FATiG - Additive Manufacturing

FATiG - Fatigue Strength of Titaneum Components from form optimized Additive Manufacturing

Lightweight design of structural components becomes increasingly relevant for ecological and economical reasons. The request for highly invidualized and optimized components raises in conventional engineering fields; e.g. mechanial engineering, vehicle production, naval architecture, but also in special branches like medical technologies. Additive Manufacturing provides outstanding possibilities. It has developed from Rapid Prototyping measures to operating solutions for One-of-a-kind and series production. 

Fatigue strength is a major design driver for dynamically loaded metal structures. A material´s fatigue response is the generation of small cracks which can grow and merge in case of ongoing dynamics. Finally, the cracks may compromise the overall integrity of a component or even the complete structure. Currently, material fatigue data are hardly or even not available for 3D printed structures.

A major goal of the project ist closing the gap for additive manufactured tintaneum structures. Therefore experiments will be performed to derive the characteristic strength values of the stress-, strain- and damage parameter live curves. The relevant material specimens will be produced by an industry partner.

Then, an application case will be designed and tested as well. In parallel, the life time of the structure will be calculated according to the notch strain approach. This concept relates the stress and strain status of a complex component with fatigue data of small material specimens. Finally, comparisons of experimental and computed fatigue life will be performed to uncover the quality of the approach.

Software will be developed for efficient treatment of the experimental and computational efforts to allow easy application of other 3D printed materials to real structures. 

The project is performed in collaboration of Kiel University of Applied Science, the University of Southern Denmark and the companies Element22 GmbH  and Scuddy GmbH & Co KG. The project scientist receives the opportunity to take her PhD from the project. The project duration is 6/2020 to 5/2023. The project is supported by WT.SH with Schleswig-Holstein federal states funds from EU.SH.