A Case Study on Redesign & Printing Large-scale Wind Tunnel Experiment Models via Combined Additive Manufacturing Processes

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While additive manufacturing (AM) offers the ability to produce complex, customized structures, it still faces limitations when it comes to printing large structures with different material sections. For the production of big-sized structures or products, traditional processes still hold the advantage in terms of cost, manufacturing time, and material compatibility. Additionally, identifying suitable parts for AM, particularly for a single AM process, can be challenging, especially those with large sizes and different material compositions. This paper proposes a modular hybrid AM solution that combines different AM processes to address the challenges associated with large-scale structure printing in AM. The study presents a case in which a metallic powder-bed-fusion process and a stereolithography process were used in combination to produce large-scale wind tunnel experimental models. A comparative analysis was conducted between the proposed approach and traditional manufacturing methods. The results demonstrate that, for large-scale cases such as wind tunnel models, a combination of multiple AM processes has the potential to improve performance/quality, reduce costs, and save time when compared to traditional processes. However, it is crucial to emphasize that the success of the hybrid approach depends heavily on the design and process planning.