SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Despite the tremendous benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) to our warfighters, uncertainty in fatigue life predictions have been a major roadblock for certifying metallic AM parts to fly. We are proposing a hybrid modeling/inspection approach to estimate fatigue life of AMed parts using damage tolerance analysis combined with inspections. The new developed tool is expected to provide certification authorities with the first step towards wider use of AMed in critical components that could be compliant with MIL-STD 1530. The model is designed to account for crack growth rates (da/dN ) vs ?K and the associated data for calibration and validation with linkages to the processing and post processing parameters of AM within our integrated computation adaptive additive manufacturing (iCAAM) software suite for predicting location specific residual stresses, microstructure (crystallography, morphology of phases, and defect) spatial distributions, anisotropic yield surface. The developed tools will also include linkages to non-destructive evaluation (NDE) data.
