Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2018

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Industrial Engineering

Degree Program

Industrial Engineering, PhD

Committee Chair

Yang, Li

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Chou, Kevin

Committee Member

Chou, Kevin

Committee Member

DePuy, Gail

Committee Member

Amos, Delaina

Author's Keywords

additive manufacturing; binder jetting; material characterization; binder-powder interaction

Abstract

Binder jetting additive manufacturing (BJ-AM) technology is a process by which a part is fabricated layer by layer through depositing liquid binder in the designated regions of each layer until the feature is complete. Due to the use of binder in geometry generation, this process possesses various advantages over the other additive manufacturing technologies including the ability to create colored objects via colored binders, lower cost, lack of heat-induced defects, and its potential capability to print a variety of materials such as metals, sands and ceramics. Although the application of the binder jetting process has been recently reported by different researchers in areas such as dentistry, biomedicine, aerospace, foundry, and automobile, the adoption of this technology in the manufacturing industry has been slower compared to other AM processes. This could be largely attributed to the uncertainties involved in the feature fabrication process (e.g. lack of qualitative/quantitative relationships between process set up characteristics and the quality of printed features) which mainly arises from the lack of adequate insight into the fundamentals of this technology. As a consequence, the fabrication of components, particularly if printing of new materials is intended, and development of binder jetting is currently based upon trial and error approach. Therefore, this research project aims to take a closer look at this technology to establish comprehensive understanding of the process characteristics by thoroughly investigating the feature fabrication in Binder Jetting process. For this purpose, the feature fabrication process in BJ-AM technology is closely monitored, and the effect of different parameters on part quality are investigated. New physics-based models are developed for describing the process characteristics at different stages. In order to predict the optimal binder saturation level, a new model is developed to describe the binder-powder bed interaction in the equilibrium state. For modeling the binder-powder bed interaction in the dynamic state, the effect of the different parameters (e.g. droplet impact velocity, the mean particle size and particle size distribution) on the feature formation process are experimentally explored. Finally, a model describing the binder-powder bed interaction in the dynamic state is developed to predict the profile of the powder saturated area by a single binder droplet.

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