Additive Manufacturing in Powertrain Development – From Prototyping to Dedicated Production Design 2024-01-2578
Upcoming, increasingly stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) as well as emission limits demand for powertrain electrification throughout all vehicle applications. Increasing complexity of electrified powertrain architectures require an overall system approach combining modular component technology with integration and industrialization requirements when heading for further significant efficiency optimization.
At the same time focus on reduced development time, product cost and minimized additional investment demand reuse of current production, machining, and assembly facilities as far as possible.
Up to date additive manufacturing (AM) is an established prototype component, as well as tooling technology in the powertrain development process, accelerating procurement time and cost, as well as allowing to validate a significantly increased number of variants.
The production applications of optimized, dedicated AM-based component design however are still limited. There are several dependencies in the decision which components are suitable and whether it is economically beneficial to implement an AM solution. The traditional economy-of-scale model is not relevant, so the selection of components is preferably on applications with low annual volumes, or high number of different variants with volatile volume distribution, where traditional manufacturing methods are barely cost effective and AM specific processes allow considerable functional benefits such as component optimization, weight and size reduction, function integration.
Future cost competitive AM applications will include complex components in combination with high grade materials, such as high temperature and hydrogen resistant steel and nickel alloys, for low and medium volume production.
New multi-material AM processes, combining multi-metal manufacturing, as well as specific material properties, are subject of research programs and will support the mobility change by extending the applications to E-Motors, Fuel Cell systems and battery components.
Focus of the paper is on the application of metal-AM for prototype and small series of appropriate powertrain components on internal combustion engines, as well as electric and fuel cell applications. The motivation for the conversion from conventional to additive manufacturing is explained application specific in regard of functional optimization with AM-process related production design architecture, as well as economically to achieve higher profitability.
