Q. How is DesignTech leveraging 3D printing to transform manufacturing processes in the aerospace and defense sectors?
3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing is revolutionizing the way companies design, develop, and manufacture products. It helps companies stay true to their design intent and manufacturing objectives. With a part or functional model in hand companies can visualize designs, check functionalities, and identify errors if any, early in the design cycle, thus saving the company significant time and costs for rework and iterations.
Additive manufacturing has also opened up new gamut of possibilities in manufacturing. When it comes to producing complex or intricate geometries or customised parts, 3D Printing is ideal. With large industrial grade or production grade 3D Printers, companies can also produce large and robust parts for end-use applications.
Being highly competitive, aerospace industry has some stringent business imperatives. Additive manufacturing can contribute in addressing some of most critical success and performance factors in the following areas:
- Light weighting: with addition of high performance composite materials, Additive Manufacturing can help aerospace companies create parts that are light weight and yet meet the required quality and tenacity parameters
- Certified materials – with the advancement of materials, many additive manufacturing solutions companies provide aerospace certified materials (FST grade) that are specially developed to meet the standards, quality, and norms of the aerospace industry. E.g. – ultem material provided by Stratasys
- Traceability: Traceability in aerospace manufacturing is essential for ensuring the safety, reliability, and quality of spacecraft components. Stratasys offers traceability of certified material from the manufacturing stage with batch and lot number.
- Producing complex geometries: with Additive Manufacturing, companies can produce complex and intricate geometries with greater ease
- Design freedom: Additive Manufacturing offers more design freedom to the engineers to test and evaluate various designs in comparison to the traditional methods.
- Customized parts production: Additive Manufacturing is perfect for producing customized parts for end use applications as it is faster, efficient, and more cost effective than the traditional processes.
- Manufacturing parts: Additive Manufacturing can be used to produce tooling such as jigs, and fixtures for aerospace components.
- Complete product development: Additive Manufacturing can also support complete product development such as drones.
3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing finds integral applications right from design, validation, to manufacturing in aerospace and defence industry.
Q. What challenges do you face when implementing additive manufacturing in the aerospace industry, and how do you overcome them?
While the usage of 3D Printing is maturing and expanding in the aerospace industry from validation to niche manufacturing applications, it is still facing a few exigent roadblocks that it needs to navigate to be fully adopted in aerospace and defense sector:
- Safety and security: aerospace components and designs are subjected to heavy testing and regulatory norms as they directly impact human lives. The 3D Printed components have to match the rigorous standards and compliances for utmost safety, performance, quality, and functioning under arduous testing conditions. Design or product failure is not an option here.
- Certified materials: availability and acceptability of materials for aerospace applications is a challenge. Aerospace certified and aerospace grade materials only can be used for developing the components or parts, which limits the choice of materials.
- Compliances to government and international bodies: 3D Printed parts need to be approved by the national and international regulatory authorities and agencies to be used in aircrafts and other aerial vehicles.
- Cost of development: All the factors mentioned above especially the use of only
permitted/approved/certified materials to create aerospace parts, contribute in increasing the overall costs of product development, which can become a deterrence in adopting Additive Manufacturing fully in aerospace or defense industry.
Q. What role does simulation play in ensuring the safety and performance of aerospace components?
CAE is used to evaluate and test the performance of aerospace systems, parts and components to the fullest under maximum anticipated loads, boundary conditions and pressures. When the components are put through rigorous virtual testing under extreme conditions, it can highlight possible design failure areas. This helps the companies address the issues and better product quality and performance.
Applications of CAE in aerospace:
- Structural analysis and design optimization: with structural analysis and design optimization, aerospace companies can make their designs more robust, light weight and yet augment their strength and performance. This leads to bettering fuel efficiency, optimizing payload capacity, and enhancing the durability and tenacity of the structures.
- CFD or Computational fluid dynamics: it is used to study, evaluate, analyse, and improve aerodynamic performance. It helps engineers study airflow patterns and impact it has on aerospace components to design and come up with ideal designs for aircrafts such as shape of the wings. It greatly assists in making the aircraft safer for the passengers by studying the impact of air and pressures while take–off and landing. The engineers can use this analysis data to make the aircraft more stable during take-off and landing.
- Noise and vibration analysis: there is lot of noise and vibration during the airplane take-off and landing. The air pressure in the cabin also suddenly drops after take-off. CAE analysis helps companies optimize and reduce noise and vibration for more comfortable travel.
- Thermal analysis: there is drastic temperature variation in the atmosphere or air closer to earth and the altitude at which the aircraft flies. The components have to not just withstand this temperature difference but also have to function properly in changing temperatures and conditions of the air or atmosphere it is exposed to outside such as moisture, rains, heat, etc. So thermal analysis is critical to robust aerospace components development.
- Component level analysis: It is not just the entire aircraft as a whole that is subjected to CAE evaluations, but simulation and analysis is carried out at every component level, e.g. seats – proper ergonomic and structural analysis needs to be conducted for sturdier and stable seats manufacturing, overhead cabins need to be structurally evaluated for carrying heavy loads and performing under pressures such as vibrations during take-off and landing etc.
- Electromagnetic analysis: there are lot of electronic components used in the aircraft. The entire communication system in the aircraft uses electromagnetic waves and frequencies to communicate with the stations or bases on the ground, so electromagnetic analysis is crucial for ensuring proper functioning of electronic and communication systems.
With all these system, component, parts and bigger structure level analysis, aircrafts are built to provide maximum safety and security, and utmost passenger comfort, while adhering to all the standards and regulatory compliances.
Q. How does DesignTech’s AR/VR/MR solutions help aerospace companies manage the lifecycle of their products, from concept to decommissioning?
We at DesignTech have diversified into developing immersive reality experiences for various industries, including manufacturing and aerospace. With AR/VR/MR, aerospace companies can develop rich and detailed immersive experiences for MRO applications. The MRO personnel can access the content anytime and anywhere, and can go through the entire maintenance, and repair operations and procedures through augmented reality or virtual reality based content. They can understand parts and components, learn the maintenance procedures, and perform tasks digitally through these enhanced simulations. This content can be made available in multiple languages and the operators can refer to it on need basis to go through the procedures in every detail. This can help carriers keep MRO related errors to the minimum, better the quality and understanding of training material, curtail the costs of training, reduce dependency on expert or person based training, and enhance the overall operational efficiency and turnaround time for maintenance and servicing.
Q. How do DesignTech’s FEA and CFD solutions help optimize the design of aerospace components?
DesignTech is a largest partner for Altair Engineering in India. Altair Engineering is a leading CAE solutions company with a dominant presence in manufacturing industry including aerospace. They offer a portfolio of end-to-end CAE solutions ranging from structural analysis, design optimization, CFD, thermal analysis, electromagnetic analysis, to technologies for digital twin. With digital twin, the companies can get real time information on product performance. Through the sensors fitted on the physical product in the aircraft, the data on performance is relayed or transmitted to its digital replica in the company that can highlight the potential performance failures. This helps companies in predictive maintenance and improving the productivity and uptime of the machines or systems.
CAE solutions from Altair Engineering can address some of most pertinent and critical challenges faced by the aerospace companies and engineers to study, evaluate, analyse and develop robust parts and components that meet the highest standards of quality, design, and performance.
Q. What are some key machining solutions that DesignTech offers specifically for the aerospace industry?
We have recently partnered with a Vision Inspection and Industrial Automation company that can help manufacturing companies identify even the minutest manufacturing errors in a component or product. This 360 degrees AI enabled vision Inspection System can help companies reduce rejections, optimize manufacturing time and costs, enhance productivity and manufacturing quality by identifying the defects in the manufactured batches. With Vision Inspection Systems, companies can target to achieve zero rejections and maintain highest quality standards in their manufactured products.
Q. What role does in-process inspection play in maintaining quality throughout the production process?
In-process inspection highlights design errors, process inefficiencies, and quality defects early in the cycle to keep the costs of errors, re-work and iterations to the minimum. It helps companies in optimizing design and development cycle to enhance overall product development efficiency, productivity, and quality.
Q. Are there any emerging materials or technologies that you’re focusing on to promote eco-friendly aerospace designs?
Today all the industries are talking about sustainable design and manufacturing processes. We at DesignTech, through our technology and services portfolio help manufacturing companies including aerospace develop light-weight, energy efficient, and better performing products through optimized development and manufacturing processes that are healthier for the environment and efficient for the companies.
Article Contributed by Mr. Rohit Arora – Executive Vice President, DesignTech Systems Pvt. Ltd
Rohit Arora, with over 20 years of experience in the engineering industry, excels in promoting advanced engineering technologies. Known for his strategic sales and mentoring skills, he effectively integrates industry challenges with modern technology solutions to drive growth and innovation.