WE Colloquium: Amrita Basak, Direct Digital Printing of Metallic Single Crystals

Abstract

Nickel-based superalloys have a broad application in the manufacture of single crystal turbine blades that are often considered as the limiting components of gas turbine engines due to the harsh operating conditions. Traditionally, these components are manufactured using exotic investment casting. However, a realization of complex designs is not feasible with the conventional manufacturing methods. The goal of this presentation is to summarize the progress made so far and highlight the challenges on additive manufacturing (AM) of such components. The first part of this talk focuses on Dr. Basak’s prior work on repairing metallic single crystals using laser powder bed fusion AM processes. The second part of the talk focuses on the development of an in-situ technique to characterize the evolution of fatigue failure in high value metallic components with an eye towards developing structural health monitoring methods. The talk will be concluded by reviewing the current research trends towards addressing the challenges related to AM of single crystal metallic components.

Bio

Dr. Amrita Basak started her academic career at Penn State in the Spring of 2019. Her research group covers a broad variety of interdisciplinary topics under the overall framework of Additive Manufacturing through a synergistic combination of computational modeling, manufacturing and materials processing technologies, materials science, and machine learning. Dr. Basak obtained her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2017 where she focused on developing an open-architecture powder-bed additive manufacturing (AM) process for repairing non-weldable nickel-based superalloys and successfully demonstrated repair of equiaxed, directionally solidified, and single crystal hot-section components through a combination of computational modeling, experimental optimization, and advanced materials characterization. She received her M.S. in Aerospace Engineering (2015) from Georgia Tech and an M. Tech. degree in Chemical Engineering (2005) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. She spent about 6.5 years as a Lead Engineer working for General Electric, Bangalore, India and 1 year as a Process Engineer working for Intel Corporation, Portland, Oregon.