Additive Manufacturing (AM) for metals includes is a group of production methodst hat use a layer-by-layer approach to directly manufacture final parts. In recent years, the production rate and material quality of additive manufactured materials have improved rapidly which has gained increased interest from the industry to use AM not only for prototyping, but for serial production. AM offers a greater design freedom, compared to conventional production methods, which allows for parts with new innovative design. This is very attractive to the aerospace industry, in which parts could be designed to have reduced weight and improved performance contributing to reduced fuel consumption, increased payload and extended flight range. There are, however, challenges yet to solve before the potential of AM could be fully utilized in aerospace applications. One of the major challenges is how to deal with the poor fatigue behaviour of AM material with rough as-built surface. The aim of this thesis is to increase the knowledge of how AM can be used for high performance industrial parts by investigating the fatigue behaviour of the titanium alloy Ti6Al4V produced with different AM processes. Foremost, the intention is to improve the understanding of how rough as-built AM surfaces in combination with AM built geometrical notches affects the fatigue properties.This was done by performing constant amplitude fatigue testing to compare different combinations of AM material produced by Electron Beam Melting(EBM) and Laser Sintering (LS) with machined or rough as-built surfaces with or without geometrical notches and Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) treatment. Furthermore, the material response can be different between constant amplitude and variable amplitude fatigue loading due to effects of overloads and local plastic deformations. The results from constant amplitude testing were used to predict the fatigue life for variable amplitude loading by cumulative damage approach and these predictions were then verified by experimental variable amplitude testing. The constant amplitude fatigue strength of material with rough as-built surfaces was found to be 65-75 % lower, compared to conventional wrought bar, in which HIP treatments had neglectable influence on the fatigue strength. Furthermore, the fatigue life predictions with cumulative damage calculations showed good agreement with the experimental results which indicates that a cumulative damage approach can be used, at least for a tensile dominated load sequences, to predict the fatigue behaviour of additive manufactured Ti6Al4V.

This bachelor’s degree project aimed to improve the wheel profile of a rail mounted trolley and determine the cause of wheel failure. The proceedings of this project where modelled after an approach for solving wear problems with an emphasis on designing for sustainability. A case study and root cause analysis (RCA) was performed and the flanged wheels were deemed insufficient for the given heavy-haul system. Possible areas of wheel profile improvement were identified and further researched with multiple literature reviews. Throughout the projects duration several limitations were introduced that reduced the concept testing to exclusively theoretical prediction models. Archard’s model was implemented to predict wear and operating time for the proposed material and wheel tread profile concepts. The wheel flange dimensions were chosen based on recommendations from wheel and rail interference handbooks among other sources. The final wheel and rail profile suggestion improved operating time by approximately 300% and wear resistance by 50% compared to its predecessor. This result was achieved by applying the same theoretical prediction model to both current and suggested profiles. The findings of this project are meant to aid SCA among others in similar cases and additionally highlight the value of product improvement from a technological, sociological, and environmental perspective.

Most of the rolling element bearings are lubricated with Grease lubricant. Generally, the grease is expected to serve for life. The major causes of the bearing failure are due to the failure of the lubrication. The grease will experience creeping, oil permeation, oil separation etc. The separated oil will be lost permanently from the bearing. The widely used grease for general application is the lithium grease. The thickener of the grease consists covalent bond. When the grease is sheared, the breakage of the covalent bond will be permanent, resulting in the permanent loss of the rheological properties. The gels have unique properties such as thermal reversibility, viscoelasticity and thixotropy. They become mobile under shear stress and solidify again when the shear stress is removed. This property can be harnessed to avoid the base oil creeping, oil permeation, leakage in gears and bearings. Due to the presence of the polar group in the gels, they form a good tribo film and prevent the wear.  Under the shear stress, weak supramolecular interactions will be distorted, and this leads to the release of the oil and they re-form the structure after a certain period of rest. When the gel is in the solid-state, it will avoid creeping and evaporation. Many classes of gels are either derived from natural sources or from environmentally friendly materials. Thus, the lubricant formed out of gel would effectively solve both environmental as well as lubrication problems. In this work, supramolecular gel lubricants were prepared out of fully green, cellulose derivatives and starch hydrolysates. The non-ionic hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) and anionic sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) were chosen to understand the effect of ionic and non-ionic gelators on the rheological and the tribological parameters. Traditionally fat was used as a lubricant, now, in food industry various fat replacers are being used. To study whether the fat replacers can act as a thickener, Dextrin and maltodextrins were chosen.  Dextrin and maltodextrin with the different DE values were selected to understand the influence of molecular weight on gelation and tribological performance.  Inspired by the recent developments and advantages of aqueous lubrication, mixer of water and poly(ethylene glycol) 200 (PEG 200) is chosen as the base fluid. It was found that a very small amount of gelator can increase the viscosity of the PEG/water to several orders. The thermal stability of the gels was studied using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and found that gels can increase the thermal stability of the base fluid. FTIR results showed the formation of a non-covalent bond between the PEG molecules and water. It is shown that anionic gelator will result in producing low friction and wear in comparison to non-ionic gelator. The possible tribo-film formation due to the negative charge in the NaCMC molecules is attributed to these results. The very low friction and low wear was exhibited by the dextrin and maltodextrin gels. It is proposed that this could be due to the microspherical particles of gels which can act as nano bearings. It was found that choosing the optimum concentration of the gelator is important to reduce friction and wear. The higher gelator concentration will form the hard gel, which cannot flow and replenish the sliding contact, resulting in the starved lubrication. This will cause high wear and friction. These gel lubricants can be used in food, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries.

Generating gear grinding is a method used for hard machining of gearbox gears. It facilitates a productive gear manufacturing with tight tolerances regarding surface roughness and geometrical accuracy. However, if the grinding is done with incorrect parameters, so called grinding burns can arise with consequences such as changes in surface hardness, changes in residual stress levels, surface embrittlement and compromised fatigue strength. This thesis investigates the gear tooth quality resulting from grinding parameters contributing to an improved grinding time. A literature study will cover gear geometries and material, grinding wheel properties, influences by grinding parameters and several verification methods. An experimental test will then be used to put four different grinding parameters to the test. The results showed that an increased cutting speed indicated finer surface roughness andincreased Barkhausen noise but showed no influence on gear geometry. Increasing both rough and fine feed rates resulted in a minor increase in geometry deviation but no significant difference in surface roughness. Large variations within the different verification method results related to grinding burns madeit difficult to draw conclusions regarding the experimental factors chosen. However, several factors apart from the experimental ones varied in the testing were believed to have significant influence, such as the flow of the cooling fluidand the amount of retained austenite from the carburizing process. In fact, the trends which seemed to be connected to these factors could be seen in both Barkhausen noise analysis, hardness measurementsand microstructure.

The automated industry is in a growing phase and the human tasks is increasingly replaced by robots and other automation solutions. The increasing industry entails that the automations must be reliable and condition monitoring plays an important role in achieving that ambition. By utilizing condition monitoring of a machine it is possible to detect a wear before it turns into a critical damage that could result in complete failure. A useful tool when monitoring the condition of a machine is by sampling and analyzing vibrations. Vibrations are generated by the moving parts of the machinery and high amplitude vibrations can often be seen as an indication of the developed faults. The frequency of these vibrations can be calculated and then detected in the sampled data. Today there is no condition monitoring system that monitor industrial robots by analyzing vibrations. The problem with analyzing robots, is that they operate with a varying speed. Since the running conditions are changing rapidly all the time, this means that the vibration frequencies also changes constantly. This is due to the fact that the vibration frequencies are dependent and affected of the operation speed. This research is a sequel and continuation of a research from previous year. The purpose of the research is to investigate the possibility to monitor the condition of a gearbox in a industrial robot, by utilizing vibration analysis. The robot that has been tested under tuff conditions in order to reach a failure, is an ABB IRB 6600. To sample data in a stationary way even tough the speed is changing during the sample time, the method order tracking has been utilized. This makes it possible to sample data with numbers of measurement per rotation instead of sampling according to time. This is processed by SKF:s condition monitoring system multilog IMx and the signal is then presented as a time waveform in the software @ptitude Observer. In Observer, it is also possible to show the signal in a spectrum by using Fast Fourier Transform. By utilizing MATLAB, the research has also resulted in a new analyzing method. This method is called Spectral Auto-Correlation. The methodology of this practice is to correlated the time waveform with itself in order to see which frequencies that are reappearing. The correlated result is then calculated with a Fast Fourier Transform to illustrate the signal in a spectrum for further analysis. During the analysis of the parts in the gearbox, critical defects were found on both the cycloidal disks. The fault frequency for the defects were calculated and analyzed from the data. This resulted in trends where the amplitude from the fault frequency had more than doubled over the time the robot has been operating in the project. This report also include a production simulation where a robot cell from SKF is simulated. The robot cell is simulated with and without a condition monitoring system. A comparison was then made to see what advantages there were with utilizing a condition monitoring system. The result of the simulation was an increased productivity with two to three percent.

Axial piston machines are operating at high pressure and varying speeds, which requires high reliability of the components. The machine components are separated by a fluid film, but sometimes this film gets penetrated by the surface asperities causing the machine to operate with metal-to-metal contact. In order to improve the design and predict the operating conditions might numerical tools be used. The goal with this thesis was to describe how the tribological contacts in Parkers machines can be modelled, considering oil and surface roughness. The so called Luleå Mixed Lubrication Model have therefore been investigated and it has been described how the model can be used in Parkers machines. The model uses a two-scale method to include the influence of real surface topographies of the components, it gives information about how the surface roughness affect the lubrication conditions. Different options of softwares have been investigated and compared to get an understanding of what possibilities and shortcomings they might have when it comes to this kind of simulations. Results show that all interesting contacts can't be treated the same, therefore must each contact be investigated separetly even though the Luleå Mixed Lubrication Model is used in all cases.

With industries aiming at higher efficiencies, lightweight parts, and easier manufacturability there has been a recent trend of replacing the metallic materials with polymeric materials and its composites. Particularly in the automotive industry, there is a demand of replacing metallic material of bushes and bearings with polymer based materials (PBM). For these heavy performance requirements (as in automobiles), the commonly used industrial polymers like Acetal and Nylon fail to provide good mechanical and tribological performance. High-performance polymer like Polyphenylene Sulfide (PPS) is a relatively newer material and shows a potential of being a PBM alternative for metallic bearings in automobiles if their tribological performance can be improved.  One of the ways of improving the tribological performance of the polymer is by the addition of filler material, hence making a polymer composite. In this study, we used Short Carbon Fibre as micro-reinforcement material and Nano-diamonds and Graphene Oxide as nano-reinforcement material to make PPS composites. The varying mechanical and tribological behaviour of PPS composites with different weight percentage of reinforcement materials was investigated. The optimum composition of the reinforcement materials was identified, which resulted in significant improvement in mechanical and tribological properties of the base material.

I detta projekt har vi fördjupat oss i en glidlagerkonstruktion som befinner sig i en skruvpress. Skruvpressen kompakterar en okänd massa som är sekretessbelagd. Robustus har ett förslag på överdimensionering av det nuvarande glidlagret. Målet med projektet var att analysera och optimera några glidlager i förhållande till det befintliga glidlagret samt att ta hänsyn till materialval och den miljö som lagret kommer att befinner sig i. Det som analyserna och optimeringen visade var att det befintliga glidlagret hade den bästa geometrin bland alla lösningar men inte det optimala materialet. Projektet befinner sig i ett tidigt stadium och det behövs en del geometriska förändringar. Det viktigaste av allt är att problemet har identifierats med hjälp av det havererade glidlagret och med en excelmodell. / We have in this project become engrossed in a plain bearing design that is located in a screw press. The screw press compact an unknown mass that is confidential. Robustus have a suggestion to over dimensioning the present plain bearing. The aim of this project was to analyze and to do an optimization on some plain bearings and compare them to the present bearing and to take the choice of material and the environment where the bearing is located into account. The analysis and the optimizations showed that the current plain bearing had the best geometry but not the optimal material selection. The project is in an early state and it needs some geometrical changes. The most important of everything is that the problem has been identified with the help of the wrecked plain bearing and with an excel model.

This thesis has been conducted at Ovako Bar for a period of 10 weeks and is the final part of the bachelor's programme in mechanical engineering. Ovako Bar is a business unit of the European steel concern Ovako which specializes in the manufacturing of engineering steel for applications in various fields of mechanical engineering. The company wants to improve profitability of their sawing centre by reducing the consumption of saw blades and increase productivity at one of their sawing machines. In the current situation the company uses disposable blades which are discarded either when a tool break occurs or when the quality requirements are no longer met for the outgoing material. A literature review was conducted in which various factors affecting the life span of the saw blades were analyzed after their impact on the outcome in which two factors was selected to be used for a design of experiments. The factors selected were feed per tooth and cutting speed in which a total of four experiments were conducted and finally the results showed that the interaction effect was the decisive factor for the outcome. To investigate the tool wear that had arisen a scanning electron microscope was used where a few teeth on each blade were studied for any damages. The conclusions that could be drawn from the experiment is that a high feed rate must be combined with a high cutting speed for best result which has to do with the fact that a higher feed requires a greater heat generation for the best chip formation. The same applies for the lower feed rate which must be combined with a lower cutting speed because a higher cutting speed causes a dominating wear on the clearance face.

In the present work further modifications are implemented to an existing test setup for the evaluation of the wear of cemented carbide drill buttons in rock drilling applications. The test setup has been evaluated in previous diploma works, which has shown that the test successfully mimics the wear seen in rock drilling applications. The new modifications include friction and normal force measurements together with the collection of rock debris. This has been made possible by redesigning the sample holder and by manufacturing equipment making rock debris collection possible. The new modifications to the test setup were evaluated by comparing the wear of three different cemented carbide grades tested against sandstone and granite with two different loads. The data collected from the new modifications were found to be robust with lower than expected spread of data. The coefficient of friction when testing against sandstone was higher than when testing against granite. More adhered material was observed on the wear surface when testing against granite than against sandstone. Load dependence on the wear of the cemented carbide buttons is only seen for the softer cemented carbide grades when testing against sandstone. The wear of the buttons indicates a high dependence on the hardness of the different grades as shouldbe expected. This diploma work has been performed for Sandvik Mining, Rock Tools,a world leading supplier of rock drill equipment.