Fatigue analysis and non-destructive evaluation of loaded aluminum brackets produced by selective laser melting

Abstract

Aerospace components premise high demands on performance and reliability of used lightweight structures. One major challenge is the manufacturing of failure safe aerospace structures, e.g. using topology-optimization in combination with additive manufacturing (AM). However, AM metal parts produced by Selective Laser Melting (SLM) can feature internal defects like surface-near pores that influence mechanical and fatigue performance significantly. In this contribution, we non-destructively evaluate topology-optimized jet engine brackets using X-ray microcomputed tomography (XCT) before and after dynamic loading. In addition, we compare data from experimental fatigue analyses with corresponding data from fatigue simulations. We show that XCT is a powerful non-destructive testing (NDT) tool for complex aluminum components, particularly in combination with fatigue simulation in order to predict regions in which the respective part is likely to fail.