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Emergy-based environmental impact evaluation and modeling of selective laser melting

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Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, such as direct laser and selective laser melting (SLM) manufacturing, allow the fabrication of functional products with high added value. This paper proposes an emergy-based method for evaluating the environmental impact and economic cost of the SLM manufacturing process while considering the environmental flows (materials, energy, and wastes) and economic factors (time, costs, and quality). By analyzing the emergy flows in an SLM system, sustainable evaluation indexes are developed to estimate its sustainability level. Then, the method is applied to analyze the environmental impact and economic cost of the SLM of a part. The results show that the cost of the process for a single part is high, the net emergy yield ratio of the SLM system is low, and its environmental load rate is very high. The sustainability indexes of the system indicated a high environmental impact and low production efficiency. However, the waste emergy output ratio of the system was very low, which reflected the near-net-shape characteristics of SLM, indicating a high sustainability potential. The results of this study are expected to contribute to increased sustainability and optimization of SLM.

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Availability of data and material

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51775162, 52005146), Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (2008085QE265, 2008085QE232, 2008085ME150), Suzhou Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Innovation of Mechanical Equipment (SZ2017ZX07), Anhui Major Science and Technology Project (18030901023), and key projects of natural science research in colleges and universities of Anhui province China (KJ2019A0673).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Suzhou University, Suzhou, 234000, People’s Republic of China

    Qingyang Wang, Mengdi Gao, Zhilin Ma & Conghu Liu

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Li

Authors
  1. Qingyang Wang
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  2. Mengdi Gao
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  3. Lei Li
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  4. Zhilin Ma
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  5. Conghu Liu
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Contributions

Qingyang Wang wrote the manuscript; Mengdi Gao contributed to the conception of the study, and revised the manuscript; Lei Li contributed significantly to analysis and manuscript preparation; Zhilin Ma performed the experiments; Conghu Liu helped perform the analysis of data.

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Correspondence to Mengdi Gao.

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Wang, Q., Gao, M., Li, L. et al. Emergy-based environmental impact evaluation and modeling of selective laser melting. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 115, 1155–1169 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-07290-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-07290-1

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