A monitoring framework based on exergetic analysis for sustainability assessment of direct laser metal deposition process

With the constant increase of energy costs and environmental impacts, improving the process efficiency is considered a priority issue for the manufacturing field. A wide knowledge about materials, energy, machinery, and auxiliary equipment is required in order to optimize the overall performance of manufacturing processes. Sustainability needs to be assessed in order to find an optimal compromise between technical quality of products and environmental compatibility of processes. In this new Industry 4.0 era, innovative manufacturing technologies, as the additive manufacturing, are taking a predominant role. The aim of this work is to give an insight into how thermodynamic laws contribute at the same time to improve energy efficiency of manufacturing resources and to provide a methodological support to move towards a smart and sustainable additive process. In this context, a fundamental step is the proper design of a sensing and real-time monitoring framework of an additive manufacturing process. This framework should be based on an accurate modelling of the physical phenomena and technological aspects of the considered process, taking into account all the sustainability requirements. To this end, a thermodynamic model for the direct laser metal deposition (DLMD) process was proposed as a test case. Finally, an exergetic analysis was conducted on a prototype DLMD system to validate the effectiveness of an ad-hoc monitoring system and highlight the limitations of this process. What emerged is that the proposed framework provided significant advantages, since it represents a valuable approach for finding suitable process management strategies to identify sustainable solutions for innovative manufacturing procedures.

Direct Laser Metal Deposition (DLMD) Additive Manufacturing (AM)of Inconel 718 Superalloy: Elemental, Microstructural and Physical Properties Evaluation

In this study direct laser metal deposition (DLMD) technique is adopted for the additive manufacturing (AM) of Inconel 718 Superalloy. To conduct the experiments, a 1 kW fiber laser with a coaxial nozzle head is used. The effects of scanning speed (for two values of 2.5 and 5 mm/s) as well as powder feed rate (for two values of 17.94 and 28.52 g/min) on the process were investigated. Characteristics of the 3D printed wall specimens such as the geometrical dimensions (width and height), microstructure observations, and the microhardness were obtained. In order to study the stability of the 3D manufactured walls, the height stability was considered for the investigation. Optical microscopy (OM), field emission electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and mapping analysis were performed to derive the microstructural features of the additive manufactured samples. The Vickers microhardness test is used to evaluate the hardness distributions of additively manufactured parts. Catchment concept of the powder in DLMD process is used for explaining different trends of the process. Results indicated that, by decreasing the scanning speed, the width and height of the deposited layer increase. The average width of the additively manufactured samples directly depends on the scanning speed and the powder feed rate. Scanning speed has a reverse effect on the height stability; that is, the lower the scanning speed, the larger the stability. Microstructural results showed that because of the solidification process, the alloying elements will be accumulated in the grain boundaries. The non-uniform cooling rate and non-steady solidification rates of molten area in additive manufacturing process, the microhardness values of the additively manufactured samples following a fluctuated trend.