Development of Lightweight Oil Catch Tank Produced by Laser Powder Bed Fusion

Laser powder bed fusion is one of the metal additive manufacturing technologies, so-called 3D printing. It has attracted great attentions due to high geometrical flexibility and remarkable metallurgical characteristics. An oil catch tank has been widely used in automotive industries for filtering oil vapors or carbon sludge from blow-by gas as a conventional usage. A pneumatic valve system mainly adopted to high-performance engines is also a potential application of it because undesirable oil infiltrates into air springs during engine operation, resulting in an excess spring pressure. This work focused on developing a lightweight oil catch tank which can be applied to a pneumatic valve system by taking advantage of additive manufacturing techniques. Al-Mg-Sc alloy powder with high tensile strength as well as high ductility were used under the consideration of specific strength, printability and availability. Test specimens fabricated with optimal printing parameters exhibited mechanical properties comparable to a high-strength wrought material as well as unique metallurgical characteristics due to rapid solidification. The newly developed oil catch tank was designed taking into account material properties acquired in this study and functional requirements of the component. The developed tank had a monolithic structure whereas conventional one consists of multiple parts. Moreover, the wall thickness was minimized from location to location based on the induced stress distribution. These are distinct geometrical features which are very difficult to be created by classical processes. As a result, the novel 3D-printed tank in this work was around 60% lighter than conventional one, and experimentally demonstrated to meet the functional requirements.