Welding, Joining and Additive Manufacturing International Conference 2015

Design and development of advanced materials for medical and high performance applications ranging from automotive to aerospace and bringing these materials into use is one of the most challenging tasks of modern materials engineering. Ceramic materials are natural candidates for these demanding applications. The wide-use of novel materials, however, depends not as much on researchers ability to demonstrate their intrinsic properties, but on the availability of industrial processing routes to fabricate parts with required geometries. Owing to the inability of current technology related methods to produce complex-shaped ceramic parts with the desired microstructures and properties, Additive Manufacturing (AM) is becoming increasingly important approach. The mechanical properties of the materials fabricated by AM techniques in many cases are similar to the corresponding properties for commercially available ceramic-based materials fabricated by other methods. AM technologies can create parts using advanced materials superior to traditional ones. Layer-wise fabrication of the parts by AM techniques, however, can lead to unsatisfactory surface roughness. In order to improve the surface finish different methods have been studied. Dense ceramic/glass, porous ceramics and ceramic/metal composites with complex geometry have been fabricated via different AM processing routes. Microstructure and mechanical properties of the fabricated composites have been investigated