Primarily based within the metropolis of Halifax on Canada’s East Coast, Dalhousie College is residence to an Superior Manufacturing Hub outfitted with a cutting-edge AM-driven infrastructure. The hub, which acquired $3.7M (CAD) again in 2023 to advance AM for Canada’s marine protection sector, is now getting used to strengthen operational readiness for the nation’s navy. Particularly, Dalhousie engineers will leverage metallic AM to develop and manufacture essential submarine components that may maintain Canada’s growing older fleet operational for a number of extra years.
In September 2024, the federal authorities of Canada introduced its plan to acquire a dozen new submarines to switch an growing older fleet of Victoria-class subs utilized by the Royal Canadian Navy. This current fleet, constructed within the Eighties, should nonetheless stay operational till the brand new submarines are prepared within the mid 2030s.
“One of many greatest hurdles for the Canadian Navy—and the army at giant—is maintaining our ships, submarines and {hardware} operational for lengthy durations,” defined Cameron Munro, protection scientist with Defence Analysis and Improvement Canada (DRDC) at Halifax’s Atlantic Analysis Centre. “In Canada, we have a tendency to make use of issues past their unique design life—40 and even 50 years.”
It goes with out saying that utilizing gear for a number of a long time entails an amazing quantity of upkeep and restore. On high of that, MRO processes will be additional difficult by the truth that OEMs exit of enterprise, making it difficult to supply alternative components or the right tooling to make these components. This has meant that the Royal Canadian Navy has needed to work with tool-and-die foundries that make customized components from scratch, a course of that’s each costly and extremely time consuming. “This type of procurement can take years,” he added. “And that’s not at all times an choice when readiness is the precedence.”
That’s the place Dalhousie College’s engineering division is available in. With its experience in metals and its AM assets, an engineering workforce led by supplies engineer Dr. Paul Bishop will leverage metallic additive manufacturing to develop essential submarine alternative components on demand. Dr. Bishop is main the initiative in collaboration with Defence Analysis and Improvement Canada (DRDC) with assist from the Pure Sciences and Engineering Analysis Council of Canada (NSERC) in addition to a consortium of trade companions.
A big a part of the work is targeted on supplies, with Dr. Bishop and his workforce learning specialised naval alloys to grasp the best way to rework them into high-quality AM powder feedstock. “Nobody—a minimum of within the open literature—has finished severe analysis into how these extremely particular naval alloys reply to additive manufacturing,” Dr. Bishop defined. “That’s the primary elementary piece of labor we’re doing—figuring out which alloys will be printed and what the optimum manufacturing course of seems like.”
The purpose of the analysis is to alleviate the R&D burden on AM materials producers in Canada. In accordance with Dalhousie, many of those corporations are cautious of taking over the analysis vital for one of these utility given the small-batch nature of the eventual manufacturing orders. Dr. Bishop hopes that by conducting the R&D on the college, and establishing materials compositions in addition to design and manufacturing specs, it’s going to facilitate the manufacturing of spare components for submarines by these producers.
He stated: “Our function at Dalhousie is to develop the basic ‘recipes’—what supplies work, the best way to print them and the processing parameters that yield merchandise of a excessive metallurgical high quality. As soon as we determine that out, corporations take the analysis we develop within the lab and apply it at a bigger, industrial scale.”
This strategy will profit the navy in a number of methods. For one, they are going to personal the R&D vital to supply components, fairly than rely on a single provider with a proprietary system. For one more, the Royal Canadian Navy can improve its upkeep and restore processes, transitioning to a extra on-demand mannequin fairly than having to stockpile spare components or wait years to switch out of date parts.
“The true purpose is to offer the Navy and the supporting trade companions with knowledge that outline dependable processes that can be utilized at scale—passing the baton so to talk, to allow them to then work collectively to implement the outcomes in Canada,” Dr. Bishop concluded. The work being finished at Dalhousie College will finally assist to strengthen the nationwide navy’s capability to stay operational and self-reliant—a very vital factor contemplating the altering panorama within the Canadian Arctic, the place receding ice is resulting in elevated worldwide commerce and site visitors.