Project description
High-quality 3D-printed aircraft engine parts
A low-cost, high-speed alternative to existing 3D material processing technologies in the aerospace industry is laser wire deposition. This additive manufacturing process uses a robot-mounted high-power laser to form a melt pool on the surface of a titanium substrate into which metal wire is fed. The EU-funded project ASSALA is developing novel numerical tools to minimise the likelihood of undesirable defects during the processing of titanium. Advanced computer models and control software will improve the reliability of aero engine parts and reduce rejects. The goal is to manufacture defect-free complex aircraft parts with lower buy-to-fly ratios of titanium, an expensive metal.
Objective
The main objective of the ASSALA project is to develop a methodology to predict defect generation likelihood induced by the interaction of robot inaccuracies and thermal effects during the Laser Wire Deposition (LWD) process of Titanium integrating deterministic and advanced statistical models applied on the manufacturing of new generation aero engine structures. The novel activities to carry out during the project will be based on:
- The development of a tool focused on the automatic path generation applied on to robotic LWD based on 5 degree of freedom deposition.
- A dynamic robot model to compensate and estimate through Monte Carlo simulation the temporal positioning accuracy.
- A fast and precise computation algorithm that will allow to solve the time consuming dynamic thermo-mechanical phenomena of the solidification process based on Finite Element Modelling through model order reduction strategies.
- Implementation of process monitoring (thermal and visible) and control tools (CAM correction) for the implementation of adaptive control strategies which will correct the component distortion.
- Integration of the developed algorithms in a methodology to predict the failure probability based on Monte Carlo statistical tools.
- Testing and validation of the developed simulation tools and implemented adaptive control strategies.
ASSALA aims at contributing to achieve more efficient and robust LWD processes provided that the end effector-to-component relative distance plays a major role in the stability of the process and in the generation of defects such as cracks or flaws that can induce the rejection of the deposits due to the critical structural nature of the aero engine components.
Fields of science
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencescomputational science
- natural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsstatistics and probability
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationssimulation software
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticslaser physics
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CS2-RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
20600 Eibar Guipuzcoa
Spain