WAAM Reliability Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing is still accelerating, not maturing. the trend runs from zero in 2017 to a peak of 12 filings in 2025, with growth still climbing through the midpoint year rather than levelling off.
- India, not the US or China, is the busiest filing venue. 18 of the tracked records were filed there against 8 in the United States, a split that says more about academic filing activity than about where the commercial technology will be practiced.
- The most-cited family is a magnesium-alloy WAAM method, not a machine-learning one. CN109623180A leads citations by a wide margin over any process-control or prediction patent in the set, despite reliability being the dataset's search focus.
Filing growth compares 2021 (1 records) with 2024 (3) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 28 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset isolates patent families at the intersection of wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) and the reliability concerns that determine whether a WAAM part can be certified for structural service: fatigue performance, porosity control, residual stress and mechanical reliability testing. It excludes general WAAM process patents that do not address one of those four failure or qualification themes directly, and it is scoped by IPC classes covering welding and arc processes (B23K9/04), powder-based additive manufacturing (B22F10/85) and materials testing (G01N3).
Twenty-eight families is a small corpus for a technology this actively discussed in the literature, which itself is informative: the reliability-and-durability slice of WAAM patenting is still forming, and the classification spread below shows where the claim activity is actually concentrated versus where it is thin.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 28-family dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filings are climbing, not plateauing
From zero filings in 2017 to a single filing at the 2022 midpoint, the count then rises to a peak of 12 in 2025 before the current partial year. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true 2025-2026 filing volume is understated in this chart — the acceleration shown here is a floor, not a ceiling.
Welding and 3D-printing classes dominate; powder and alloy claims are secondary
Every record in the set carries a B23K welding/arc classification, and 17 of 28 also sit in B33Y (additive manufacturing generally) — expected, since the search is anchored on WAAM. The more informative split is the long tail: B22F (powder metallurgy, 7 records), C22C (alloys, 6) and single-digit counts in B23P, G01N, A61B and B21F show where reliability claims are being attached to adjacent disciplines rather than treated as a distinct category.
Shares are the percentage of the 28 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Reliability and Durability with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about wire arc additive manufacturing reliability and durability and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited and most recent filings
US20250222535A1 — Wire arc additive manufacturing based multi-layer fabrication/repair of Ti part with equiaxed/hybrid microstructure
A method for determining build parameters for a wire arc additive manufacture machine (WAAM) is disclosed herein. The method includes receiving, by a processor, a plurality of input parameters for a WAAM process for building a component, calculating a melt pool size for the WAAM process based at least in part on the plurality of input parameters, calculating solidification parameters for a material being used for the WAAM process, determining one or more structural transition points during WAAM process for building the component, the one or more structural transition points indicating an internal microstructure of the component, generating a build file in response to the one or more structural transition points.Filed by Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation, published 2025-07-10 — the dataset's most recent representative filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN109623180A | 一种镁合金的丝材电弧增材制造方法 | 32 |
| 2 | US20210402506A1 | Wire and arc additive manufacturing method for magnesium alloy | 14 |
| 3 | US20210402507A1 | Wire and arc additive manufacturing method for titanium alloy | 12 |
| 4 | US20230220526A1 | Steel Material for Forming Components Using Additive Manufacturing and Use of a Steel Material of This Type | 8 |
| 5 | US20230158595A1 | Prediction and control of product shape quality in wire and arc additive manufacturing through machine learni… | 7 |
| 6 | US11945042B2 | Wire and arc additive manufacturing method for magnesium alloy | 1 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate them; read this as a signal of influence within the searched corpus, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (6 of 6 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Four read-outs from the trend, classification and citation data that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
Still an accelerating field, not a settled one
The midpoint year (2022) shows only a single filing, meaning almost all activity in this dataset has happened in the last few years. That compresses the prior-art window: a filer today is competing against a much smaller body of granted claims than the raw 28-family count suggests once duplicates and pending applications are set aside.
India carries the filing volume, not the commercial centre of gravity
More than half of the tracked records were filed with the Indian patent office, well ahead of the United States. That pattern is typical of academic and institutional filers building portfolios rather than commercial entities protecting products, and it should temper any assumption that filing volume maps directly to where WAAM parts will be manufactured or certified.
The most-cited patent is a materials method, not a reliability-testing one
CN109623180A, a magnesium-alloy wire-arc method, out-cites the nearest reliability- or ML-oriented family by more than double. That is a reminder that citation counts here reward age and foundational process claims more than they reward the fatigue- and porosity-specific subject matter this search was built to find.
Collaboration is thin and mostly single-instance
Only nine co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest of them link back to a single individual filer rather than an institution-to-institution partnership. Recent-year momentum is similarly dispersed: no assignee in the tracked list shows more than one filing in the latest year, and several previously active academic filers show a full drop-off.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wire arc additive manufacturing reliability and durability, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
The assignee base is fragmented across academic institutions and a small number of corporate filers, with no single entity showing sustained year-over-year momentum yet.
Three assignees tied at the top of a shallow field
Tech Innovation in Exploration & Mining Foundation, Swami Vivekananda University and individual filer Sudipta Swain each recorded one filing in the latest year — the maximum seen among tracked assignees. No filer in this dataset has yet built a multi-filing streak in a single year.
Some early academic filers have gone quiet
Delhi Technological University and Chennai Institute of Technology both show zero filings in the latest year against prior activity, a full year-over-year drop. That pattern is common among academic portfolios built around a single research grant or thesis cycle rather than an ongoing R&D programme.
Filing is largely solo, with a few individual-led clusters
The strongest co-assignee links in the dataset all trace to Sudipta Swain paired separately with three other individuals, rather than to a lab-to-lab or company-to-university tie-up. That suggests reliability-focused WAAM patenting here is still driven by individual academic researchers assembling small co-inventor teams.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| TECH INNOVATION IN EXPLORATION & MINING FOUNDATION | 1 | — |
| SWAMI VIVEKANANDA UNIV | 1 | — |
| SUDIPTA SWAIN | 1 | — |
| Northeastern University (China) | 0 | — |
| DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY | 0 | -100% |
| CHENNAI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | 0 | -100% |
| Board of Regents, The University of Texas System | 0 | -100% |
| Tata Steel Limited | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a fragmented, still-accelerating field. These are the next questions worth running before committing a filing or design-around strategy.
Model the design-around space for the top-cited families
CN109623180A and the two Hamilton Sundstrand-adjacent US filings carry the most citation weight in this set. Map their independent claims against your own process parameters before assuming freedom to operate.
Explore claim scope in EurekaTrack the academic-to-corporate handoff
Much of the current filing volume comes from Indian academic institutions with single-year filing bursts. Watch for licensing or assignment activity as these move toward commercial partners.
Set up assignee alerts in EurekaRe-run the classification split as volume grows
With only 28 families, the B22F and C22C counts could shift meaningfully with a handful of new filings. Revisit the IPC composition once 2025-2026 publications catch up.
Rebuild this search in EurekaCommon questions on WAAM reliability patents
The core classification is B23K9/04, which covers arc welding and is used as the anchor class because WAAM is fundamentally an arc welding process applied layer by layer. Reliability-specific subject matter — fatigue testing, mechanical property verification — pulls in G01N3 for materials testing, while the additive manufacturing framing itself sits under B33Y and, where powder feedstock is involved, B22F. In this dataset, B23K appears in all 28 records and B33Y in 17 of them, confirming that WAAM reliability patents are classified primarily as welding patents first and additive-manufacturing patents second.
No single assignee dominates this dataset; the field is fragmented across academic institutions, individual inventors and a handful of corporate filers. The most recent-year activity is split evenly across three assignees each filing once, and citation leadership belongs to an older magnesium-alloy process family rather than a fatigue- or porosity-specific one. This suggests the leadership question is still open — worth revisiting annually as filing volume grows.
Eighteen of the 28 tracked records were filed with the Indian patent office against eight in the United States. That gap most likely reflects a high volume of academic and institutional filing activity in India — universities filing to build portfolios and support research output — rather than India being the commercial centre for WAAM part production or certification. Filing counts by receiving office should not be read as a proxy for where the technology will actually be manufactured or deployed.
It is early-stage and still accelerating rather than maturing. Filings ran essentially flat through the mid-2010s to early 2020s, with only one filing recorded at the 2022 midpoint, before climbing to a peak of 12 in the most recent full year. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, even that peak likely understates true recent filing activity, meaning the field's real growth curve is probably steeper than the visible chart shows.
The IPC long tail points to several under-claimed adjacencies: only single-digit record counts appear in classes covering general metal working, materials testing integration and wire working, despite these being natural companions to fatigue and porosity claims. Specific gaps include in-process fatigue-life prediction tied directly to deposition parameters, post-weld treatments for porosity closure, and non-destructive testing integrated into the WAAM build cycle itself. A first claim in any of these areas would likely face a shallower prior-art field than a claim on the core WAAM process, which is already well covered under B23K and B33Y.
Research Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Reliability and Durability in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole wire arc additive manufacturing reliability and durability corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.