Principal investigator: Jack Beuth, Levent Burak Kara

University: Carnegie Mellon University

Industry partners: Acoustic Monitoring for Additive Manufacturing Production

Preliminary results have demonstrated that a lot can be learned from a build through proper analysis of its acoustic emissions. For example, it has been demonstrated that at least one powder fusion anomaly will result in different, detectable acoustic emissions than anomaly-free fusion. This project will perform a series of prescribed builds both with and without spreading and fusion errors and monitor acoustic emissions from them. Acoustic data from those builds will then be analyzed using machine learning techniques to identify unique acoustic signatures of spreading and fusion errors. There will be significant interactions between CMU and Bosch, with the Bosch research center located only a couple of miles from CMU. This will allow Bosch to share its expertise in acoustic sensing with CMU and will allow CMU to share its expertise on AM processing with Bosch. This project has significant interest for both CMU and Bosch. CMU is deploying a number of sensing methods in its builds with fundamental and practical results. Bosch’s efforts at deploying AM across its business units could be significantly impacted by the widespread use of acoustic monitoring in AM machines. Acoustic monitoring and other process monitoring methods are critical to the application of AM at production scales, which is a key job-creating opportunity for Pennsylvania over the next decade.