In-Situ Sensing of Additive Manufacturing Process for safety-Critical Aerospace Applications

Certification of fabricated components is an important subject in AM research. Adequate quality inspection of finished parts is challenging and non-destructive-techniques are often difficult to realize. The development of an online in-situ sensing is vital for component qualification and certification. The proposed project will support the goals of ICME through the development of an in situ monitoring system for AM. The system will enable the operator to monitor quality of an AM job online and assess quality of the finished part. The system consists of two major developments in hardware and software. The first development is the design of a complete sensor setup. Sensors ensure a high-quality measurement of melt pool and as-spread/as-processed layer surfaces. Open-source control software will transfer sensing-data at high sample rates sufficient for process monitoring. The second development is the data analysis system to translate and visualize measured sensor values in the format of interpretable process quality images. The visualization is accomplished by a mapping algorithm, which transfers measurements from a time-domain into a position-domain representation. The processed data will feed into ICME tool to predict the void formation, residual stress, damage, oxidation, and other anomalies.