© The Author(s) 2025.The reuse of powder in laser powder bed fusion offers a promising approach to optimizing material usage, reducing costs, and improving sustainability. However, its application in the aeronautical sector presents significant challenges due to strict certification requirements, process reliability concerns, and the need to maintain mechanical integrity over multiple reuse cycles. This study conducts a comprehensive and global analysis of powder reuse, considering its mechanical, economic, and environmental impacts. The methodology includes powder characterization, mechanical testing, cost modelling, and environmental life-cycle assessment, providing a holistic understanding of powder degradation and its implications. Results confirm that successive reuse cycles lead to minor changes in powder morphology and an increase in oxygen content, yet mechanical properties remain within acceptable limits, with a slight improvement in tensile strength. Economically, powder reuse significantly reduces costs, with a 33% decrease observed after a single reuse cycle and further reductions in subsequent cycles. Environmentally, the life-cycle assessment highlights substantial benefits, including a dramatic reduction in material waste, energy consumption, and carbon footprint, reinforcing the sustainability advantages of controlled powder reuse. These findings validate the feasibility of powder reuse in industrial-scale additive manufacturing. The study highlights the importance of implementing standardized reuse protocols to ensure consistency in mechanical properties, minimize variations in powder characteristics, and maintain process stability over multiple reuse cycles. Additionally, it underscores the need for further research into long-term powder recycling strategies, including controlled rejuvenation methods, advanced monitoring techniques, and predictive models for powder degradation. By optimizing reuse practices, industries can maximize cost savings, enhance material sustainability, and significantly reduce the environmental impact of additive manufacturing processes, reinforcing the viability of AM as a competitive and responsible manufacturing approach.

© The Author(s) 2025.Additive manufacturing is nowadays an alternative to traditional manufacturing in the aeronautical sector due to its potential for weight reduction. This research work was developed with data and case studies from an aircraft manufacturer and presents a holistic evaluation of the potential of additive manufacturing regarding, not only technical performance but also cost reduction and environmental sustainability including the use phase of an aircraft. The findings demonstrate that AM can significantly lower life-cycle costs for components with high criticality, achieving up to a 39% reduction compared to traditional manufacturing, even for parts with simple design requirements. This analysis underscores the importance of incorporating post-processing considerations, which account for 13% of the life cycle cost, into both economic and environmental models to ensure informed decision-making. Finally, this study also highlights the importance of optimizing printing strategies as different orientations can influence manufacturing costs.

© 2025 Emerald Publishing LimitedPurpose – This paper aims to assess the feasibility of using additive manufacturing (AM) to produce a gas-turbine’s fuel swirler, thereby validating its suitability for this fabrication process. This study involves a statistical comparison of the AM process with other manufacturing methods, utilizing a multi-criteria decision-making approach to determine the most favorable method for the component. This study also includes the manufacturing of the component and an evolution of the quality control results to ascertain the component’s compliance with required standards. Design/methodology/approach – To compare the different fabrication methods, this paper uses the analytic hierarchy process to compare AM with alternative manufacturing processes, generating different scenarios for comparison. In addition, two samples of the component were additively manufactured to assess their suitability for application in a small gas turbine. Findings – The results indicate that AM was identified as eligible and adequate process for producing the fuel swirler in most scenarios. This study includes the results of a nondestructive quality control process and provides a comprehensive discussion aiming to optimize the component’s quality. These results support the potential for scaling up the production of this component and identifying other components that may benefit from AM. Originality/value – This research contributes to the advancement of technical knowledge regarding the application of an innovative manufacturing method for jet engine components. It aims to enhance manufacturing capabilities for different thermal machine parts while reducing design costs.

©2024 Luiz Vitor Tozi, João Vidal, Jesuino Takachi Tomita, Anderson Vicente Borille, Cleverson Bringuenti, Alexandre Roma, Henrique Rodrigues Oliveira.The industry and the academy are continuously developing new technologies and approaches regarding the gas turbine manufacturing. Logically, sectors of turbomachinery and aerospace engineering are deeply focused on applying newer and even unconventional manufacturing process, aiming on cost reduction, reduced lead times and efficiency. In addition, it is conspicuous that metal additive manufacturing (AM) technologies can provide interesting possibilities for companies seeking to innovate and perfect existing components, with respect to reach better buy-to-fly ratios. In this paper, the authors developed a proposal for additively manufacturing a fuel swirler and evaluated in detail its process of fabrication in order to compare the results with the characteristic of a conventionally manufactured swirler. Furthermore, a dedicated review of the state-of-the-art related to the AM of fuel swirlers were realized to evaluate the relevance of this topic to conclude if the use of AM to fabricate this component can favor the aerospace industry.

© 2023 The Authors.Market movement towards sustainability and electromobility impose new demands on the gear Industry in terms of materials, design and manufacturing. In this context, laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) has been under the spotlight for being one of the most promising technologies in additive manufacturing (AM), allowing the designer to think beyond traditional constraints. On the other hand, anisotropic properties, distortions, and heterogeneous residual stress may lead to excessive stress states during finishing processes. For carburizing materials, such as 20MnCr5, the mechanisms leading to residual stress and distortions go beyond the temperature gradient mechanism (TGM) and incorporate significant microstructural changes due to phase transformation. The combination of these phenomena with the gear manufacturing chain places a significant challenge to the gear industry. Therefore, this study investigates the potential and challenges of manufacturing 20MnCr5 gears through L-PBF with focus on the surface integrity evolution along the manufacturing chain. The study addresses the processability of the material and investigates the surface integrity of the gears through the manufacturing chain. The composition of thermal and microstructural phenomena simultaneously occurring during print generates heterogeneous residual stress along the gear orientation. Contrary to the literature, the stress relief did not equalize the residual stress entirely. Therefore, the heterogeneous residual stress distribution observed in the as-built condition propagated through the entire chain. Even after three manufacturing operations, the pattern of residual stress after printing directly influenced the final residual stress state.

© 2021, Korean Society for Precision Engineering.Powder metallurgy represents an alternative to increase sustainability in the manufacturing of automotive gears, but its potential is hindered by a certain lack of knowledge on surface integrity properties that can impair the gear performance. This study explores the effects of the microstructural differences induced by this chain on the residual stress heterogeneity state of gears. X-ray diffraction methods of macro residual stress mapping and line profile analysis were applied for measurements of gear teeth after subsequent steps of the powder metallurgy and the conventional wrought steel chains. The powder metallurgy chain induced more pronounced heterogeneities than the conventional manufacturing, characterized by non-uniform residual stress distributions along the lead and the involute profiles of gear flanks. These non-uniformities observed after carburizing were traced back to the previous steps, surface densification, sintering and compaction. The residual stress distribution patterns of these steps were compatible with the plasticity dynamics of each manufacturing process. Such surface integrity heterogeneities result in a residual stress gradient along the gears functional surface, exposing particular regions to be more susceptible to fatigue effects.

© 2022 The Authors.The evolution of residual stress (RS) induced by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) along post-processing steps of automotive carburizing steels is a topic still underexplored by the scientific community. In this study, L-PBF specimens of 20MnCr5 steel produced with different build orientations were subjected to the same stress relief, milling and carburizing steps. RS and the diffractogram full width of half maximum (FWHM) depth profiles obtained through X-ray diffraction were compared along the manufacturing chains. It was shown that the previous manufacturing steps influence the final RS state, from L-PBF to carburizing.

© 2021 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.Early product development phases are decisive to determine the environmental impacts of an aircraft during its life cycle. In order to reduce overall environmental impacts, the designers and engineers must be able to assess the consequences of their design choices. In this research, an aircraft eco-design tool was developed to support the decision-making process during the aircraft conceptual design phase. The tool uses a streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to calculate cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of the aircraft's life cycle using its design parameters and the ecoinvent database as inputs. The tool performs Uncertainty Analysis via Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS), giving the practitioner insight on the distribution and uncertainty of the results. Input parameters are fitted to Beta-PERT distributions and randomly sampled for each iteration of the MCS. The tool was used to analyze different concepts for a freighter aircraft and a "what-if" scenario, the manufacturing of a composite airframe. The results are coherent with other LCA studies, showing predominance of the operation life cycle stage in all midpoint and endpoint indicators. Furthermore, visualizing the results as distributions rather than single values is of key importance in the decision-making process. The tool is demonstrated to be a versatile eco-design asset for evaluation and comparison of aircraft environmental impacts during the conceptual design phase and may contribute to designing aircraft with minimal environmental impacts.

© 2020, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.This research had the objective of investigating the viability of using niobium carbide–Nickel binder-cemented carbides as an alternative material for cutting tools. The high hardness and high wear resistance associated with niobium carbide (NbC) fulfills one of the main requirements for cutting tool material. In order to achieve this objective, insert tools with square shapes were manufactured using samples at 5 different grades. The samples were developed with different ratios of NbC carbide/Ni binder, compaction parameters, and sintering conditions. The samples were qualified in terms of micro-hardness and physical properties. The inserts were also qualified in terms of their macro-geometry, surface finish, and cutting edge micro-geometry. Machining experiments were performed under different cutting parameters on tempered ANSI 4340 steel workpieces. Flank wear progression was the control parameter, and wear analyses were made using a CCD camera and SEM/EDS. The main wear mechanisms observed were abrasion, followed by adhesion, while no traces of tribooxidation and diffusion were observed. The results led to the conclusion that the ratio of NbC carbide/Ni binder had the greatest influence on wear, but the leading parameter is the sintering conditions.

© 2017 Elsevier LtdNiobium carbide (NbC) exhibits important properties which make it an alternative for cutting tool material. Nowadays, the cutting tool market is dominated by the tungsten carbide, which is used in cemented carbide grades of tool materials. However, the research of a novel substrate material for cutting tool application requires mainly two aspects of study. The assessment of the cutting tool characteristics which influence the machining performance, and the machining experiments themselves. Thus, the features evaluating of the cutting tool made of niobium carbide, which indicate its potential application as the main hard phase in cutting tool substrates, were performed. Cutting tools analyses were carried out in parallel with machining experiments. Tool life experiments were carried out in external cylindrical turning conditions, in order to evaluate tool lifetimes and tool wear evolution of the cutting tools in study.