The First European Conference on Structural Integrity of Additive Manufactured Materials (ESIAM19) was held at Trondheim, Norway, September 9–11, 2019. Two symposia entitled Metal Additive Manufacturing and Engineering Structural Integrity were organised jointly by FESI and Professor Bo Chen from University of Leicester (also a visiting professor at Coventry University) and they were embedded in ESIAM19 on the first two days.
In total, 17 oral presentations were delivered in these two half-day symposia that covered various additive manufacturing (AM) topics ranging from AM powders, processing and microstructure, to fatigue crack initiation, growth, and lifetime assessment. The first symposium was mainly focused on AM titanium and its alloys, whereas the second symposium addressed the challenges and opportunities related to AM high-temperature structural materials. The whole ESIAM19 conference was attended by more than 170 participants and the FESI co-organised AM symposia were attended by approximately 30 people.
It has been a really good experience to see the proposals and creativity of the community and the people who have come forward and really want to get involved in supporting us to organise these two symposia. A special thank-you is given to the chairman of ESIAM19 conference, Professor Filippo Berto from the NTNU, who gave a welcome opening speech of the AM symposium and particularly emphasised that “it is very good to see that the two symposia can be successfully organised in the European’s first AM Structural Integrity Conference”.
The four keynote presentations covered:
(i) Electron beam melted additive manufacturing of Ti and Ni-based alloys: challenges and opportunities, delivered by Professor Bo Chen (University of Leicester)
(ii) The structural integrity of additive manufactured Ti6Al4V: materials, process and build attributes linked to part life predictions, delivered by Professor Thorsten Becker (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)
(iii) Additive manufacturing process simulations: from microstructure to distortion, delivered by Dr Tyler London (TWI)
(iv) Solidification and densification behaviour of Nb-Si-Ti alloys manufactured by laser additive manufacturing, delivered by Professor Hongbiao Dong (University of Leicester)
Professor Xiang Zhang (Coventry University), the symposium co-chair and a fatigue expert, praised the experience gained from myriad sources of materials knowledge: “this conference highlights the importance in linking the materials, processing, properties, and structural integrity”, he said.
The two AM symposia had co-badges from partner organisations including TWI/NSIRC, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Nuclear-AMRC, and Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
FESI is planning to hold a UK seminar–workshop on additive manufacturing during 2020 aimed at overviewing key messages coming out of the Trondheim conference, followed by four or five key speakers presenting relevant information on the subject from a UK perspective, particularly in relation to the structural integrity challenges.
Bo Chen
Professor of Engineering Materials,
University of Leicester