Additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been researched and developed for almost three decades. Microscale AM is one of the fastest-growing fields of research within the AM area. Considerable progress has been made in the development and commercialization of new and innovative microscale AM processes, as well as several practical applications in a variety of fields. However, there are still significant challenges that exist in terms of design, available materials, processes, and the ability to fabricate true three-dimensional structures and systems at a microscale. For instance, microscale AM fabrication technologies are associated with certain limitations and constraints due to the scale aspect, which may require the establishment and use of specialized design methodologies in order to overcome them. The aim of this paper is to review the main processes, materials, and applications of the current microscale AM technology, to present future research needs for this technology, and to discuss the need for the introduction of a design methodology. Thus, one of the primary concerns of the current paper is to present the design aspects describing the comparative advantages and AM limitations at the microscale, as well as the selection of processes and materials.
Circular Economy (CE) and the potential of reusing and recycling the products after the end of their life, becomes imperative for environmental, economic and social reasons. Especially during the 4th Industrial Revolution that is taking place nowadays, an increasing number of out-of-date equipment has to be replaced, which constitutes a chance and necessity to be reused, through recycling, redesigning and remanufacturing. The paper presents proof-of-concept studies regarding upcycling of obsolete and outdated equipment into novel test rigs mainly addressing research activities. Three such case studies are presented, namely the upcycling of an injection moulding machine into a modular test bench for power hydraulic components, the upcycling of scrap components into a hybrid hydraulic/ ICE powertrain rig and the functional augmentation of a gear roll tester to accommodate single and double flank tests. Significant savings in cost, raw materials and time are demonstrated in all cases and adherence to the CE objectives are observed.
In recent years, multidisc wet friction clutches are used in demanding powertrains of automatic and dual clutch transmissions targeting high efficiency and smoothness during gearshift. However, the developed flow pattern between the clutch discs is significantly complex and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods employed are quite demanding in terms of computational cost. To deal with this issue semi-analytical solutions were derived, which are limited, however, to specific problems, in order to obtain handy expressions, while also providing insight to the wet clutch physics. Nevertheless, this lack of global validity is counterbalanced by the fact that the governing equations become analytically solvable at specific operational conditions with satisfactory accuracy, provided that the simplifications rendering the truncated terms inactive hold true. In this work, a quantitative way of determining the relative weight of each term of the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations set is presented, based on the post-processing of CFD results using the Buckingham “π-theorem”. The sets of nondimensional numbers created were used to describe and model the physics of the wet clutch.
Resin-impregnated fibres are extensively used in a variety of industrial applications as is demonstrated in the literature. Resin-fibre impregnation techniques are used in order to create homogeneous macro – materials and to take full advantage of the mechanical properties of the fibrous reinforcement (i.e. carbon, glass, organic or ceramic fibres). However, achieving highly impregnated fibres is proven quite challenging especially in continuous production techniques that are required for large production rates. The main challenge lies in achieving complete impregnation of the tightly arranged fibres mainly referring to the formed yarns containing multiple fibres, sometimes even twisted. This results in partially impregnated materials containing cavities that tend to exhibit inferior mechanical properties compared to the theoretical calculations, which assume fully impregnated materials. These cavities often lead to crack generation, acting as stress concentration sites, resulting in complete failure of the material at macro-level. In this paper a novel technique for continuous production of fully impregnated woven fibres is presented using non – meshing, co – rotating rollers. A laboratory-scale apparatus is designed and described thoroughly in the context of this work. The method resembles pultrusion in the sense that a reinforcement plain fibre mesh (glass) is co–processed with the liquid resin through a pair of co–rotating toothed rollers to produce a continuously reinforced 3D tape. The surface of the rollers is produced from a double-sinusoidal toothed surface (rack) using the Theory of Gearing in three-dimensions, which imposes significant differential sliding of the fibres without differential tension and facilitates fibre wetting. The geometry of the rollers is calculated not to damage the unprocessed fibres, while facilitating local widespreading of the stranded fibres in the three – dimensional space leading to the resin being able to fully penetrate the reinforcing fibre material.
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