Session: 20-01: Online NDE techniques for smart manufacturing

Paper Number: 98602

98602 - Towards Inline Material Microstructure Imaging Using Spatially Resolved Acoustic Spectroscopy (Sras) 

Monitoring of material characteristics is the next step need towards the realisation of truly autonomous manufacturing. For additive manufacturing the issue of structural defects has been minimised through intense research into process control and traditional testing regimes, however the ability to measure the microstructure is currently limited to offline and destructive measurement methods. In this paper, we present our work towards integrating the laser ultrasound characterisation technique spatially resolved acoustic spectroscopy (SRAS) in-situ with the manufacturing process. SRAS is an established lab-based tool that is capable of imaging material microstructure, however there are significant challenges in bringing this technique to workshop environments, including operating on rough surfaces, high-speed acquisition and image resolution. We present our work to date on concepts on integration into an additive manufacturing (AM) environment, microstructural images made on as-deposited samples made using a variety of AM techniques, and solutions to instrumentation to operate on rough surfaces.

We will also present our work towards in-process monitoring inside a milling tool. In this scenario, the live imaging of microstructure is not only useful in establishing material suitability, but also to track the degree of tool wear through the measurement of additional white layer deposition on the material surface. Consideration of specimen coating, machined surface roughness, scanning regimes and data acquisition will be reviewed.

Presenting Author: Rikesh Patel University of Nottingham