Towards a General Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing Framework for Fabricating Complex Structural Components

Abstract

As an emerging additive manufacturing method, cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) has attracted more and more researchers’ attention due to its unique advantages. However, only a few researchers have studied the fabrication of complex structural components. Therefore, it is important to develop a general CSAM framework that is suitable for the fabrication of different shapes of workpieces. In particular, the choice for the optimal kinematic spraying parameters, the prediction of deposit evolution and the planning of spraying trajectory are the most basic and crucial. Different sub-modules are integrated in the proposed framework to solve these problems. In detail, the modeling methodology is used to obtain the optimal kinematic spraying parameters and to predict the deposit evolution in the simulation. Based on the feasible parameters, the trajectory planification methodology is used to generate the spraying trajectory for the workpiece being manufactured, especially the workpiece with complex structure. Finally, the simulation and experimental results of a fabrication for a workpiece with complex structure provide the developed system is reliable and effective. The framework developed in this paper can considered as a general tool for additive manufacturing of with complex structural workpieces in the CSAM.