Aircraft repair technologies

A long-time DMTC collaboration involving industry partner RUAG Australia and research partners DST, Swinburne University and RMIT has, since 2009, focused on advancing the use of additive manufacturing in the sustainment and restoration of parts that are used, worn or damaged.

ruag

Dr Cameron Barr of RMIT, Dr Caixian Tang, Senior Engineer in Additive Technologies at RUAG Australia and Dr Rizwan Rashid of Swinburne, examine the thread repair on a secondary piston component used in military aircraft.

DMTC’s work with its partners has successfully demonstrated that the Laser Additive Deposition (LAD) process can restore components made from AerMet100, 300M, and 15-5PH ultra-high strength steels. The measure of effectiveness was the fatigue life of the restored components. This work is ongoing and will now assess dynamic performance measures including fatigue and damage tolerance of titanium and nickel alloys in order to support the certification and acceptance of LAD repair to a
wider array of materials and defence components.

For the industrial base, technological advances in these areas can introduce new skills and deliver significant productivity gains. For the Defence customer these advances can reduce the demand for replacement parts that are typically expensive, difficult to source and present a key risk to effective maintenance scheduling.