Future Sustainable Car Materials

The development and testing of innovative and high-quality recycled materials in the automotive industry is a crucial step for sustainable production and significant reduction of the CO2 footprint of automobiles as well as for other industrial sectors.
In the joint project Future Sustainable Car Materials, processes and opportunities will be investigated to further advance material and process development in order to reduce C02 emissions and achieving climate targets.
By developing new and sustainable production processes and materials, the proportion of recycled and secondary raw materials can be further increased while maintaining high quality and enabling new possibilities for the design of components.
With DED (Direct Energy Deposition) processes in additive manufacturing, components can be produced from wire or powder materials while new possibilities for the development and design of components arise depending on powder composition and mixture. One of the main challenges so far has been the precise and reproducible powder supply and conveying. In particular, the provision of the exact amount of powder and the assurance of reproducible conveying rates are current challenges.

The aim of the sub-project UAP 2.1 direct recycling of scrap material with new technologies at the Chair of Materials Handling, Material Flow and Logistics fml in the overall project Future Sustainable Car Materials (FSCM) is to increase the recyclate quota for metallic materials. In this context, the recyclability of aluminum scrap for the process chain additive manufacturing is to be researched.
Specifically, a novel powder supply system for DED processes is to be developed and researched in collaboration with the Chair for Additive Manufacturing Processes MAT. In this context, powdered additive materials are also to be used to enable the production of graded components with variable and nozzle-mixed alloy constituents based on real-time control.
Furthermore, delays in the material feed are to be eliminated by selecting and combining more suitable conveying processes and shortened controlled systems as well as model-based prediction processes. A push-pull module in the powder nozzle is also to be investigated and implemented based on processes from wire feeding technology.

In a first step, the recyclability of aluminum scrap in a additive manufacturing process chain will be investigated in a study. Subsequently, various conveying processes will be selected and evaluated. After the development and implementation of a prototype of a suitable powder conveying system, the concept will be tested and validated experimentally.

• Study on the recyclability of aluminum scrap in the additive manufacturing process chain
• Evaluation and selection of conveying methods
• Development of the conveying system and the push-pull module
• Implementation of a prototype for the powder conveying section of the plasma powder process.
• Experimental investigation and validation
• Documentation, transfer of results and findings and conclusion