Environmental Performance Comparison Between Wire-Arc and Powder-Laser-Based DED Processes

Directed energy deposition (DED) is a popular group of metal additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. The DED processes uses either a laser source or an arc source to melt the metal in form of powder or wire and directly deposited melted metal into the part according to successive layers. The technological performance of these technologies has been proved in terms of fabricating dense parts from different metals. However, the environmental performance of these processes is not analyzed comprehensively yet. In this paper, we aim at evaluating the environmental impacts related to the wire-arc DED (WA-DED) and powder-laser DED (PL-DED) based on the manufacture of a test part. The goal, scope and system boundary were defined, and the data for life cycle assessment were collected from the literature and Ecoinvent-3.5 database. The environmental impacts related to each manufacturing process were computed with the aid of the OpenLCA software. The outcomes of the research enable choosing the most suitable manufacturing method in the environmentally friendly point of view.