Additive Manufacturing Applications in Turbomachinery through Rapid Prototyping

Despite the vast experience with traditional construction methods, there is a drive to move towards one-piece construction, where there are no joints, and the cost of tools is reduced to a minimum. The Turbomachinery industry, including geometrically complicated parts like impellers, diffusers, volute casings, etc. has always been keen to implement new and modern manufacturing technologies. This paper investigates some applications of additive manufacturing in turbomachinery from a practical view. Rapid prototyping (RP) has been used in different stages of design to the manufacturing process to evaluate both the manufacturing and design performance of the selected parts through physical printed samples.

Keywords:

Additive manufacturing , FDM , Lightweight Design , Turbomachinery , Manufacturing Technology , SLA , Rapid Prototyping