The constantly increasing demands for components in terms of mechanical properties, functionality and minimum production costs pose huge challenges for the science community. Novel processes such as Plasma-Metal-Deposition (PMD®) technology enable the additive production of complex parts in a very short time. However, this requires extensive experimental development of a process parameter set for each material. To reduce this experimental effort, finite-element (FE) simulations with coupled microstructure modelling can be used.

However, the research time for determining a parameter set for a microstructure model for one material is usually three years. In this project, research is therefore being conducted on a new laser-ultrasound system for a Gleeble testing machine, in which the measuring frequency is significantly increased and new evaluation algorithms are implemented.

The synchronized data of the laser-ultrasound system and the Gleeble will be calibrated with reference investigations from light- and scanning-electron-microscopy and evaluated in a semi-automatic sequence to be developed. The necessary scripts are to be programmed in such a way, that the sequence of data analysis via the derivation of the parameter sets necessary for the microstructure simulation up to the implementation in the FE-code becomes possible in a minimum of time. The significant reduction in the development time of new parameter sets should then also enable industries with less research affinity to carry out simulation-supported process optimisation with microstructure modelling.

• Research Center for Non-Destructive Testing GmbH (RECENDT)
• Lehrstuhl für Umformtechnik, Montanuniversität Leoben (Konsortialführer)
• RHP-Technology GmbH
• S&I Technologies GmbH & Co KG