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PublicationLife cycle analysis results for engine blisk LCA( 2024-02-05)Purpose - The aviation industry has seen consistent growth over the past few decades. To maintain its sustainability and competitiveness, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of the industry, including materials, processes and resources; manufacturing and production; lifetime services; reuse; end-of-life; and recycling. One important component of aircraft engines, integral rotors known as Blisks, are made of high-value metallic alloys that require complex and resource-intensive manufacturing processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the ecological and economical impacts generated through Blisk production and thereby identify significant ‘hot-spots’. Design/methodology/approach - This paper focuses on the methodology and approach for conducting a full-scale Blisk life cycle assessment (LCA) based on ISO 14040/44. Unlike previous papers in the European Aerospace Science Network series, which focused on the first two stages of LCA, this publication delves into the "life cycle impact assessment" and "interpretation" stages, providing an overview of the life cycle inventory modeling, impact category selection and presenting preliminary LCA results for the Blisk manufacturing process chain. Findings - The result shows that the milled titanium Blisk has a lower CO2 footprint than the milled nickel Blisk, which is less than half of the global warming potential (GWP) of the milled nickel Blisk. A main contributor to GWP arises from raw material production. However, no recycling scenarios were included in the analysis, which will be the topic of further investigations. Originality/value - The originality of this work lies in the detailed ecological assessment of the manufacturing for complex engine components and the derivation of hot spots as well as potential improvements in terms of eco-footprint reduction throughout the products cradle-to-gate cycle. The LCA results serve as a basis for future approaches of process chain optimisation, use of "greener" materials and individual process improvements.
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PublicationAn optimization approach for a milling dynamics simulation based on Quantum Computing( 2024-02-01)
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PublicationMachinability study in orthogonal cutting of additively manufactured Inconel 718 with specifically induced porosity( 2024-02-01)In comparison to conventional manufacturing technologies, additive manufacturing (AM) offers great design freedom, the integration of functions into components, new lightweight design concepts and high material efficiency. In aerospace and turbomachinery, this technology is increasingly coming into focus, especially the laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M) process. PBF-LB/M is already used for some aerospace components, which are often exposed to high thermal and mechanical loads. Dependent on the component geometry, support structures are required for AM, which then usually have to be removed by machining. One suitable support structure is the use of material with specifically induced porosity. This ensures good heat dissipation and thus homogeneous component properties, high retention forces and short process times in PBF-LB/M. However, the machinability of porous, additively manufactured material has hardly been researched so far. One preliminary investigation of milling porous, additively manufactured Inconel 718, though, showed significantly poorer machinability of the porous material compared to the dense material. To further examine this phenomenon, this paper presents the results of fundamental machinability studies with porous, additively manufactured Inconel 718 in orthogonal cutting. The investigations with tungsten carbide cutting tools on a special fundamental test rig include the analysis of the cutting force, the chip geometry, the chip temperature and the surface quality. The research results provide explanations for the poorer machinability of the porous material and derived approaches for improving the machinability in future studies.
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PublicationBlisk Specific Query Language (BLISQL) - An approach for domain specific data querying in Blisk Manufacturing( 2023-07-18)Product lifecycle management (PLM) is constantly improved by a steadily growing amount of data collected along the product and process development chain. This data supports designing optimized geometries and manufacturing processes. For the optimization of the manufacturing process, data from process design and manufacturing are extracted and processed. The use of a query language is helpful to make the extraction more efficient. Query languages, referring to the specific domain of a component, simplify the formulation of the queries. We present an approach for domain specific data querying in blisk manufacturing based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) using SPARQL.
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PublicationCloud-based process design in a digital twin framework with integrated and coupled technology models for blisk milling( 2022-12-19)
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PublicationResilience in Aviation( 2022-11-14)Pandemic, sustainability and efficiency targets pose ongoing challenges for the aviation industry: It must continue to develop propulsion concepts and tap into new materials and manufacturing processes. Cross-domain digital twins harbor previously untapped potential for mastering growing requirements with the help of digitization, as a practical example from the production of aerospace components shows in the white paper. The trend topic of sustainability drives innovation and complements productivity, quality and costs as criteria for strategic corporate decisions. Awareness of this must be consolidated among personnel, as well as the ability to manage resilient processes. Such processes ensure the successful handling of disruptions. In this way, a disruption can even turn into an opportunity. In the white paper, the Fraunhofer IPT pools its expert knowledge on how the dimensions of "technology", "digitalization", "sustainability" and "employees" can be combined in the context of aviation in order to seize this opportunity.
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PublicationResilienz in der Luftfahrt( 2022-09-16)Pandemie, Nachhaltigkeits- und Effizienzziele stellt fortlaufende Herausforderungen an die Luftfahrtindustrie: Sie muss Antriebstechnologien weiterentwickeln sowie neue Werkstoffe und Fertigungsverfahren erschließen. Domänenübergreifende digitale Zwillinge bergen bisher ungenutzte Potenziale, um wachsende Anforderungen mithilfe von Digitalisierung zu bewältigen, wie ein praxisnahes Beispiel aus der Fertigung von Luftfahrtkomponenten im Whitepaper aufzeigt. Das Trendthema Nachhaltigkeit treibt Innovationen an und ergänzt Produktivität, Qualität und Kosten als Kriterium für strategische Unternehmensentscheidungen. Das Bewusstsein dafür muss sich beim Personal festigen sowie die Fähigkeit, resiliente Prozesse zu bewältigen. Solche Prozesse stellen den erfolgreichen Umgang mit Störungen sicher. So kann sich eine Störung sogar zu einer Chance wandeln. Das Fraunhofer IPT bündelt im Whitepaper sein Expertenwissen, wie sich die Dimensionen »Technologie«, »Digitalisierung«, »Nachhaltigkeit« und »Personal« im Kontext der Luftfahrt verbinden lassen, um diese Chance zu ergreifen.
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PublicationPreparation of Papers for IFAC Conferences & Symposia: Adaptive fixture system for reducing machining distortion caused by residual stresses in milling( 2022)Machining distortion caused by residual stresses is one of the major challenges in the production of thin-walled monolithic parts, which are widely used in the aerospace industry. The relevant influencing factors include the selected process parameters, the machining sequence as well as the used fixture system. This paper presents an adaptive fixture system for reducing machining distortion caused by residual stresses in milling. To validate the advantage of this system, machining distortion experiments are conducted on monolithic parts made of Ti-6A1-4V using a conventional and the adaptive fixture system.
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PublicationLife Cycle Inventories for Engine Blisk LCA( 2022)The aviation industry has been growing continuously over the past decades. To ensure sustainability and competitiveness for the aviation industry sector, a full understanding of the environmental impacts is required, not only during use phase but along the entire life cycle, including “Materials”, “Processes and Resources”, “Manufacturing and Production”, “Lifetime Services” as well as “Reuse, End-of-Life and Recycling”. Core engine components, such as integral rotors (Blisks), are comprised of high value metallic alloys that require complex and resource consuming manufacturing processes. This paper will introduce an approach for Life-Cy-cle-Inventory data acquisition during Blisk manufacturing as basis for a Life-Cycle-Assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040. A particular focus will be set on the data quality and confidence level regarding measuring, acquisition, and analysis of in- and output flows within the Blisk manufacturing process chain in scope. This includes the stages of material generation, forming processes, heat treatments, machining, surface treatments and quality assurance. A greater emphasis is drawn to selected variations on mechanical machining processes. On this basis, first results of an LCA for Blisk-manufacturing will be presented.
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PublicationDeep learning and rule-based image processing pipeline for automated metal cutting tool wear detection and measurement( 2022)Tool wear causes costs and quality problems in metal cutting manufacturing processes. This paper contains an approach of digitalization and big data analytical methods to quantify the wear of metal cutting tools. The method developed consists of a pipeline of deep learning operations for processing tool wear images collected with a digital microscope and is complemented by a rule-based approach to measuring wear along the cutting edge of machining tools. The end-to-end approach allows fully automated tool wear detection and measurement that can be used for inline measurements within CNC machine tools for machining applications.
