PSI - Issue 54

Miloslav Kepka et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 54 (2024) 59–66 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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2. Advantages and challenges of AM Additive manufacturing technology (AM - additive manufacturing) can be seen as part of technological and social progress. Additive design and manufacturing are among the most important technological directions developed worldwide as part of the "Industrial Revolution 4.0". Fig. 3 shows the development of global revenues for additively manufactured products and services presented in Wohlers Report 2023. Predictions for the next few years assume further growth. Similarly, the number of publications devoted to the issue of additive technologies is growing exponentially.

Fig. 3. Global revenues for AM products and services - Wohlers Report 2023.

The technology itself and its application are still in dynamic development, which includes various challenges: • Elimination of defects (imperfect sintering and some degree of porosity are "common"); • Surface roughness (when it is not possible to apply suitable machining); • Anisotropy of mechanical properties depending on the direction of "construction" of the component; • Heterogeneous (locally different) material properties; • Residual stress and distortion of the product as a result of the heat process during additive manufacturing; • The microstructure and material properties are dependent on the process parameters of additive manufacturing, which means that laser power, scanning speed, printing strategy, and layer thickness are the important parameters that can directly affect the material microstructure and the resulting "behavior„ of products, and chemical thermal postprocessing, of course; • The challenges (problems) of additive manufacturing have great relevance to the fatigue of materials and fatigue resistance of structural components. The main advantages of AM include: • High geometric freedom and, as a result, the possibility of producing components of very complex shapes; • Integration of sub-components into one component; • Production of components precisely tailored to the customer (e.g., joint or dental replacements); • Effective use of material; • Additive manufacturing also has the potential to produce hybrid (multi-material) structures; • Prompt production of specific spare parts for maintenance and repair of machines and equipment .