Guest seminar by Theresa Buchenau: Description of surface quality for metal additive manufacturing by means of optical methods

Theresa Buchenau

Description of surface quality for metal additive manufacturing by means of optical methods

Guest speaker: Theresa Buchenau

Abstract: Recent developments in metal additive manufacturing offer new possibilities for various applications by enabling lightweight, biomimetic designs. When qualifying additively manufactured metal parts, especially for aerospace applications, the surface quality poses a challenge. Characteristic for metal additive manufacturing surfaces are irregular powder particle agglomerations, sub- surface voids and undercuts. The special nature of those surfaces cannot be described by means of commonly used surface parameters like arithmetic mean height (Ra / Sa) and maximum profile height (Rz / Sz, ISO 4287 and ISO 25178).

First results obtained from optical surface scanning methods show that even within the aforementioned standards there are parameters available better fit for the surface description of the examined metal AM samples. These results as well as an impression of the current activities and future possibilities to achieve the aim of a holistic description of metal AM surfaces and their characteristic features will be presented during this talk.

Biography: Theresa Buchenau is a PhD candidate at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM in Bremen, Germany, in the department of Adhesion and Interface Research. Previously, she studied Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology (BSc, completed in 2015) and Bremen University (MSc, completed in 2018). Currently, she is working on surface and bulk material quality description for metal additive manufacturing.