The advent of additive manufacturing technologies presents a number of opportunities that have the potential to greatly benefit designers, and contribute to the sustainability of products. Additive manufacturing technologies have removed many of the manufacturing restrictions that may previously have compromised a designer's ability to make the product they imagined. Products can also be extensively customized to the user thus, once again, potentially increasing their desirability, pleasure and attachment and therefore their longevity. As additive manufacturing technologies evolve, and more new materials become available, and multiple material technologies are further developed, the field of product design has the potential to greatly change. This paper examines how aspects of additive manufacturing, from a sustainable design perspective, could become a useful tool in the arsenal to bring about the sustainable design of consumer products.
Fused deposition modelling is one of the additive manufacturing processes in which a semi-solid polymer material is deposited line-by-line to construct 3D objects direct from computer aided design (CAD) models. Benefits inherent with additively manufacturing allowed effective competition with other traditional methods in specific applications and the process drew sufficient research attention. The nature of material deposition and the mechanics of solid state sintering lead to varying levels of inter-road and inter-layer bonding resulting in a composite structure of voids interspersed in the base material matrix. While there are other parameters also, the raster angle in particular has a direct bearing on the resulting meso-structure and together with the rate of inter-road coalescence plays a significant role in influencing the mechanical characteristics of parts produced. Experimental and analytical attempts were made in the past to evaluate the role of raster angle orientation, but the resulting material properties were taken to be those of the base material.The hypothesis for the current research is that the mechanical properties resulting from fused deposition modelling are structure-sensitive. Experimental and analytical models are developed to test this hypothesis and the results indicate the hypothesis to be true.
Considering the stringent regulations, manufacturing of aircraft parts is often quite complex and time consuming. The multi-million components, multi-tier manufacturing systems and the severe constraints surrounding the sector lead to heavy inventory investments to achieve the just-in-time supply of parts often needed to reduce the airplane ground times. Additive manufacturing evolved allowing for the direct production of complex parts based on digital data with no complex tooling or machinery, a messiah of true just in time production. Appropriate integration of additive manufacturing with the aircraft industry could resolve some of the supply chain and inventory hurdles. Significant progress is already evident in these lines, but the lack of quality assurance attributes and certification standards is hampering the progress. The state-of-the-art of the application of additive manufacturing in the aircraft industry is reviewed in this paper. The supply chain configurations of the aircraft industry, the possible roles of additive manufacturing in relaxing the pressures in the system are evaluated. The application areas, enhanced attributes, and certification standards are critically reviewed and classified. The overall growth in the application of additive manufacturing in the aircraft industry, the main hurdles, and the future possibilities are evaluated and presented systematically, clearly portraying the developments.
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