Thu, 05 March, 2020
TWI hosted a meeting of students from UK Universities who are working on the collaborative NEWAM project. The students were given an opportunity to share ideas and information related to their part of the NEWAM project and additive manufacturing as well as being taken on a tour of TWI’s facilities near Cambridge.
The NEWAM project involves a large number of partners including the Advanced Forming Research Centre, BAE Systems-Air, Defence Science and Tech Lab DSTL, EWM, Glenalmond Group, HBM United Kingdom Ltd, KUKA Robotics UK Limited, Lockheed Martin, Manufacturing Technology Centre, Peak NDT, Perryman Company (International), PowerPhotonic Ltd, PWP Industrial, Schlumberger, SPI Lasers UK Ltd, TechnipFMC plc (UK), The Weir Group plc, the University of Sheffield, and Wintwire Limited.
The aim of the project is to develop large area metal additive (LAMA) manufacturing by pioneering a new high build-rate wire-based directed energy deposition technique with improved shape and microstructural precision. This will allow for the production of near-shape large-scale engineering structures at lower cost. The project will also seek to create guaranteed ‘right-first-time’ homogenous or tailored high performance mechanical properties and structural integrity in additively manufactured parts.
The project is due to run for five years with a £7 million budget and is split into four interconnected parts. The first of these is the creation of new wire-based directed energy deposition processes with high build rates, precise net-shape deposition and independent thermal control using active thermal profile management. The second part of the project will involve creating new wire compositions that are tailored to the new thermal process regimes to produce properties that are superior to those from the equivalent forged alloys, while also offering crucial information about the formation and criticality of defects. The third aspect of the project will determine key fundamental science and understanding using advanced process and material modelling and state-of-the-art high efficiency techniques. These will be developed and implemented through physics-based thermal and fluid-flow models, as well as microstructural and mechanical models. The fourth part of the project will use a physics-based framework for guaranteed mechanical properties and structural integrity, including the development of in-process non-destructive evaluation techniques.
Combining these four aspects will allow for shorter lead times and reduced costs for the development of directed energy deposition components based on a science-based understanding of the process. This improved understanding will allow a diverse group of industry sectors including aerospace and defence to exploit the full potential of the LAMA manufacturing process.