Metal additive manufactured, topology optimized components have already demonstrated the immense impact of weight reduction, resource efficiency, and mechanical performance. The mono-materials with homogeneous material properties are often insufficient to meet today’s heterogeneous application requirements. New multi-material components with locally tailored mechanical, electrical, thermal, or magnetic properties must be developed to meet the new and challenging requirements and significantly improve the component performance. Based on the immense potential for 3D printed multi-material components, current problems will be solved within this project and result in high-impact industrial products: Material Design, multi-material 3D printing, component design, and sustainability. These factors will be supported by numerical simulations and validated by use case experiments.
MADE-3D aims to enhance the additive manufacturing process in order to enable the multi-material processing for multi-material components with locally tailored properties to meet the challenging application requirements and improve component performance. The focus relies on material design, process design, component design, and sustainability and will be supported by numerical simulations and computational approaches. MADE-3D will utilize a lean system design approach with science-based models using Direct Energy Deposition (DED) and Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF). Besides, will investigate the circular material cycle to achieve sustainable manufacturing routes. The results of the project will significantly impact the entire process chain of 3D printed multi-material components, from computational material-design concepts to industrialization and sustainability.
Objectives
The main challenge in 3D printing is the inability to print the majority of steels and alloys without encountering issues like cracking. This challenge is amplified when attempting to print multi-material components. The lack of available combinations of multiple materials is a significant barrier to achieving progress in 3D printing. The conventional empirical approach to material development for 3D printing is expensive and time-consuming, involving extensive testing and long development cycles. Alternative approaches are needed to accelerate material design and overcome these challenges.
Additive Manufacturing technologies are improved to the state of industrialization and thus disrupt 3D printing applications.
Designers are provided with novel information on design guidelines essential to exploit the advantages of multi-material processing leading to numerous product improvements as demonstrated in this project.
Based on sustainability addressing energy efficiency, cost, and recyclability, economic decisions to industrialize multi-material components will be made.
Results
Future public results it will be posted here.