Towards In-Situ Qualification of Additively Manufactured Parts: Real Time Monitoring and Intelligent Intermittent Control of Laser Powder-Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing

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Additive manufacturing (AM), (i.e., 3-dimensional (3D) printing), is an advanced manufacturing technology slated to revolutionize the global manufacturing industry by 2030. AM enables the manufacturing of complex shapes with superior mechanical properties and, owing to exponential advancements in the last decade, promises to move beyond low volume prototyping towards becoming a legitimate serial and mass production platform. The proposed research program aims to advance laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF), a class of AM, in which a scanning laser selectively melts powder particles on a material bed. This technology is extremely attractive for industry due to its versatility and flexibility. However, significant challenges exist such as the existence of complex governing physics, more than 100 independent process parameters, very large data sets streaming from monitoring devices, and a lack of information on quality assurance algorithms in the literature. Like all conventional manufacturing techniques, quality assurance procedures/tools are paramount to aiding manufacturers in the quality management and certification of AM-made parts. This represents a critical gap in AM research and development and is a bottleneck for widespread adoption. My long-term vision for AM research encompasses development of reliable monitoring, high-speed quality assurance, and closed-loop real-time control systems for LPBF that can be used towards establishing a "Certify-as-you-build" strategy. To this end, the proposed research program will develop an innovative quality assurance platform for LPBF; not only to address the existing challenges in LPBF, but also to foster transformative research through a holistic approach that accelerates AM technology adoption in serial production. It will also promote the world-class training of research personnel, enhancing their theoretical and practical engineering skills required for the multidisciplinary area of AM. The short-term objectives of this proposal are: i) Development of high-fidelity, high-speed analytical/experimental models; ii) Enhancement of advanced continuous and process intermittent monitoring capabilities for characterizing process signatures; iii) Development of intelligent based sampling strategies to collect rich data from big data streams; iv) Development of real-time detection algorithms as process estimators to correlate signal outputs to actual defects; and v) Development of advanced continuous and process-intermittent controllers to compensate for defects such as porous defects, delamination, and residual stress. This transformative research will significantly enhance Canada's competitiveness and innovation capacity in this cutting-edge area of advanced manufacturing technology. The industrial need to adopt AM into their business plans/products is global in scale and urgent, thus the proposed program has strong potential to provide new leading-edge technologies for domestic and export markets.