Environmental analysis of selective laser melting in the manufacturing of aeronautical turbine blades

• Published in: Journal of cleaner production 2020-02, Vol.246, p.119068, Article 119068
• Main Authors: Torres-Carrillo, Sharon, Siller, Héctor R., Vila, Carlos, López, Cecilio, Rodríguez, Ciro A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Additive manufacturing; Aerospace manufacturing; Environmental impact; Life cycle assessment; Selective laser melting
• ISSN: 0959-6526; 1879-1786
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119068

The exponential growth of additive manufacturing technologies is not only improving production processes to achieve functional requirements for products, but it could also help to minimize environmental impacts. In order to align a green product lifecycle management vision, companies need to implement emerging technologies and define a set of metrics that measure the benefits of the change. Each product requires a particular and optimized manufacturing process plan, and each production phase must achieve a significant reduction of critical metrics for the whole Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper provides a comprehensive and comparative LCA of two manufacturing process plans for the case study of an aircraft engine turbine blade. The first process consists of a combination of Investment Casting and Precision Machining and the second consists in the replacement of Investment casting by Selective Laser Melting as an emergent process for near net shape fabrication. The collected data for the comparison includes Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Ozone layer Depletion Potential (ODP), Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), and Human Toxicity (HT) with cancer and non-cancer effects. The relative analysis shows that, for the critical indicators, an apparent improvement in CO2 emissions reduction is achieved as well as in the other hazardous emissions. The results showed that the whole lifecycle of Conventional Manufacturing corresponds to 7.32 tons of CO2, while, the emission of the Additive Manufacturing is 7.02 tons of CO2. The results analysis can be used for decision-making, and it can help for facing future comparative works to explore cleaner manufacturing technologies. •Process Modelling of Additive and Conventional Aerospace Manufacturing.•Data mining and simulation of manufacturing operations with a LCA tool.•Analysis of manufacturing process plan with Selective Laser Melting.•Sustainability Analysis of Investment Casting compared to Selective Laser Melting.