SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The performance of parts made by metallic additive manufacturing (AM) is highly correlated to the underlying bulk/surface microstructure characteristics (e.g. porosities, morphology, phases etc.) which are related to the processing and post processing conditions. Regardless of how optimized post processing can be, poorly selected processing parameters will always result in poor component performance, especially under dynamic loading conditions. Using trial and error to optimize processing parameters to achieve desired performance is expensive and time consuming. Thus, MRL is adopting an integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) approach which uses simulation and modeling for process parameter optimization in AM in general and in laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) in particular.
