Advancing functional integration through multi-material additive manufacturing: Simulation and experimental validation of a burner nozzle

A combination of simulation and experimental testing is introduced that opens the ability to evaluate the fluid-driven heat exchange of multi-material components. Multi-material laser powder bed fusion is used for processing a nickel-base (Ni) and a copper-base (Cu) alloy in one process fabricating a burner tip component. The multi-material component is compared to its mono-material counterpart made entirely from the Ni-base alloy. A computational fluid dynamics simulation is used to calculate the maximum component temperature differences between both components as-built and heat-treated leading to a theoretical thermal improvement of 36% in the burner tip. Differences between the experimentally achieved thermal improvement of 32% and the theoretical benchmark are discussed by metallographic part analysis. Using the example burner tip component, multi-material process-specific challenges and component design approaches are presented for future applications.