Potential and scope of additive manufacturing in aerospace industry with reference to India

Abstract

Aerospace industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Especially in India, it is estimated to grow in exponential rate owing to the rapid globalization and the fact that India is one of the world centres for tourism and trade. This exponential growth in the field of aerospace industry puts more demand on manufacturing and design of aircraft and its components. Unfortunately, the tradition method on spare parts production for aerospace industry cannot supply the growing demand to its fullest because it is time consuming and the cost of production is very high. Additive manufacturing, being one of the most revolutionary methods of is an appropriate substitute for the traditional manufacturing process in the aerospace industry as mass production becomes cheaper and save much of time. It also provides the flexibility to change the design and manufacturing method of any particular component with most ease at any stage from design to production. Additive manufacturing displays unarguable traits compared to traditional manufacturing in material saving, cost of production, requirement of skilled labour force and time consumption, especially in aerospace industry. However, there is not one single method of designing or producing the required component and this paper intends to classify and discuss each method in details and in comparison with each other. Few methods that are discussed in this paper include EBM, SLM, MD and LMD. In spite of the overwhelming advantage the technology has over the current method, it still faces few challenges to be fully implemented in floor level which is also focused in this paper in particular to India.