New Shining new light on laser additive manufacturing of powders using synchrotron imaging

增材制造（AM）被誉为顶级颠覆性技术之一，因为它彻底改变了传统的铸造、热机械加工、机械加工和连接制造方法。这种潜在的变革性技术，允许前所未有的设计自由，允许在激光功率的辅助下从粉末逐层构建组件。在医学和工程原型应用中使用塑料的3d打印已经取得了巨大的成功。然而，利用增材制造在金属中大规模生产合金部件，只打入了少数利基市场，其中一个是医疗植入物，包括钛关节置换（患者超过10万），这得益于李教授团队的发展。在航空航天应用中，增材制造有望产生重大的经济影响，因为它消除了大规模的加工浪费，并通过更有效的部件拓扑设计减少了材料的使用。然而，理解和控制激光加工粉末的微观结构是材料科学在极端-非常高的凝固速率、超细的微观结构和远离平衡的亚稳定相形成的一个范例。我们迫切需要实验和建模的敏锐性来推动这一领域的发展，从而产生新的发明。这些极端的加工条件是实现和使用增材制造金属/合金部件制造的挑战的核心。它是材料制造的一个快速发展的分支，充满了令人兴奋的问题，需要一系列先进的设备和表征技术。曼彻斯特在开发用于直接观察激光粉末AM过程中的熔池的原位同步加速器表征技术方面处于世界领先地位，并开发了第一台进行此类实验的设备。在攻读博士学位期间，学生将首先在新材料/条件下使用现有的钻机，然后帮助开发用于吹粉激光AM等替代工艺的第二代钻机。他们将这种独特的能力与更传统的显微镜（光学和电子显微镜）和机械测试技术相结合。他们还将进行相关的光学和热成像，并与谢菲尔德大学的学生合作，利用那里新购买的价值300万英镑的柔性研究增材制造机器，扩大新的基本见解。

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is hailed as one of the top disruptive technologies as it is a radical departure from the traditional manufacturing approaches of casting, thermomechanical processing, machining and joining. This potentially transformative technology, allowing unprecedented design freedom, allows components to be built layer by layer from powder aided by laser power. Tremendous success has already been achieved by 3D-printing using plastics for medical and engineering prototype applications. However, large-scale alloy component production in metals using AM has only broken into a few niche markets, one of them medical implants, including the titanium joint replacements (over 100,000 are in patients) aided by developments in Prof. Lee's group. In aerospace applications, AM promises to have a significant economic impact due to elimination of large-scale machining wastage and minimal usage of material via more efficient topological designs of components. However, understanding and controlling laser-processed powder microstructures is an exemplar for materials science at extreme - very high solidification rates, ultra-fine microstructures, and far-from-equilibrium meta-stable phase formation. There is a critical need for both experimental and modelling acumen to advance the field, resulting in new inventions.These extreme processing conditions lie at the heart of the challenge to implement and readily use AM for metal/alloy component manufacturing. It is a rapidly evolving branch of materials manufacturing, rich in exciting problems and demanding an array of advanced equipment and characterization techniques. Manchester is world leading in developing in situ synchrotron characterisation techniques for directly observing the molten pool during laser powder AM, having developed the first rig to perform such experiments. During the PhD the student will first use this existing rig on new materials / conditions, and then help develop a second generation rig for alternative processes such as blown powder laser AM. They will combine this unique capability with more traditional microscopy (optical and EM) and mechanical testing techniques. They will also perform correlative optical and thermal imaging, and working collaboratively with students at Sheffield, scale up the new fundamental insights using the £3m in newly purchased flexible research AM machines there.