Browsing by Subject "optical fibers"

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Thermal Modeling of Fiber Optic Embedment in Metal Additive Manufacturing
(University of Texas at Austin, 2021) Snider, Elias; Gegel, Michelle; Holguin, Ryan; Dominguez, Cesar; Bernardin, John; Bristow, Douglas; Landers, Robert
Optical fibers are useful in many sensing applications, including temperature and radiation sensing as well as distributed strain measurements. These optical fibers may be consolidated within an additive manufacturing process to help diagnose and/or monitor the mechanical performance of a part. However, bonding optical fibers to metal parts using laser-based additive manufacturing requires processing temperatures dangerous to the fiber, posing challenges for fiber survival. To protect the fiber and allow bonding with the metal part, the fibers are plated with a nickel coating prior to embedment – a process that is costly to perform. These coatings may also have small internal defects that vary from one fiber to the next. Due to manufacturing cost and lack of repeatability, it is difficult to experimentally determine appropriate process parameters, such as laser power and coating thickness. Thus, numerical modeling offers an efficient approach to exploring embedment parameters and their effect on fiber survivability. This work employs transient thermal models of embedment processes to identify and simulate significant design parameters such as coating thickness, embedment geometry, and cooling time. A transient thermal simulation was developed and is presented which models fiber optic embedment processes via Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS®, a blown powder, direct energy deposition process) and trends in peak fiber core temperatures, as well as thermal shock are discussed.