Innovative additive manufacturing (AM) process for successful production of 7000 series aluminum alloy components using Smart Optical Monitoring Syste

Naval aircraft components are routinely made of 7000 series aluminum alloys due to their strength, weight and fatigue properties. Present Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes falls short of producing 7000 series Al alloys successfully due to lack of porosity, thermal and composition control. In-situ methods implemented to date largely only yield information about the component surface and other more advanced techniques capable of inspecting sub-surface have been tested ex-situ, but are yet to be integrated. In order to develop a proof of concept for a novel AM process for use with 7000 series Al alloys, and to demonstrate its feasibility to address material reflectivity and residual stresses produced during solidification, the following three challenging tasks are proposed in Phase I: (1) The first is the defect identification, monitoring and chemical composition prediction, (2) The second is the estimation and mitigation of residual stress through hardness prediction using smart optical monitoring system (SOMS), and (3) The third is the feasibility study on the integration of in-process monitoring system into AM control system. The integration of laser-based AM system with SOMS system will be designed and evaluated to accommodate in-house fabrication capability to produce the coupon samples during the AM sample development phase.