Healable Al alloys Manufacturing by Advanced Automated Characterisation - HAMAAC

Project summary

A new high strength healable aluminium matrix composite (hAMC) based on Al-Mg-Sc alloys will be developed, addressing a growing demand of the aerospace and defence vehicles, for light, load-bearing parts with increased lifetime. Parts such as heat exchangers or connectors will be produced by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF). The hAMC will allow to i) reduce parts replacements frequency by min 50% thanks to its healing capacity; ii) enable weight savings, thus reducing CO2 emissions by decreased fuel consumption; iii) enhance safety by advanced quality control and inspection at early stages of cracking. Their liquid eutectic-phase melting healing will be characterized and subsequently optimized using a dedicated multiscale imaging and analysis protocol. This protocol involves 3D correlative tomography. Upscaling the protocol for industrial use, an automated characterization tool setup for quality control of L-PBF parts will results from Artificial Intelligence (AI) data treatment.