New aeronautical engine designs strive the manufacturers to use new processes which permit to add specific features such as stiffeners, often leading to weight or lead time saving. Electron Beam Melting (EBM) process is potential candidate but is not yet fully understood and controlled because of its lack of maturity. Case studies show that the waste of raw material is reduced by up to 40% when using Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies - such as EBM - instead of subtractive (machining) technologies. It is due to the capacity of AM technologies to build parts directly from 3D models.

For the aerospace parts, the reduction of the raw material consumption is essential, but mechanical properties must be guaranteed. One must guarantee that the recycled powder is comparable in all above mentioned aspects to fresh powder. Also, the differences that may appear between fresh and recycled powder must not interfere in mechanical performance of functional parts built of recycled powder. So far, no specific criteria exist in terms powder recyclability such as the number of manufacturing. Also, no study of recyclability has been published.

AEROBEAM was aimed at investigating the mechanical properties of aeronautical Ti6Al4V stator vanes elaborated by EBM. During this project, optimisation of build parameters, characterisation of processed material, characterisation of recycled powder and characterisation of material processed out of recycled powder was performed. The results aimed at ensuring that the stator vanes built in WP5 are completely reliable regarding aeronautical requirements and can be equally used no matter if vanes are built from fresh or recycled powder as long as the powder is below its maximum level of recyclability.