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Abstract There is an urgent need for developing collaborative process-defect modeling in metal-based additive manufacturing (AM). This mainly stems from the high volume of training data needed to develop reliable machine learning models for in-situ anomaly detection. The requirements for large data are especially challenging for small-to-medium manufacturers (SMMs), for whom collecting copious amounts of data is usually cost prohibitive. The objective of this research is to develop a secured data sharing mechanism for directed energy deposition (DED) based AM without disclosing product design information, facilitating secured data aggregation for collaborative modeling. However, one major obstacle is the privacy concerns that arise from data sharing, since AM process data contain confidential design information, such as the printing path. The proposed adaptive design de-identification for additive manufacturing (ADDAM) methodology integrates AM process knowledge into an adaptive de-identification procedure to mask the printing trajectory information in metal-based AM thermal history, which otherwise discloses substantial printing path information. This adaptive approach applies a flexible data privacy level to each thermal image based on its similarity with the other images, facilitating better data utility preservation while protecting data privacy. A real-world case study was used to validate the proposed method based on the fabrication of two cylindrical parts using a DED process. These results are expressed as a Pareto optimal solution, demonstrating significant improvements in privacy gain and minimal utility loss. The proposed method can facilitate privacy improvements of up to 30% with as little as 0% losses in dataset utility after de-identification. 

Abstract The process uncertainty induced quality issue remains the major challenge that hinders the wider adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) technology. The defects occurred significantly compromise structural integrity and mechanical properties of fabricated parts. Therefore, there is an urgent need in fast, yet reliable AM component certification. Most finite element analysis related methods characterize defects based on the thermomechanical relationships, which are computationally inefficient and cannot capture process uncertainty. In addition, there is a growing trend in data-driven approaches on characterizing the empirical relationships between thermal history and anomaly occurrences, which focus on modeling an individual image basis to identify local defects. Despite their effectiveness in local anomaly detection, these methods are quite cumbersome when applied to layer-wise anomaly detection. This paper proposes a novel in situ layer-wise anomaly detection method by analyzing the layer-by-layer morphological dynamics of melt pools and heat affected zones (HAZs). Specifically, the thermal images are first preprocessed based on the g-code to assure unified orientation. Subsequently, the melt pool and HAZ are segmented, and the global and morphological transition metrics are developed to characterize the morphological dynamics. New layer-wise features are extracted, and supervised machine learning methods are applied for layer-wise anomaly detection. The proposed method is validated using the directed energy deposition (DED) process, which demonstrates superior performance comparing with the benchmark methods. The average computational time is significantly shorter than the average build time, enabling in situ layer-wise certification and real-time process control. 

Abstract Laser-based additive manufacturing (LBAM) provides unrivalled design freedom with the ability to manufacture complicated parts for a wide range of engineering applications. Melt pool is one of the most important signatures in LBAM and is indicative of process anomalies and part defects. High-speed thermal images of the melt pool captured during LBAM make it possible for in situ melt pool monitoring and porosity prediction. This paper aims to broaden current knowledge of the underlying relationship between process and porosity in LBAM and provide new possibilities for efficient and accurate porosity prediction. We present a deep learning-based data fusion method to predict porosity in LBAM parts by leveraging the measured melt pool thermal history and two newly created deep learning neural networks. A PyroNet, based on Convolutional Neural Networks, is developed to correlate in-process pyrometry images with layer-wise porosity; an IRNet, based on Long-term Recurrent Convolutional Networks, is developed to correlate sequential thermal images from an infrared camera with layer-wise porosity. Predictions from PyroNet and IRNet are fused at the decision-level to obtain a more accurate prediction of layer-wise porosity. The model fidelity is validated with LBAM Ti–6Al–4V thin-wall structure. This is the first work that manages to fuse pyrometer data and infrared camera data for metal additive manufacturing (AM). The case study results based on benchmark datasets show that our method can achieve high accuracy with relatively high efficiency, demonstrating the applicability of the method for in situ porosity detection in LBAM. 

Abstract Distortion in laser-based additive manufacturing (LBAM) is a critical issue that adversely affects the geometric integrity of additively manufactured parts and generally exhibits a complicated dependence on the underlying material. The differences in properties between distinct materials prevent the immediate application of a distortion model learned for one material to another, which introduces the challenge in LBAM of learning a distortion model for a new material system given past experiments. Current methods for investigating the distortion of different material systems typically involve finite element analysis or a large number of experiments in an empirical study. However, these methods do not learn from previous experiments and can incur significant costs in terms of computation, time, or resources. We propose a Bayesian model transfer methodology that is both physics-based and data-driven to leverage past experiments on previously studied material systems for more efficient distortion modeling of new systems. This method transfers distortion models across distinct materials based on the statistical effect equivalence framework by formulating the differences between two materials as a lurking variable. Our method reduces the experimentation and effort needed for specifying distortion models for new material systems. We validate our methodology in a case study of distortion model transfer from Ti–6Al–4V disks to 316L stainless steel disks. This case study is the first instance of model transfer between material systems and illustrates the ability of the Bayesian model transfer methodology to address the issue of comprehensive distortion modeling across varying material systems in LBAM. 

The goal of this work to mitigate flaws in metal parts produced from laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing (AM) process. As a step towards this goal, the objective of this work is to predict the build quality of a part as it is being printed via deep learning of in-situ layer-wise images obtained from an optical camera instrumented in the LPBF machine. To realize this objective, we designed a set of thin-wall features (fins) from Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) material with varying length-to-thickness ratio. These thin-wall test parts were printed under three different build orientations and in-situ images of their top surface were acquired during the process. The parts were examined offline using X-ray computed tomography (XCT), and their build quality was quantified in terms of statistical features, such as the thickness and consistency of its edges. Subsequently, a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained to predict the XCT-derived statistical quality features using the layer-wise optical images of the thin-wall part as inputs. The statistical correlation between CNN-based predictions and XCT-observed quality measurements exceeds 85%. This work has two outcomes consequential to the sustainability of additive manufacturing: (1) It provides practitioners with a guideline for building thin-wall features with minimal defects, and (2) the high correlation between the offline XCT measurements and in-situ sensor-based quality metrics substantiates the potential for applying deep learning approaches for the real-time prediction of build flaws in LPBF.