Objective
Highest precision in the manufacturing process in preferably simple process chains with a low number of process steps – that’s one of the main demands made by manufacturing companies that seek to maintain and expand stable and sustainable production in high-wage countries such as Germany at competitive costs.
The task of the SFB 1120 is to systematize the individual questions and influencing factors with regard to melt formation, melt flow, energy transport and solidification and to provide a description that is as superordinate as possible. This description is oriented towards answering essential questions on energy coupling, melt flow, phase and microstructure transformation, volume contraction, diffusion and precipitation as a function of the temperature gradient:
- How can the precision of the prediction of the melting and solidification processes on the one hand and the interaction with external effects on the other hand be increased by simulating the involved physical individual processes or the overall process?
- How and to what extent can the interactions of the physical and material individual processes (temporally and spatially dynamic) among each other and related to the overall component be used coherently to increase precision or to compensate for defect errors/accuracy deviations?
- How can these possibilities for controlling the melt and for setting a desired component precision be implemented in production-relevant technology (approaches)?
Among other things, this means:
- Individual physical process: dynamic energy coupling, energy absorption, melt pool flow, interfacial or surface tension effects, temperature fields and gradients, evaporation, layer build-up.
- Individual material process: shrinkage, precipitation, microstructure formation, phase transformation, residual stresses, reptation, chemical gradient formation, diffusion
- Precision increase: reduction of distortion, defect frequency, surface roughness, component geometry; increase of mechanical-technological properties; improvement of thermal and electrical properties as well as prediction accuracy.
The main result of the collaborative research center is multi-scale control of melt-based manufacturing processes from melt formation through melt flow properties and melt solidification as a prerequisite for an increased precision in the production of melt-engineered components.