L-247 Additive manufacturing for energetic materials

Additive Manufacturing (AM) started to develop in the early 80’s and has been keeping on evolving ever since. Many different processes were invented simultaneously. It is only in 2015 that AM processes were classified in order to sort them into seven families: Binder Jetting, Material Jetting, Material Extrusion, Powder Bed Fusion, Directed Energy Deposition, Vat Photopolymerization and Sheet Lamination. Only some processes were adapted for the manufacture of energetic materials. This paper first presents an overview of the different AM processes and gathers information about experiments conducted with energetic materials.

Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA) and Digital Light Projection (DLP) are believed to be the most promising technologies in this domain. This report will also focus on the optimization of the properties of a material through the avoidance of defects: voids, cracks, porosity, inter-layer defects and surface finish. To do this, optimization parameters will be reviewed: processing parameters and material parameters. Experimental methods such as Taguchi method, Fuzzy Logic (FL), Response Surface Methodology (RSM), Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) will be mentioned and explained. The second part of this report is an overview of parameters and methods that have to be taken into account when designing a process to guarantee satisfactory performance and properties for EM.