Metal additive manufacturing in aerospace: A review

🤖 Plain-English Summary

Metal additive manufacturing involves manufacturing techniques that add material to produce metallic components, typically layer by layer. This provides a current state of the art, while also summarizing the primary application scenarios and the associated commercial and technical benefits of additive manufacturing in these applications.

🔑 Key Findings

• The substantial growth in this technology is partly driven by its opportunity for commercial and performance benefits in the aerospace industry.
• The fundamental opportunities for metal additive manufacturing in aerospace applications include: significant cost and lead-time reductions, novel materials and unique design solutions, mass reduction of components through highly efficient and lightweight designs, and consolidation of multiple components for performance enhancement or risk management, e.g.
• through internal cooling features in thermally loaded components or by eliminating traditional joining processes.

🔗 Related Resources