Description
Objective:Reliable and affordable bellows for propulsion application.
Targeted Improvements: the activity should result in a reliable component (bellow), significantly reducing yield and quality costs.
Description: Bellows have been used as a leak tight spring component in a number of propulsion related designs such as regulators and valves
Traditional manufacturing techniques result in high non quality costs due to the need to perform numerous welds which are difficult to realize and can only be partially inspected.
Using additive manufacturing techniques could allow producing near neat shape bellows that could reduce local stresses and avoid welds.
Work logic:
a. State of the art of additive manufacturing techniques/ trade-off/requirements
b. Design of a bellow optimized for function and for the selected additive manufacturing technique
c. Manufacturing and testing of min 5 samples including fatigue tests.
d.Evaluation of the achieved results