Sustainability Assessment of Direct Energy Deposition (DED) based Hybrid Manufacturing using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Method

Abstract

As sustainability has emerged as a highlight for almost every field over the last few decades, the manufacturing field is no exception. Generally, additive manufacturing performs better than traditional manufacturing in terms of sustainability because of its lean energy- and material usage. Previous studies have compared the sustainability performance between traditional and additive manufacturing, but hybrid manufacturing was not focused upon much. In this paper, the life cycle assessment method is used to analyze and compare the energy consumption and environmental impact of direct energy deposition (DED) based hybrid manufacturing and traditional manufacturing “CNC milling” process for a turbine blade. Six environmental impacts are assessed in this study: global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), and abiotic depletion potential (ADP) on the venture to point out the significant issues in the two manufacturing options that impact the environment. Besides, the impact of geometric complexity on the environmental performance for the two processes is also investigated. At lower geometric complexity, the environmental impact of DED and CNC are almost the same. But with the increment of geometrical complexity, DED performs better than CNC in terms of environmental impact.