EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

During the last ten years, additive manufacturing by using power bed fusion technology has become a very reliable technology to produce complex metallic parts. Layer by layer manufacturing allows the integration of a fiber bragg grating inside the parts during the fabrication. The latter opens a lot of possibilities for structural health monitoring. It has a critical impact for the monitoring of the nuclear structure and nuclear waste management, and allows to assess the usability of the parts without taking any risk of outside aggression on the sensor such as corrosion or break during the transport. The methods used during our analysis were the following: i) a parametric study of the laser powder bed fusion processing conditions for 316L stainless steel parts; ii) a study for the adaption of the optical fiber (thermal resistance, impact of the laser, diameter); iii) the optimisation of the bonding between the optical fiber and the metallic component. Fibers have been successfully embedded without coating inside the parts, which demonstrates the feasibility to insert components into the additive manufacturing process. The structural and the mechanical behaviours of the parts remain the same after the insertion of the fiber.. As a conclusion our results show the possibility to embedded a fiber without coating and it could become a game changer in structural health monitoring.