Evaluation of additive manufacturing side channels for nuclear nonproliferation applications

Abstract The nuclear industry is continuing to grow and adopt new technologies to manufacture components. One of the technologies under consideration is additive manufacturing (AM). AM could make production of components at lower cost and could lessen lead times significantly. However, AM could be prone to proliferation risks. AM machines give off signatures during the manufacturing process, and these signatures offer an alternative means of observing the component. Correlations between these signatures and the geometry being manufactured could be developed; enabling proliferators as they could take advantage of these correlations to steal AM manufacturing instructions relating to nuclear technology. This work pertains to preliminary work exploring the feasibility of tapping into AM side channels to predict geometries being manufactured on AM machines. The feasibility of utilizing vibration to draw geometric correlations will be assessed on an Ultimaker 2 + thermoplastic 3D printer.