Small Parts Fabrication Using Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing Technologies

Metallic components with embedded sensors or smart parts can be a beneficial tool for monitoring harsh environments in the energy, biomedical, automotive, and aerospace industries. Smart parts maintain structural integrity with added functionality of sensing temperature, pressure, and structural health. A non-intrusive placement of a sensor in metallic components was developed using powder bed fusion additive manufacturing (AM). A paused build procedure was used to fabricate a proof of concept, a cylindrical shaped smart part using both electron beam melting (EBM) and selective laser melting (SLM) technologies. This paper focuses on the fabrication process and characterization of the smart part. A functional complex shaped energy system component, a smart injector was fabricated to demonstrate the applicability in harsh environments. The pressure and temperature sensing capabilities were tested using compressive cyclic loading and hot fire testing in a combustion chamber testing. A maximum sensing response of 3V was obtained for EBM fabricated smart part while applying compressive load. An image analysis based part positioning method was demonstrated for EBM technology that can be employed in other AM technologies to alleviate or completely remove misalignment in a paused build fabrication process.Mechanical Engineerin