Laser beam-powder bed fusion/metal (PBF-LB/M) offers significant advantages for manufacturing 316L stainless steel components. However, inherent surface roughness can limit their application in sectors requiring high-quality surfaces. This study investigates the influence of two electrochemical post-processing techniques, Hirtisation and DLyte, on surface topography and fatigue behavior of PBF-LB fabricated 316L stainless steel. Vertically built cylindrical fatigue specimens were subjected to both the treatments. Following surface treatment, surface roughness, residual stress, microstructure, and high-cycle fatigue properties were studied. Hirtisation significantly reduced the average surface roughness (S<inf>a</inf>) around 70%, with a further improvement to around 80% after DLyte treatment. The mean roughness depth and deepest valley depth also decreased after post-processing. Notably, uniaxial fatigue testing revealed a 20% increase in fatigue life for specimens subjected to Hirtisation while around 40% for a combination treatment, Hirtisation + DLyte compared to the as-built condition. However, these specimens exhibited higher surface tensile residual stress levels. This suggests a trade-off between the benefits of a smoother surface (reduced fatigue crack initiation sites) and the detrimental effects of higher residual stress (promoting crack propagation). Despite the improvement in surface quality, the treated specimens exhibited higher surface residual stress, which may counteract some fatigue benefits

Although recovery of fibers from used textiles with retained material quality is desired, separation of individual components from polymer blends used in today's complex textile materials is currently not available at viable scale. Biotechnology could provide a solution to this pressing problem by enabling selective depolymerization of recyclable fibers of natural and synthetic origin, to isolate constituents or even recover monomers. We compiled experimental data for biocatalytic polymer degradation with a focus on synthetic polymers with hydrolysable links and calculated conversion rates to explore this path The analysis emphasizes that we urgently need major research efforts: beyond cellulose-based fibers, biotechnological-assisted depolymerization of plastics so far only works for polyethylene terephthalate, with degradation of a few other relevant synthetic polymer chains being reported. In contrast, by analyzing market data and emerging trends for synthetic fibers in the textile industry, in combination with numbers from used garment collection and sorting plants, it was shown that the use of difficult-to-recycle blended materials is rapidly growing. If the lack of recycling technology and production trend for fiber blends remains, a volume of more than 3400 Mt of waste will have been accumulated by 2030. This work highlights the urgent need to transform the textile industry from a biocatalytic perspective.

Oven curing of automotive parts is a complex industrial process involving multiple scales ranging from submillimeter thick layers to the size of the ovens, and long curing times. In this work, the process is simulated by state-of-the-art immersed boundary techniques. First, the simulations are validated against temperature measurements, in a lab scale oven, of three parts taken from a truck cab. Second, a novel multicriteria optimization method is proposed. It is applied to study the optimal positioning of the three parts with respect to curing time and energy consumption. The results presented demonstrate that complex industrial heat transfer processes can be optimized by combining state-of-theart simulation technology and deterministic optimization techniques