Analysis of Potential Materials for Local Production Using Additive Manufacturing. A Case for the Rail Industry

In the rail industry, unavailability of spare parts can have negative implications such as downtime and financial losses. Long lead times can be experienced in the process of replacing a broken spare part. Some of the parts are expensive to produce in-house because of the tooling costs. It can be time consuming to wait for suppliers to replace the part especially if the part is not produced locally. Proper maintenance of vehicles requires spare parts to be available timeously. The use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) to print spare parts on demand is a quicker and flexible approach when compared to conventional manufacturing methods. The aim of this study is to investigate the material application of Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) in the local production of a typical rail part. Taking advantage of the flexibility offered by the WAAM process, three alternative high performance materials. are considered to reduce the weight, improve functional performance and service life of the part. The performance of all the three materials are tested and analysed using the FEM software. The results of this study are useful in providing guidance on the development of a suitable AM based process chain for producing the part. This demonstrates the capability of AM as a suitable approach for enabling local sustainable production of spare parts for the rail industry