AEROSPACE
INNOVATING FOR EFFICIENCY WITH AM IN THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY Patrick Dunne, Vice President, Advanced Application Development at 3D Systems explores the advantages the aerospace industry can gain by embracing DFAM/AM.
A
s green credentials increasingly gain importance for many businesses, manufacturers are looking for new ways to create products that deliver performance efficiencies. The aerospace industry is at the forefront, looking for opportunities to innovate with novel designs that ultimately help improve fuel efficiency. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a revolutionary technology that is changing the way many companies are designing and producing products. In aerospace, this rapid, minimally constrained design environment allows for step changes in design optimisation. At a practical level this is now enabling aerospace companies to design better, faster and more efficient platforms.
DESIGN SIMPLIFICATION, CONSOLIDATION AND PART COUNT REDUCTION
Historically, complexity, cost, time-to-market as well as end system reliability hold a close correlation to the number of subcomponents within an assembly. The fewer parts you have, the less assembly required and ultimately, the fewer points of failure. While a reduction in the number of parts as a design philosophy is not new, nor even exclusive to AM, it allows engineers to take it to a whole new level. My favourite recent example was a direct metal component that was traditionally made from 12 separate castings and tubes, all welded into a single part. Aside from assembly labour, tools, jigs and fixtures – as well as a complex multi-vendor
supply chain – it ultimately contained a QC step where nearly 10 metres of weld lines had to be meticulously CT inspected for defects. When AM was applied, 12 parts became one – and jigs and fixtures, assembly and slow QC inspection of weld lines were no longer required. The resultant part was lighter, had fewer points of failure, was more cost-effective and efficient to source and produce, and yielded better performance.
THERMAL TRANSFER
The fuel efficiency of jet engines is a function of multiple factors. One of these factors is system temperature. Typically, the hotter you can run the system, the more fuel-efficient it becomes. A 100-200°C increase in temperature can account for a 1-2% efficiency increase. While that does not sound like much, it can equate to hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel savings for an airline when you look at thousands of engines flying many thousands of hours. AM allows engineers to integrate the design of exotic/conformal cooling structures into sub-components that ultimately allow the parts to maintain functional and structural integrity at these elevated temperatures. Similar principals of thermal transfer exist within rocket combustion systems, where temperature drives pressure. This, in turn, yields performance, as well as the rate of wear and tear/ablation, feeding the trend towards system reuse economics.
However, nowhere is this improvement realised more than space systems. Design-driven structural optimisation, both manual and automatic, yields step changes in strength-to-weight ratios. Recent examples include Thales brackets for satellite antenna. Utilising advanced structural algorithms, Thales was able to generate a bracket design that, when expressed in Direct Titanium printing, was 25% lighter – while maintaining the performance of a traditionally manufactured bracket. Further opportunities for optimisation were identified based on transitioning to tubular structures, as we see in bicycle frames.
AM, THE EFFICIENCY BREAK-THROUGH
When you combine thermal transfer, component consolidation, and weight reduction, you can see how AM has a large part to play in improving energy usage figures for the aerospace market. There are other benefits too such as more costeffective R&D, reduced time to first part, and the ability to create bespoke parts, furthering innovation. AM is transforming how industryleaders are creating new, improved products while gaining efficiencies that place them well ahead of their competitors.
WEIGHT REDUCTION
AM holds huge potential benefits for the efficiency of spacecraft and satellites. Reducing the weight of parts that fly always yields improved fuel efficiency and performance.
5 SHOWN:
EXHAUST MANIFOLD
28.3 / www.tctmagazine.com / 015
