Dear Colleagues,

Metal powder net-shape and near net-shape technologies are increasingly interesting, as they allow producing parts as close as possible to their final shape, eliminating or reducing secondary operations, and consequently reducing scrap, costs, time to market, and environmental impact.

Among them, Press and Sinter, Metal Injection Moulding, and, recently, Metal Additive Manufacturing are attractive to a huge market. Nevertheless, the specific characteristics of such technologies must be carefully considered, aiming at best exploiting the benefits. The well-known product development process, which implies to consider the synergistic influence of material, shape and production process in a collaborative environment, is a crucial and hard task dealing with such technologies. Metal powders for conventional Powder Metallurgy strongly differ from metal powders for Additive Manufacturing, and their characteristics may dramatically affect the properties of final parts.

The inappropriate definition of the process parameters inevitably introduces defects in the part at a geometric and microstructural level that detrimentally affect its functioning in operation and its structural reliability. The shape of products must be optimized according to the peculiarities of the technology. Moreover, aiming at obtaining parts, as close as possible to their final shape, dimensional and geometrical control is a crucial aspect to be considered in the design step. Depending on the technology, the designer must consider the influence of many different variables, both related to modelling platforms and to process parameters. In addition, the parameters of the metallurgical process must be carefully defined, since they strongly affect the final microstructure and the onset of distortions, residual stresses and different types of localized or diffuse defects.

This Special Issue invites papers approaching the Product Development in net-shape and near net-shape Metal powder technologies from different point of views, considering the whole life-cycle of the products, and the need for collaboratively evaluating the many different variables affecting the characteristics of the final product.

Keywords:

• Metal powders production and characterization;
• Development of new metal powder mixes;
• Modelling architectures and knowledge-based systems;
• Topological issues and shape optimization;
• Methods and tools, considering the characteristics of the specific production processes in the different steps of the design process;
• Simulation and experimental verification of the influence of design-process parameters on the geometric, microstructural and mechanical characteristics of the final parts;
• Verification of the dimensional and geometric characteristics, by both contact and contactless techniques;
• Experimental investigation of the structural reliability of the components;
• Lifecycle and environmental concerns

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2022

Prof. Dr. Ilaria Cristofolini – University of Trento

Prof. Dr. Nora Lecis – Politecnico di Milano

Prof. Dr. Vigilio Fontanari – University of Trento

Guest Editors

More information:​https://www.mdpi.com/journal/metals/special_issues/net_shape_powder