Abstract
Abstract While metal additive manufacturing (AM) promises substantial efficiency gains to the gas turbine manufacturing sector, uncertainty about the quality of parts produced via AM has been a significant hindrance to widespread implementation. Although high fidelity inspection techniques involving computed tomography (CT) and destructive testing have been effective for low volume development activities, new quality assurance solutions are needed that enable rapid, low-cost inspection of serial production AM components. Solar Turbines Incorporated is actively engaged in the development of inspection processes for high production volume AM part acceptance capability of combustion and turbine hot section components. Eddy current inspection (ECI) was identified as a potential non-destructive evaluation (NDE) solution. Based on the principles of electromagnetism, ECI has been successful on conventional materials for surface and near-surface crack detection. However, limited industry data is available regarding the effectiveness of ECI on AM material. The nature of AM-induced discontinuities, specifically for metal laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) processing, demands high measurement resolution to detect fine features such as bulk porosity, lack of fusion and interlayer discontinuities. Development activities were thus executed to determine the suitability of ECI for detection of AM discontinuities. NDE training sets were printed with intentional variations in key L-PBF processing parameters to simulate the conditions which produce relevant AM material discontinuities. The training sets were then evaluated with a custom ECI system to determine the inspection capability and sensitivity. Inspections were conducted as a function of multiple input frequencies to determine the optimal tradeoff between measurement resolution and depth of penetration. Additional characterization of the training sets was conducted via metallographic analysis to establish correlations between the ECI results and AM material quality. An optimized multi-frequency inspection setting was identified to provide suitable measurement resolution for near surface AM material inspection. Correlations developed between ECI scan data and materials characterization results have enabled the ability to rapidly discriminate between varying discontinuity levels in AM components. Based on these efforts, ECI is considered a suitable inspection technique for materials produced via the L-PBF AM process.
Published Version
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