Digital Design Data Research Articles

Assessing the pros and cons of wire-arc additive manufacturing for material production

A promising new method for mass-producing metal components and structures for a range of industries, including shipbuilding, automotive, aviation, and other technical sectors, is wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM). Additive manufacturing (AM) called 3D printing, it is a disruptive manufacturing technique that starts with digital design data and manufactures products layer by layer. WAAM has been utilized to create parts from a variety of materials, such as alloy wires based on aluminium (Al), titanium (Ti) and nickel. This review article focuses on the most important facets of the WAAM process, including the technology utilized, the drawbacks encountered, the steps taken during and after the process, the tools used to monitor the process, the gases involved, and the materials. The comparison of WAAM with other additive manufacturing technologies is also emphasized in the article. Moreover, it compares and analyses several WAAM techniques, including plasma arc welding (PAW), gas metal arc welding (GMAW) and gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) in terms of material deposition rate, the method GMAW have higher material deposition rate when compared to other approach. Material manufacturing using WAAM has great potential. The accuracy of the manufacturing and smoothness of WAAM-made parts can be enhanced in the future to better suit tight-tolerance uses.

Informing Operations: evaluating the need to maintain complex process facility digital twins

During the design phase of major capital projects, information content about complex process facilities is created and used to model how the facility will operate once completed. In the Oil and Gas (O&G) sector, this digital design data is referenced to plan material orders, stage testing, and track commissioning of the facility components. It can also inform decisions related to construction, installation, and ongoing operational activities of these facilities across multiple locations around the world. Training the workforce to build and maintain this content in the operational context is one of the critical infrastructure challenges of the Industry 4.0 digital transformation. This empirical findings study evaluated a large integrated petrochemical process industry (PcPI) firm as it struggled to understand the need to manage three-dimensional (3D) design models as digital twins after custody of facilities transitioned from project to operations. Results from an exploratory case study at that firm were compared to a transcript of a project kickoff meeting hosted by process industry standards organization. Consistent themes and recommendations surfaced across both sessions and validated findings. Understanding how firms in this sector perceive the need to manage 3D models as digital twins throughout the facility lifecycle supports the need to determine the informing value of this important category of digital assets.

Wireless Ventilation Measurement in 3D Printed Sand Molds

Additive Manufacturing is enabling the casting of complex geometries directly from digital design data, including 3D-scanned and reverse-engineered structures and even functionally graded lattices. By ink jetting binder into a bed of sand layer-by-layer, dimensionally precise sand molds and cores can be printed to serve as soft tooling for sand casting. However, the related increase in geometry complexity can lead to challenges in ensuring casting quality and yield. One recently explored remedy is to introduce sensors (the Internet of Things) to enable the collection of a diversity of data at difficult-to-access locations in molds in order to measure temperature, pressure, moisture, and core shift. This effort has explored measuring barometric pressure at strategic locations to evaluate the ventilation design of internal cores. Optimized and measurable ventilation can be leveraged to improve the quality of castings by reducing porosity and improving surface finish. By measuring the pressures that accumulate within cores due to binder decomposition, new ventilation designs and strategies—enabled with complex, 3D printed fluidic channels—can be explored. In this work, two castings with different metal temperatures were poured and internal pressures were measured and compared to simulations demonstrating that wireless disposable sensors can be used to measure pressure and that the measured pressure correlated with venting strategies now possible with 3D printed sand cores.

Research on Auxiliary Construction System of Transmission Engineering Based on 3D Digital Achievements

In order to take full advantage of the three-dimensional digital design data and solve the traditional construction schemes’ problems better, characteristics of three-dimensional digital data and the shortcomings of traditional construction management methods in the paper are analyzed. The organization management mode of 3D digital results is studied to construct a full information 3D model library by combing the relationship between models, attributes, documents, drawings, etc. On the basis of this, combined with the construction process of transmission engineering, a three-dimensional auxiliary construction application platform for transmission engineering based on three-dimensional digital design results is established. Through the software platform to manage, process, analyze and mine massive data, on the one hand, the integration, interaction and sharing of multi-source heterogeneous data are realized; on the other hand, the three-dimensional digital technology is applied to the construction process to realize the three-dimensional visualization of the construction process of the transmission engineering, thus providing a new solution for solving the construction problem.

To kit or not to kit: Analysing the value of model-based kitting for additive manufacturing

The use of additive manufacturing (AM) for the production of functional parts is increasing. Thus, AM based practices that can reduce supply chain costs gain in importance. We take a forward-looking approach and study how AM can be used more effectively in the production of multi-part products in low to medium quantities. The impact of introducing kitting in AM on supply chain cost is investigated. Kitting approaches are traditionally devised to feed all components belonging to an assembly into individual containers. Where conventional manufacturing approaches are used for kitting, the produced parts pass through inventory and kit preparation steps before being forwarded to the assembly line/station. However, by taking advantage of the object-oriented information handling inherent in the AM process, kitting information can be embedded directly within the digital design data and parts produced in a common build. This model-based kitting practice reduces − even eliminates − the need for a manual kit preparation step and promises additional supply chain benefits. Eight experiments were conducted using laser sintering (LS) to investigate the impact of model-based component kitting on production cost and supply chain cost. The results show that with current state-of-the-art volume packing software, production costs increase with the adoption of kitting. The increased production cost was off-set to different extents by kitting supply chain benefits, including simplified production planning, reduced work-in-progress inventory and elimination of parts fetching prior to assembly. Findings of this research are of interest for manufacturers, service bureaus and practitioners who use AM for low quantity production, as well as developers of AM volume packing and production planning software.

Enhancing digital design data availability in the aerospace industry

This paper presents the development of a roadmap to enhance the current utilisation of digital design data within the aerospace engineering discipline. The quality and timeliness of product design and development decisions depend on the data availability. Therefore, there is a need for enhancing the digital data availability in order to make better decisions in a shorter time, reducing the product lead-time. This research project, which conducted in collaboration between Airbus in the UK and Cranfield University, has identified opportunities to exploit the access and sharing of digital data, specifically within the Weight Engineers and the stress population through the use of Digital Mock-Up colouring and lightweight visualization.

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT IN BUILDING DESIGN

The problem of managing digital design data including drawings, specifications and other technical data in building design and construction units is a real challenge, especially when there is a need to structure the design information across building design companies. The main difficulty in this information management is the shortage of unified rules (or standards) concerning the ways how the digital design data should be gathered, archived, and preserved in the most efficient way for building design and construction units. The most important issue addressed in this work, is the standardised reference of all design data definitions.

Electronic document management in building design

Abstract The problem of managing digital design data including drawings, specifications and other technical data in building design and construction units is a real challenge, especially when there is a need to structure the design information across building design companies. The main difficulty in this information management is the shortage of unified rules (or standards) concerning the ways how the digital design data should be gathered, archived, and preserved in the most efficient way for building design and construction units. The most important issue addressed in this work, is the standardised reference of all design data definitions.

Spatial Integration in Construction

Work in construction always requires moving within, and interacting with, a complex environment while handling heavy materials and building elements to be joined, inserted, or aligned. Modern design software is able to digitally model all of those elements in their spatially correct configuration, and without interference. When it comes to the actual construction, however, the spatial models do not find any use. Twenty years after the manufacturing industry began using electronic design data to control their machinery, construction is also getting ready to move away from its longstanding tradition of working with paper-based blueprints. The newest steps on the path toward the use of three-dimensional digital design data in support of site operation are stimulated by the global positioning system and the many uses of lasers. Surveying has always performed critical functions on construction sites, such as marking building layouts, anchor bolts, concrete formwork, or bridge bearings. The objective of spatial...