New Trends in Aviation and Medical Technology Enabled by Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

In this publication, the potentials of additive manufacturing in the field of sustainability and individualization for aviation and medical technology are presented. Design approaches for each application field as well as examples in the fields are shown. In the field of aviation, structures can be manufactured so that they are load path optimized. This has a great lightweight potential and results in a low resource consumption. The examples contain the design of an aircraft cabin partition using the Direct Energy Deposition process and the optimization of load introduction points directly integrated into the sandwich core. Furthermore, in medical technology, additive manufacturing can be used to produce patient-specific models based on original medical imaging data, which can be used for training of medical treatments, quality assurance or for the validation of new developed medical devices. As examples a stroke simulation model containing a modular aortic model as well as functional stenose models are shown. Furthermore, the use of AM molds to generate a deformable bladder shell and a prostate phantom are described.

The study of degradation and mechanical properties of poly(lactic) acid (PLA) based 3D printed filament

“…This layer-by-layer approach enables the direct production of 3D parts from a CAD model. Currently, 3D printing technology, particularly FDM, is extensively used for mass customization and fabrication of open-source design across numerous applications, including agriculture, healthcare, automotive, locomotive, and aviation [11][12][13][14]. Moreover, amidst the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, 3D printing has emerged as a critical tool in enhancing healthcare and our overall response to the crisis.…”

A Novel Anthropomorphic Phantom Composed of Tissue-Equivalent Materials for Use in Experimental Radiotherapy: Design, Dosimetry and Biological Pilot Study

“…Additive manufacturing processes (AM) of phantoms using tissue-equivalent materials are at the core of this development and have been discussed before [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. They allow the reliable reproduction of a standardized biological environment suitable to obtain replicates of biological data to obtain statistical power, aiming to answer a specific set of questions.…”