Concept and validation of an active cooling technique to mitigate heat accumulation in WAAM

This work aimed at introducing and exploring the potential of a thermal management technique, named as near-immersion active cooling (NIAC), to mitigate heat accumulation in Wire + Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM). According to this technique concept, the preform is deposited inside a work tank that is filled with water, whose level rises while the metal layers are deposited. For validation of the NIAC technique, Al5Mg single-pass multi-layer linear walls were deposited by the CMT (R) process under different thermal management approaches. During depositions, the temperature history of the preforms was measured. Porosity was assessed as a means of analyzing the potential negative effect of the water cooling in the NIAC technique. The preform geometry and mechanical properties were also assessed. The results showed that the NIAC technique was efficient to mitigate heat accumulation in WAAM of aluminum. The temperature of the preforms was kept low independently of its height. There was no measurable increase in porosity with the water cooling. In addition, the wall width was virtually constant, and the anisotropy of mechanical properties tends to be reduced, characterizing a preform quality improvement. Thus, the NIAC technique offers an efficient and low-cost thermal management approach to mitigate heat accumulation in WAAM and, consequently, also to cope with the deleterious issues related to such emerging alternative of additive manufacturing.