The School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI (a partnership between Indiana and Purdue universities, USA) has announced that Praxair Surface Technologies has awarded one of six TruForm AMbition grants to a project led by Dr Jing Zhang, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mechanical and Energy Engineering. The aim of the in-kind grant is to support the growth of Additive Manufacturing in the academic community, targeting North American universities involved with metal Additive Manufacturing.

Praxair Surface Technologies is a supplier of metal powders for AM, offering a full line of cobalt, copper, iron, nickel and titanium-based alloys to the industry. “This AMbition grant helps support collaboration within the industry, which is important as we push to accelerate metal AM adoption,” stated Andy Shives, Praxair Surface Technologies’s Additive Manufacturing Business Manager.

Zhang will collaborate with Praxair Surface Technologies, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Changwon National University in South Korea to develop Additive Manufacturing of Alloy 718, which is used to fabricate military vehicle engine components.

“Through this grant and a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with ARL, IUPUI will work closely with the team to develop a new methodology to optimize the metal AM process via combined ICME (integrated computational materials engineering) and targeted experimental validation,” Zhang explained. “The goal is to maximize the performance of AM alloys used for U.S. Department of Defense applications, in both normal operating and high strain-rate and ballistic conditions.”

Dr Brandon McWilliams, the team lead for laser based Additive Manufacturing at ARL, added, “The Army will benefit from this collaborative research project with academia and industry to accelerate metal Additive Manufacturing science transitions into technologies that enhance the capabilities of the next generation combat vehicle and increase soldier lethality.”

Grant recipients will receive Praxair Surface Technologies’s TruForm metal powder, along with engineering support for AM projects. TruForm is a gas atomised metal powder made specifically for Additive Manufacturing. The six universities’ winning projects involve various technologies, including laser powder bed, directed energy deposition and binder jetting for AM. Praxair Surface Technologies will partner with IUPUI on the analysis of microstructure effects, and to improve process parameters and part properties using a wide portfolio of metal alloys.

School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI

www.praxairsurfacetechnologies.com