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Steel cast bracket
Conventional design of the steel cast bracket (upper left) that was environmentally assessed against the corresponding topology-optimised design of the EOS titanium AM-made bracket (lower right corner).
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Airbus Group Innovations
Produced Waste
Waste produced as weighted by the “embodied” energy for each process (in kWh). This way of presenting results conveys a stronger and improved idea of the embodied cost of the material, non-organic wastes for each alternative process, based upon their ability to be recovered either by re-use or recycling.
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Airbus Group Innovations
CO2 Emissions
Emissions of carbon dioxide through the static (i.e., manufacturing) phases of the different design options (in kg CO2 eq.)
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Airbus Group Innovations
Energy Consumption
Take-down of the energy consumption for the different processes benchmarked during the manufacturing phase (in kWh).
Additive manufacturing pioneer EOS has joined forces with Airbus Group Innovations to put together a study on industrial 3D printing in aerospace.
The market leader for design-driven, integrated e-manufacturing solutions in additive manufacturing and Airbus Group Innovations (previous EADS Innovation Works), which is based in Bristol, are aiming to complete an environmental lifecycle comparison of both rapid investment casting and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), two key production technologies.
Airbus Group Innovations and EOS' eco-assessment was applied to a standardised Airbus A320 nacelle hinge bracket and strove to include a detailed analysis of the overall lifecycle of the part from the supplier of the raw powder metal, to the equipment manufacturer and to the end-user. The manufacturer was EOS and the end-user was Airbus Group Innovations.
Adapted from Airbus' streamlined lifecycle assessment (SLCA) and ISO 14040 series requirements data, the testing serves as the basis for continued "Cradle-to-Cradle" study into other aerospace parts, processes and end-of-life strategies.
To begin with, the SLCA was conducted on a generic bracket benchmarking the DMLS process with a conventional casting process used as the baseline. Comparing the lifecycle of a steel bracket (casting process) with the lifecycle of a design-optimised titanium bracket (DMLS):
- The use phase has by far the biggest impact in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions over the whole lifecycle of the bracket.
- CO2 emissions over the whole lifecycle of the nacelle hinges were reduced by nearly 40 per cent via weight saving that resulted from an optimised geometry, which is enabled by the design freedom offered by the DMLS process and the use of titanium.
- Most significantly, using DMLS to build the hinge may reduce the weight per plane by 10 kilograms, a noteworthy saving when looking at industry "buy-to-fly" ratios.
The second phase of the analysis focused on the manufacturing process for the design-optimised bracket using titanium as an ideal, common material - and this time benchmarking the manufacturing process of investment casting against that of DMLS via the EOSINT M 280 system:
- The total energy consumption for creating the initial raw powder metal, then producing the bracket in DMLS, was slightly smaller than the equivalent cast process steps (with the higher energy use of DMLS limited to the melt and chill cycle of its manufacturing profile and offset at the same time by a significantly reduced build time). Casting in this comparison was burdened with the furnace operation of burning an SLA (stereolithography) epoxy model, which uses considerable energy and generates greenhouse gases.
- The DMLS process itself used only the material actually needed to make the part—thereby eliminating waste from secondary machining and reducing consumption of titanium by 25 per cent over the cast application.
In his final report, Additive Layer Manufacturing Research Team Leader Jon Meyer said: "DMLS has demonstrated a number of benefits, as it can support the optimisation of design and enable subsequent manufacture in low-volume production. In general, the joint study revealed that DMLS has the potential to build light, sustainable parts with due regard for the company's CO2 footprint."
Nicola Knoch, Environmental and Sustainability consultant to EOS, commented: "We have worked in a bold, new collaboration with Airbus Group Innovations on integrating business and ecological sustainability from sourcing through to product development.
"There is now a valuable, holistic baseline established on our technology regarding the measurable costs, benefits and impacts of DMLS. This sets the groundwork for future technology developments in additive manufacturing and further studies."
