Bionic lightweight design by laser additive manufacturing (LAM) for aircraft industry

摘要

Today many challenges lie ahead of the aircraft industry. The increasing competition and shortage of resources raise a challenge for future manufacturing technologies and lightweight design. A possibility to cope with these circumstances is the manufacturing technology of Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM). However there are still challenges to cope with due to the processes novelty, such as the development of further materials, especially lightweight alloys, and new design approaches. Therefore innovative approaches for material development and lightweight design were created in order to fully exploit the processes potentials. The material development process is based on an analytical calculation of temperature distribution versus effective process factors in order to identify acceptable operating conditions for the LAM process. A novel approach to extreme lightweight design was realized by incorporating structural optimization tools and bionic structures into one design process. By consequently following these design principles, designers can achieve lightweight savings in designing new aircraft structure and push lightweight design to new limits.