MIDAS - Determining Hot Cracking Susceptibility in Additive Manufacturing using Modeling and Experimentation

Despite a crucial need for more efficient operation and sustainable production of aircraft engines, additive manufacturing of large Ni-superalloy engine parts enabled by laser direct energy deposition with wire (LDED-w) is still limited due to hot cracking.
To tackle this problem with focus area Integrated structure, materials and production technology, this project aims to gain a deeper understanding of this defect formation in LDED-w of Ni-superalloy and develop and demonstrate a full-scale model to predict its occurrence in a part. Complementary fields of expertise will be put into synergy to develop an advanced physical model for establishing a hot cracking criterion for the full-scale model. Experiments will be made to perform a reliability evaluation of both the physical and full-scale models. The results will contribute to reducing costly trial-and-error testing, maturing LDED-w opening to sustainable and robust production of high-quality parts, thus strengthening the competitiveness of the Swedish aviation industry.

The project consortium associates front-line expertise of LDED-w and Ni-superalloy with University West (coordinator) – thermo-fluid modeling, in-situ instrumentation, hot cracking analysis, KTH – solidification and microstructure, LTU - solid-state mechanics, GKN Aerospace –Swedish worldwide manufacturer of aeroengines, and PROCADA AB – Swedish SME expert in process control.