Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes are more complex to control than traditional manufacturing approaches, and process variabilities can lead to fatigue performance variability. Understanding fatigue behavior trends is important because fatigue loading can lead to sudden and catastrophic failure phenomena in critical systems associated with the aerospace, natural gas, space, and defense industries, to name a few. For AM materials, hundreds to thousands of tests are required to understanding fatigue trends. In cases like turbine engine flowpath parts, datapoints as high as one billion cycles to failure must be acquired. Roughly 600 days is required to conduct a single test that accumulates one billion fatigue cycles. To combat the long wait from standard testing and to rapidly scale the use of AM in disruptive industries, a new accelerated fatigue testing machine has been developed. The accelerated test machine can gather data >220 times faster than standard rotating bending and axial methods, and the test method is more simplified and accurate to operate than ultrasonic fatigue testing methods. However, for ubiquitous adoption of the accelerated fatigue testing machine by the AM community, the repeatability of the procedure must be demonstrated against the test results from industry-accepted standards. The proposed presentation will explicitly explain the details of the simplified accelerated fatigue testing machine/method procedures. In addition to the procedure explanation, the presentation will highlight fatigue life comparisons between the accelerated fatigue and standard testing results of commonly used aluminum alloys that include Alsi10Mg and Elementum 3D alloys A1000 RAM10 and A5083 RAM5.

As additive manufacturing moves from niche to necessity in the aerospace sector, the challenge lies not only in technical capability but in qualification, standardisation and supply chain maturity. This expert panel brings together leaders from across industry and research to explore the path to scalable aerospace AM — from high-temperature alloys and accelerated fatigue testing to collaborative roadmaps for UK manufacturing. Join the discussion on the materials, processes and partnerships reshaping how we design, test and fly with additive.