Design By Additive Manufacturing: an application in aeronautics and defence

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a major challenge for the deployment of Industry 4.0 in companies. Thus, it becomes essential to control the potential contributions of this innovative process from the early stages of design. In this paper, previous Design and Creativity For/With/Through AM approaches are first reviewed comprehensively and classified into distinct categories according to their main purpose and application. Then, they are integrated into a modular framework as part of a global 5-step design approach to promote AM in the whole design process: the Design By Additive Manufacturing (DBAM) methodology. A validation of the method is then proposed on an industrial case study from the aeronautics and defence sector, thereby fostering the complete exploitation of AM potentials and the development of AM-conformal designs.