Laser-based Powder Bed Fusion of Zirconium-based Metallic Glass in the MARS-M Sounding Rocket Payload

Kurzfassung

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies offer great opportunities to meet the challenges of the space industry thanks to the reduction of material usage, mass to transport, as well as production time. Though the use of polymer AM on the ISS is undoubtedly a success, metal-based AM is bound to become a requirement for future space exploration missions. Laser-based Powder Bed Fusion is an AM process able to achieve complex geometries unattainable to traditional manufacturing techniques in one piece, and can use any feedstock materials thanks to scalable process parameters. Since their birth in the 1960s, metallic glasses – amorphous metals with potentially very attractive properties – have improved in glass-forming ability to become bulk metallic glasses, extending their field of application. However, their size is still limited by their traditional production by casting or thermoplastic forming (from millimetre to centimetre range) due to decreasing cooling rates and ensuing crystallisation, generally deteriorating the attractive properties sought after. AM has recently proved to be a game-changer for these innovative materials, as it has allowed them to sidestep the size limitations by building bit by bit, producing an amorphous item larger than traditionally possible. Here we explore this union specifically in this domain by manufacturing parts from BMG in a powder-based process independent of gravity, in the lab and in a sounding rocket.