Additive Manufacturing of high temperature Materials and Assessment of Weldability (AMMAW)

The interest in Additive Manufacturing (AM) has sky-rocketed the last ten years, not at least due to the fact that AM enables a way to tailor components with respect to weight and cost reductions highly relevant for e.g. the aerospace industry. However, there are many things to pay attention to as a new manufacturing method has come to live. Every manufacturing process have its own very characteristics in terms of how it influence the material’s microstructure which in turn also have consequences on the outcome of the following manufacturing steps and finally also the mechanical properties. One such example is the fact that the component which is to be manufactured by AM is limited to the size of the build chamber. This means that it most often will need to be joined together to other parts of other material forms (e.g. wrought, cast) usually by welding. It is therefore of prime concern to fundamentally understand how AM as material form behaves in welding being the main task in the present project. The component in focus is a laser welded turbine rear frame made from smaller parts by AM. The material is the nickel based superalloy 718. The PhD student, the one who mainly will take on the task in fundamentally understand weldability of AM-manufactured Alloy 718 is together with the supervisors working at University West in Trollhättan. The PhD student is also planning to spend some time at University of Manitoba in Winnipeg Canada to carry out advanced microscopy.