Additive Manufacturing in aeronautics: an overview and a case-study

Additive Manufacturing is receiving growing interest in the aeronautics thanks to massive improvements in terms of equipment and materials and increasing availability of specific standards. Among the processes, technologies for metals have been suggested for functional parts, whereas those for non-metal are generally preferred for non-critical component. Therefore, the paper focuses on the processes of laser-based powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition, the latter having been already considered for many applications in the field of interest. Nevertheless, some issues must be addressed and are presented, referring to a case-study of cladding over an aluminium plate, with preliminary numerical simulation and eventual treating by means of laser surface modification to reduce the final roughness.