Manufacturing by Design

在高度工程化的材料中，微尺度缺陷可以决定部件/系统尺度上的失效模式。虽然x射线CT在能够在微尺度上对缺陷进行成像、发现和非破坏性跟踪方面是独一无二的，但目前它只能对毫米大小的样品这样做。目前，这对制造设计和安全寿命预测提出了重大限制，其中缺陷的性质和位置是制造过程的直接后果。例如，在增材制造中，制造试样时产生的缺陷可能与三维复杂的增材制造工程部件中的缺陷大不相同。同样，对于复合材料，小尺度的样品通常不够大，不足以正确地代表控制结构行为的所有层次尺度。欧洲研究辐射设施（ESRF）和国家实验室CT研究设施（NRF）之间的合作将通过开发和利用新的光束线（BM18），使能够以微米分辨率进行x射线成像的材料体积增加100万倍。此外，对于能量高达400keV的x射线，这种无与伦比的分辨率可以探测高Z材料以及复杂的环境阶段。这代表了一种范式的转变，允许我们从次级测试件中的缺陷转移到制造组件和设备中的缺陷。这将通过更好地理解这些缺陷是如何在制造和装配过程中引入的来补充。它还将使我们能够侦察和缩放制造结构，以确定更广泛的缺陷分布，然后以随时间推移的方式跟踪特定缺陷的演变，作为机械或环境负载的函数，了解它们如何导致服务中的快速故障。这将有助于引导针对单个零件几何形状/架构定制的更智能制造工艺的设计，并有助于建立增材制造和复合制造工艺的数字孪生。其次，我们将利用ID19上的高帧率成像，利用由于新的esrf极亮光源升级而增加的可用通量，研究在增材制造过程中引入缺陷的机制，以及缺陷如何导致非常快速的故障，例如电池的热失控。复合材料制造和电池制造，以及这些制造物品的原位和操作性能和降解，通过NRF将这些能力传播给英国学术界和工业界，并使其更广泛地可用。该合作还将导致新的数据处理和分析流程的发展，能够处理将获得的非常显著的数据提升，并将导致实时实验的多站点协作。这将使我们能够作为一个多地点团队共同开展项目，从而减少出差，并抵消COVID-19对高要求实验造成的一些限制。

In highly engineered materials, microscale defects can determine failure modes at the compo-nent/system scale. While X-ray CT is unique in being able to image, find, and follow defects non-destructively at the microscale, currently it can only do so for mm sized samples. This currently presents a significant limitation for manufacturing design and safe life prediction where the nature and location of the defects are a direct consequence of the manufacturing process. For example, in additive manufacturing, the defects made when manufacturing a test-piece may be quite different from those in a three dimensionally complex additively manufactured engineering component. Similarly, for composite materials, small-scale samples are commonly not large enough to properly represent all the hierarchical scales that control structural behaviour. This collaboration between the European Research Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the National Research Facility for laboratory CT (NRF) will lead to a million-fold increase in the volume of material that can be X-ray imaged at micrometre resolution through the development and exploitation of a new beamline (BM18). Further, this unparalleled resolution for X-rays at energies up to 400keV enables high Z materials to be probed as well as complex environmental stages. This represents a paradigm shift allowing us to move from defects in sub-scale test-pieces, to those in manufactured components and devices. This will be complemented by a better understanding of how such defects are introduced during manufacture and assembly. It will also allow us to scout and zoom manufactured structures to identify the broader defect distribution and then to follow the evolution of specific defects in a time-lapse manner as a function of mechanical or environmental loads, to learn how they lead to rapid failure in service. This will help to steer the design of smarter manufacturing processes tailored to the individual part geometry/architecture and help to establish a digital twin of additive and composite manufacturing processes.Secondly, we will exploit high frame rate imaging on ID19 exploiting the increased flux available due to the new ESRF-extremely bright source upgrade to study the mechanisms by which defects are introduced during additive manufacture and how defects can lead to very rapid failures, such as thermal runaway in batteriesIn this project, we will specifically focus on additive manufacturing, composite materials manufacturing and battery manufacturing and the in situ and operando performance and degradation of such manufactured articles, with the capabilities being disseminated and made more widely available to UK academics and industry through the NRF. The collaboration will also lead to the development of new data handling and analysis processes able to handle the very significant uplift in data that will be obtained and will lead to multiple site collaboration on experiments in real-time. This will enable us to work together as a multisite team on projects thereby involving less travelling and off-setting some of the constraints on demanding experiments posed by COVID-19.