Selective laser melting (SLM) and topology optimization for lighter aerospace componentes

By Miguel Seabra, José L. Azevedo, A. Araújo, L. Reis, E. Pinto, N. Alves, Rui Santos, J. Mortágua. 2016

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a manufacturing process through which a 3D component is produced by consecutively adding material. One of the most promising AM processes is SLM. In SLM a laser completely melts metallic powder particles together forming a 3D component. SLM is known for its freedom of manufacturing constraints allowing complex geometries and high material efficiency. Topology Optimisation (TO) is an optimisation type that calculates the optimal material distribution for a given problem. The combination of SLM with TO is being developed to create lightweight components. In this work, the whole development process, from optimisation to design, production and testing is addressed. Initially, an aircraft bracket topology was optimised to be produced by means of SLM. The TO solution was interpreted and designed for AM. During the interpretation and design process, a design methodology was defined in order to facilitate and make more accurate the TO solution design and make it ready for AM. After the optimised component was produced, metrological and mechanical tests were performed in order to validate the final design and the computer analysis. The optimised component showed considerable weight reduction with an increase of the factor of safety. The experimental tests revealed a good relation to the computer analysis evidencing, however, room for improvement, both in the computer model and the experimental tests.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/351f567d485fdf749d9e7e2431a65de61fc3be37

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In Mechanical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

3D printing of Aluminium alloys: Additive Manufacturing of Aluminium alloys using selective laser melting (2019, methodology): “conventional methods is show in (a) and the optimised model to be fabricated by SLM is shown in (b) [53].”
Improving the fatigue behaviour of a selectively laser melted aluminium alloy: Influence of heat treatment and surface quality (2016, background): “Fabricating load bearing parts using SLM, such as automotive power trains, turbine components [10], or aerospace components [11], is becoming more commonplace, therefore studying their mechanical performance is gaining further attention to cope with the widely expanding popularity for the process [1”