Investigation on the Impact of Property-Microstructure of Spark Plasma Sintered MgB2 Superconducting Bulks in Manufacturing Operations

In manufacturing systems over the years, distinct clusters of research have been created around manufacturing science and manufacturing operations separately. Despite the need for their connection in cases of knowledge transfer for production scalability, those areas have remained largely isolated. With advances in the areas of advanced and additive manufacturing, digitization and automation of manufacturing processes have shown the potential to strengthen the line connecting manufacturing science and operations of increasingly complex production systems. The integration of tools for part property testing and data analytics will support solutions concerning predictive modeling for quality, reliability, process throughput, and overall system effectiveness. In this work, the Spark Plasma Sintering of superconducting Magnesium Diboride is investigated with respect to its potential for scalability. Steps for part property testing, part qualification, and production scalability are taken from a systematic perspective. The aim of this work is to prove how material requirements play a role not only in the quality of superconducting bulks produced but the downstream effect that it causes in the manufacturing operations related to such a process. To validate this analysis, a performance measurement system is proposed and experimented to prove the relationships derived and explained throughout this dissertation. Assessments of scrap rate, process yield, as well as reliability and maintenance schedules are evaluated in order to shed some light on sustainably scaling up the production processes that currently are constrained to laboratory environments. This work is separated into three different chapters, which relate to three manuscripts that will or have been submitted to peer-reviewed journals.