A review of wire arc additive manufacturing and advances in wire arc additive manufacturing of aluminium

Although wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) has proven its capability of fulfilling demands of production of medium-to-large-scale components for automotive and allied sectors made up of aluminium, at present, WAAM cannot be applied as a fully fledged manufacturing process because of practical challenges such as under-matched mechanical properties, the presence of large residual stresses and mandatory post-deposition operation for the formed component. This paper is a review of WAAM technology including a brief of WAAM history, status, advantages and constraints of the WAAM field. A focus is provided including the efforts directed towards the reduction of porosity, tensile properties, microstructural investigations and other valuable advancements in the field of WAAM of aluminium. This review was submitted as part of the 2018 Materials Literature Review Prize of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining run by the Editorial Board of MST. Sponsorship of the prize by TWI Ltd is gratefully acknowledged.