Serial Uniqueness: Strengthening Standard Steel Profiles with WAAM Technology

Abstract

Wire‐and‐Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) is based on the well‐known welding technique in which an electric arc is used as a heat source to melt a metal wire. The technology finds its application, among else, in the construction industry, where steel wire is the chosen feed material. Different scales of structural components and elements can be manufactured using WAAM, such as steel joints and pedestrian bridges. Robot‐assisted control of the layer build‐up allows for freedom in the design of structural elements. In this paper, the authors propose a hybrid manufacturing method to combine industrial serial processing with individualised additive manufacturing based on the local stress distributions and force‐flows. The method is validated on the set of five different demonstrators that tackle different local structural issues through different design solutions for local strengthening while exhibiting particular manufacturing constraints characteristic for a workspace confined by flanges of rolled I‐profiles.