Additive Manufacturing in Aerospace and Defense Industries: A Review

A. K. Madan; Kanishk Yadav; Harshit Jain; Himanshu Bhatt; Himanshu Bist

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a promising fabrication technique that can offer significant benefits to aerospace industries and Defense Support Service providers. Because of its potential to delocalize production near the point of use and its transformative potential, the technology is gaining popularity. In fact AM has a great potential to revolutionise the Global manufacturing and distribution system by offering low cost and highly customized parts. AM encompasses a broad variety of techniques for converting a 3D file into a physical product by depositing layer upon layer of content. AM is only in its early stages of growth and is considered a young technology. Because of this immaturity, there is a lot of confusion around key metrics like time and cost. Moreover many studies have been going on to make AM more versatile and reliable technology with focus on developing novel materials , process optimisation and cost efficiency. There are also important decision variables when evaluating AM and comparing them to conventional manufacturing processes such as cost of production , reliability, repeatability optimisation and material properties. . This study paper seeks to bring to the reader the different AM techniques with a detailed emphasis on the most relevant innovations to Aerospace and Defence Support Services. Among the various sectors, Aerospace has given the most importance to AM technologies by providing heavy investment for developing the AM industrial applications.This paper aims to introduce recent research and developments in the Defence and Aerospace industry with possible improvements in AM technologies and cost modelling strategies for production of highly customized products.

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