and resources.'
For the project, several measurement systems are combined to monitor the 3D printing process, specifically the powder bed-based laser beam melting. In this process, metal powder is applied layer by layer and melted with a laser. The measurement systems capture, among other things, whether the powder is applied evenly and whether the surface of the component provides insights into possible defects.
Reduction of testing times
This information is linked with high-resolution computed tomographic X-ray images of the components. This allows the signals from the monitoring systems to be specifically compared with the actual properties of the component. From these insights, it can be inferred early on which areas need to be thoroughly tested in the future. This makes quality assurance significantly more efficient.
Through the new methods, tests are expected to be significantly shortened, their accuracy increased, and a substantial contribution made to the reliable assessment of process stability and component quality of additively manufactured components. This will make the use of 3D printed components in aviation more attractive.
Partners from aviation and manufacturing
In addition to BAM, leading companies from the aviation and manufacturing industries such as Boeing Deutschland GmbH, Liebherr-Aerospace Lindenberg GmbH (project leader), MTU Aero Engines AG, and Materialise GmbH, as well as associated partner Carl Zeiss Industrial Metrology GmbH, are involved in the project. They bring practical experience and industrial research and development expertise to the project. Furthermore, project progress is regularly discussed with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to consider certification-relevant aspects from the outset. The project is funded as part of the aviation research program LuFo VII-1 by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).
Contact:
www.bam.de
