Life Cycle Assessment of Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Products

Abstract

The industrial progress over these years has led to fast, goodquality production. Despite this progress, the impacts related to such type of production, whether these are social, economic, or environmental, have not been, at times, studied extensively. The industry realized the importance of a greener approach and as a result, new sustainable technologies, such as additive manufacturing (AM), have emerged. To generalize the environmental benefits of AM over traditional manufacturing, methodologies like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are used. The proposed work has the intent of understanding and quantifying the environmental impacts associated with a particular AM technique for the fabrication of metal parts, Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM). An LCA is conducted and, considering the same circumstances, the environmental impacts related to the production of 3 different metal parts are analysed. In order to understand the results obtained, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling, which is also used for the fabrication of metal parts, is equally considered. In this particular application, when compared to CNC Milling, WAAM proves to have a 12%-47% in the environmental impact, depending upon the geometry considered. The environmental hotspot identified for both processes is the production of the raw material.