Results

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a technology that has the potential to support the Circular Economy by: (1) offering new material options (2) allowing design freedom (3) implementing sustainable manufacturing (4) providing better products and (5) simplifying resource recapture. However, currently AM is a hugely inefficient process and many AM parts have poor mechanical properties, low resistance to aggressive environments and lower reproducibility compared to other technologies. Currently only a few alloys, the most relevant being AlSi10Mg, TiAl6V4, CoCr and Inconel 718, can be reliably produced by AM. Difficulties also exist in AM metal-ceramic composites due to the different response of powders to the heat source, segregation or decomposition of ceramic phases. Another of the great limitations of AM is the scarce range of commercially available materials, normally restricted to those offered by the manufacturers of the machines, which are not always optimal for in-service conditions of the finished components and which, often are given without information about their composition and characteristics, which prevents their development and improvement. The physicochemical and microstructural characteristics of the raw powder materials used in AM can significantly affect solidification, sintering behaviour and the final properties of the manufactured component. Even though the importance of the powder characteristics in the success of AM is recognized by the scientific community, so far there are very few attempts to tailor-make powders with specific characteristics for AM.

In the present project the design, functionalization, fabrication and evaluation of Smart Hybrid Powders (SHP) is proposed with tailor-made characteristics required for AM. The production of SHP will be coupled with the use of multiscale modelling that will consider synergistically the physicochemical characteristics of the SHP and the process parameters in order to control the final properties of the components. Two different approaches will be applied for the SHP: (1) coated powders with nano-sized elements or compounds produced and deposited in-situ in a fluidized bed reactor (FBR). These nano-sized elements will control solidification, grain growth and microstructure, producing defect-free components; (2) metal-coated ceramic particles with homogeneous metallic coating in a FBR for fabrication of cermets or metal-ceramic composite materials by AM.