The global manufacturing industry is undergoing a transformation towards lightweight and high-performance development, and aluminum alloys have become the dominant material for key components of high-end equipment. The conventional single-wire directed energy deposition-arc (single-wire DED-arc) suffers from inherent limitations, including excessive heat input and fixed compositions of commercial welding wires. While multi-wire directed energy deposition-arc (multi-wire DED-arc) technology presents significant advantages, its development still faces numerous challenges. This paper reviews the research status and engineering progress of multi-wire DED-arc technology for aluminum alloys, analyzes the synergistic regulation mechanism of three core process dimensions (wire feeding rate regulation, current-voltage synergistic control, and inter-wire geometric parameter optimization), and summarizes its applications in the automotive, rail transit, and aerospace fields. It further identifies the core advantages and key bottlenecks of this technology, establishes a unified theoretical framework for multi-wire DED-arc aluminum alloy forming, and can provide a valuable reference for future research in this field and the development of dedicated precision equipment.
multi-wire directed energy deposition-arc (multi-wire DED-arc); aluminum alloy; in-situ alloying; precision forming