A critical analysis of additive manufacturing technologies for aerospace applications

In the restricted budget environments of recent years, the aerospace and defense sectors are primarily driven by cost, in addition to level of system performance and development schedule. Some of the current techniques listed for additive manufacturing are still very relevant in current industry and technologies are being developed to further improve effectiveness. Specialized products often require development of new processes and facilities which are very capital intensive. Laser based additive manufacturing has shown the potential to reduce the development costs and eliminated the complexity factor. As a result, it becomes possible to manufacture structures of complex shapes and sizes. Efforts are still ongoing for developing a cost effective solution to additive manufacturing of non-metals and metals. There are several parameters which are used to judge the additive technology such as surface finish, tensile strength of the product manufactured, intricacy of design, variety of materials with which the technology can work etc. Some of the newer technologies such as laser consolidation have the potential to not only develop near net shape parts but also repair broken metal components but also repair broken metal components by printing the damaged areas over the existing metal bodies. Abilities like this will not only enable the aerospace sector to reduce their time to development but also reuse some of the critical and non-critical components in the space missions at very low costs. This paper looks at the different additive manufacturing technologies which can be used for the manufacturing of aerospace components from a number of different parameters, their advantages and disadvantages and tries to assess their feasibility for production of components for practical applications. Apart from this, the paper shall also cover the latest developments in this field and try to assess what will be their implications on the management of critical components for use in the aerospace sector.