Sougata Roy has received a four-year, $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study the possi­bilities of using additive manu­facturing to create shields and components that could be used in nuclear reactors. “This work in advanced manu­facturing, particularly in using additive manu­facturing, is about making a difference,” said Roy from the Iowa State University. “One of the major things that excites me about this project is working with nuclear energy,” Roy said. “It’s the largest source of clean power in the United States. This emission-free elec­tricity is important for the future.”

The grant will allow Roy to assemble what he calls a DREAM-TEAM project: “Developing a Robust Ecosystem for Additive Manu­facturing of Tungsten for Extreme Applications and Management.” Joining Roy on the project are Yachao Wang, an assistant professor of mechanical engi­neering at the University of North Dakota, and researchers from three of the U.S. Department of Energy’s labs: Ames National Labora­tory on the Iowa State campus, Argonne National Labora­tory in Illinois and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. 

The researchers will work with tungsten, a top material candidate for the inner walls of fusion reactors because it maintains strength at high tempera­tures, has a high melting temperature, resists erosion under high-energy neutron irradia­tion and retains low levels of radioactive tritium. But, Roy said, tungsten is expensive for conventional manu­facturers to work with because it’s hard and brittle. So, they’ll try 3D printing tungsten-based alloys using laser powder-blown directed-energy depo­sition. It involves using a laser under oxygen-controlled conditions to process tungsten powder and, layer by layer, print the metal.

Roy, who has experience 3D printing other steel-based alloys for nuclear energy applications, said the project will allow him to purchase a new instrument to characterize the mechanical properties of the printed samples. Roy said the most unique part of the project isn’t the actual printing, it’s the physics-based modeling and compu­tational simu­lations of the printing process that will complement the experi­mental work. The modeling and simulations, which will include work with machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, will help researchers establish the theories behind their experi­mental results. The simulations will also help them develop recipes for tungsten alloys that can withstand the extreme conditions inside a nuclear reactor. “We’ll start with pure tungsten,” he said. “Eventually we’ll develop new alloys to resolve this cracking challenge.” (Source: Iowa State U.)

Link: CoMPASS – Convergent Manufacturing, Processing and Advanced Surface Science – Lab, Iowa State University, Ames, USA