New strategy of remanufacturing based on additive manufacturing technologies

Nowadays, additive manufacturing (AM) techniques are efficient enough to produce products with a material compatible with the usage. Taking into account the performances of these new techniques in a new remanufacturing strategy could open the new ways to transform an end of life (EoL) part into a new part intended for another product, without returning to the level of raw material.

The objectives of this thesis aim to solve two following issues:
(1) The first issue concerned to technological feasibility: is it possible to build new features on an existing part by AM techniques? More importantly, do the AM-built features have a strong bond with the existing part, and behave as a unique part? In this research, we firstly focus on the metal AM techniques (e.g., EBM, SLM and CLAD/DMD).
(2) The second issue concerned to the study of the complete remanufacturing strategy from a technological point of view, and from economic and environmental points of view.

• Design of manufacturing operation sequence allowing to transform an end of life part into a new part intended for another product;
• Identification of end of life products whose the parts can be the starting base;
• Evaluation of economic efficiency and environmental impact.

PhD candidate: Van Thao LE
University Grenoble-Alpes, 2014 - 2017
PhD supervisor: Henri PARIS, Guillaume MANDIL


Partnership:

Investigation on the technological feasibility of AM techniques for the strategy;

Study the complete remanufacturing chain compatible with the technology.

Product topology that best fits to the expected strategy.

Methods and Models;

Classification of EoL parts in line with the proposed strategy;

Technological, environmental and economic performances;

Valorization of obtained results in the international journals and conferences.