Research & Development – VEXTEC

VEXTEC Secures AFWERX Phase II Program for Additive Manufacturing

Michael Oja — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 16:45:51 +0000

July 24, 2023

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VEXTEC Secures AFWERX Phase II Program for Additive Manufacturing

VEXTEC Builds on its Relationships with AFRL and Lockheed Martin for Analytical tools in AM

(BRENTWOOD, Tennessee) – VEXTEC announces it has been selected by AFWERX for a SBIR Phase II award focused on predictive analytics for certification in Additive Manufacturing, to address the most pressing challenges in the Department of the Air Force (DAF). The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) process by accelerating the small business experience through faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and eliminating bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution. The DAF began offering the Open Topic SBIR/STTR program in 2018 which expanded the range of innovations the DAF funded and now on July 21, 2023, VEXTEC will start its journey to create and provide innovative capabilities that will strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.

“AM processes have struggled to demonstrate sufficient repeatability to be viable options for the creation of primary structures, due to high reliability requirements and testing and certification costs,” noted Dr. Bob Tryon, Chief Technology Officer at VEXTEC. “There has historically been a lack of analytical tools that can handle the variability in AM-produced materials’ mechanical responses when compared with traditional wrought materials. The probabilistic modeling capability of our VPS-MICRO® software, which can integrate structural and materials analyses, is an ideal solution to meet this challenge in AM. We look forward to working with AFRL/RQVS and our OEM partner Lockheed Martin in this program.”

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

About VEXTEC
VEXTEC Corporation is the home of VPS-MICRO, a unique microstructural fatigue durability prediction software. This technology fills a gap in the existing capabilities provided by CAD/CAM, FEA, statistical modeling, and physical material and component testing, by effectively integrating them into a single computational processing framework. Since 2000, VEXTEC has provided predictive analytics prognostics and life extension capabilities for hundreds of different products. VEXTEC’s clients include leading multinationals in the aerospace, automotive, electronics, energy, heavy industry and medical device manufacturing sectors, as well as many federal government agencies. VEXTEC has seven U.S. patents related to its technology. For more information on VEXTEC and VPS-MICRO software, visit: www.vextec.com.

About Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
Sole organization leading the planning and execution of U.S. Air Force & U.S. Space Force science & technology programs. Orchestrates a world-wide government, industry & academia coalition in the discovery, development & delivery of a wide range of revolutionary technology. Provides leading-edge warfighting capabilities keeping air, space and cyberspace forces the world’s best. Employs 10,800 military, civilian and contractor personnel at 17 research sites executing an annual $4B budget. For more information, visit: www.afresearchlab.com.

About AFWERX
The innovation arm of the DAF and a directorate within AFRL. Brings cutting-edge American ingenuity from small businesses and start-ups to address the most pressing challenges of the DAF. Employs approximately 215 military, civilian and contractor personnel at five hubs and sites executing an annual $1.4B budget. Since 2019, has executed 4,671 contracts worth more than $2B to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base and drive faster technology transition to operational capability. For more information, visit: www.afwerx.com.

Company Press Contact:
Michael Oja
Sales and Project Manager
moja@vextec.com

VEXTEC Wins AFWERX Program for Rapid Certification of Additively Manufactured Parts

Ashley C. Clark — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 17:22:12 +0000

VEXTEC to Demonstrate an Integrated Computational & Experimental Approach for Rapid Certification of AM Parts Using VPS-MICRO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Brentwood, TN, December 05, 2022 – AFWERX – the innovation arm of the US Department of the Air Force (DAF) – has selected VEXTEC for a new Phase I SBIR program, intended to create greater visibility within the DAF for its computational predictive software, VPS-MICRO^®. The software tool enables risk-based certification of parts by predicting failure characteristics from microstructural data. The 3-month program focuses on identifying strong potential customer leads for proven, innovative technology throughout the Air Force and Space Force.

The overall mission of AFWERX and its AFVentures division is to fill capability gaps for the DAF and to transition promising technologies at scale. Phase I SBIR awardees are placed in a cohort which provides them with Air Force resources and tools to facilitate meaningful interactions between small businesses and Air Force customers and end-users. VEXTEC’s VPS-MICRO software for Additive Manufacturing (AM) was a differentiating factor in awarding the Phase I program.

“The Department of the Air Force is a very large customer for many small businesses like ours,” noted Dr. Bob Tryon, Chief Technology Officer at VEXTEC. “We are excited to use this opportunity to reach out to DoD groups organized under the DAF, and inform them about our Digital Engineering solution for analyzing performance of critical metallic components in their platforms. And as metal AM continues to gain momentum, the need for techniques to aid in certification of AM parts will only increase.”

About VEXTEC:

VEXTEC Corporation is the home of VPS-MICRO, a unique microstructural fatigue durability prediction software based on ICME (Integrated Computational Materials Engineering). This technology fills a gap in the existing capabilities provided by CAD/CAM, FEA, statistical modeling, and physical material and component testing, by effectively integrating them into a single computational processing framework. Since 2000, VEXTEC has provided predictive analytics prognostics and life extension capabilities for hundreds of different products. VEXTEC’s clients include leading multinationals in the aerospace, automotive, electronics, energy, heavy industry and medical device manufacturing sectors, as well as many federal government agencies. VEXTEC has seven US patents related to its technology. For more information on VEXTEC and VPS-MICRO software, visit: http://vextec.com.

On the Brink: Materials Science Poised to be the Next Great Digital Transformation

Michael Oja — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:15:14 +0000

The largest time chunks in any product’s life cycle are in the design and engineering phases. This is because there are questions that need to be answered, both in how the product will perform and how the product itself will be made. Each of these parallel design inquiries are rooted in materials science, which at its basic level employs the evaluation and application of a material’s physical properties to make engineering decisions. Over the last 3 decades, shifts to digitization by the design and manufacturing worlds have contributed to the year-over-year advancements in the design loop. The use of finite element analysis (FEA) has revolutionized the way companies attack their structural designs; workstation processor speeds and high-end graphics cards have kept pace to give engineers in-depth knowledge of how their components react to service loads. In manufacturing, robots can repeatedly perform intricate machining, welding, or even build full components in the case of Additive Manufacturing (3-D Printing). However, the lynchpin between these design and manufacturing sectors, materials science, has remained a mostly analog endeavor. Relying on testing, measurement, and analysis, materials science has been necessarily slower in comparison.

The pivot to predictive, analytics-driven strategies is well underway in many industries and is certainly bearing fruit. In healthcare, forests full of patient information on paper have been digitized into electronic health records (EHRs), and health trends are now being predicted with astonishing accuracy. Even in the (slightly) less academic world of internet searches, aggregation of data (search terms, geographies, times of year, among others) reveals a very accurate picture of seasonal illness trends around the globe. The retail sector’s “loyalty card” programs may offer discounts for shoppers, but the habitual data received in return is much more valuable. Manufacturing’s use of the Big Data concept of IoT- Internet of Things (adapted to the Industrial Internet of Things – IIoT, a.k.a. Industry 4.0) is giving plant managers actionable data for improving production rates. Suddenly, the “necessarily slow” process of materials science has become a “cripplingly slow” bottleneck. The drumbeat for progress is persistent from all critical industries (aerospace, automotive, energy, medical devices, etc.). It is inevitable that the products and production methods of the future will demand a quantum leap in materials science. This leap will be facilitated by three main aspects: fundamental changes to materials science education, increasing reliance on desktop prototyping, and the maturation of Additive Manufacturing.

Materials Science Education

Using systematic numerical modeling to analyze and solve complex mechanics problems has been the basis of FEA techniques since their initial development in the late-1960s. The underlying math (algebraic matrices and differential equations) had been around for much longer than this, but the computational capability for solving anything more than the most basic geometries was realized only in the latter-half of the 20th century. It really is amazing how fast FEA has become entrenched in the design process for most industries, but not completely surprising given the amount of attention being paid to it at the university level. As FEA is a natural extension of math and computer science, you will often find entire courses in these disciplines being devoted to the finite element method. These courses place particular emphasis on using software as an assisting tool to visualize the problem (structural analysis, fluid dynamics, etc.). Mechanical engineering students are now required to have at least introductory-level knowledge of this method and one of its fundamental tenets: not every location on a component sees the same stress. On the other side of campus sits the materials science department. Aspiring engineers taking introductory materials courses are told to neglect the reality that materials are not homogeneous and isotropic (the same everywhere), and are also exposed to the physical tests used to assess material properties. Unlike their experience with finite element methods, students’ takeaway from materials science is that it is some kind of “black box” with parameters that are difficult to quantify; only upper-level students would understand. This type of thinking must change, as materials science undergoes the digital transformation necessary to keep up with industry.

Desktop Prototyping

Desktop prototyping goes hand-in-hand with FEA-assisted design. Engineers can rapidly assess the effects of loading components in different ways, or the effects of putting the same loads on components with different geometries. A vanguard of new technologies to digitize materials science is approaching critical mass; these form the basis of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME). VEXTEC’s VPS-MICRO® software is an ICME tool that efficiently marries quantifiable microstructural characteristics with FEA-supplied stresses, to visualize and predict the durability of a component, or even a system of components. Indeed, these material properties are not the “black box” many engineers imagine, nor are they the single deterministic values that are presented to them on material specifications and lot certification reports. These properties are now being leveraged computationally, to achieve efficient production rates and improved end-user performance. The efficient linkage of all of these digital methods to virtually prototype from “cradle to grave”, will give engineers and other decision-makers enormous capability in many aspects of their business (design, sustainment, warranty outlay, and supply chain, just to name a few).

Additive Manufacturing

Arguably, the two most prominent manufacturing buzzwords of the last 5 years have been “Additive Manufacturing” (AM). Companies have been investing heavily in these types of 3-D printing technologies that build components layer by layer, so much so that it has quickly become the third major manufacturing method for metallic components next to conventional forging and casting processes. Earlier this year, VEXTEC’s blog highlighted this shift in manufacturing, and how our VPS-MICRO® technology plays a key role in durability certification for AM. The benefits of additive are obvious: production of near-net shapes with intricate geometries, in controllable volumes with very little waste. However, unlike forging and casting, the materials science related to AM is not yet well-established. Industries are racing to find effective means of qualifying AM components, because the last thing anyone needs is a critical part made by AM to fail when it was not expected to. But the lure of the “on-demand production” that AM offers, much like “on-demand” taxi services like Uber and Lyft in the transportation service industry, will necessarily disrupt and pull materials science into the digital age.

Digital visualization of additively-manufactured Ti-6Al-4V blocks (porosity highlighted in red), and the product as-built using electron beam melting (EBM).

Companies who embrace the analytical digitization of materials science will see outstanding returns both in the near-term and long-term, with technologies that can take full advantage of insatiable consumer demands, and with engineers who are better-equipped to adapt to those demands.

SEQUESTERING THE NEXT GENERATION

Michael Oja — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:39:06 +0000

The hottest word currently being spoken in offices and around dinner tables in the US is “sequestration.” Not since the seminal juror movie 12 Angry Men has the word enjoyed such buzz. While there are many ongoing debates concerning the political ramifications of this government budget-reduction action (that went into effect on March 1), today we would like to discuss one item in particular: its possible effect on military aviation.

The US Military’s newest airborne weapon system, the F-35 Lightning II, is a fifth-generation jet fighter. Along with the other next-generation fighter, the F-22 Raptor, these planes were procured with the intent of fighting the next generation of worldwide threats. The F-22 has been in the US Air Force’s lineup since 2005; the F-35, planned as three main variants for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, had its first test flight in 2006 but has since been mired in production delays and ballooning budget overruns. Mark Thompson penned a timely article in the February 25 edition of Time, “The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built”. His article states that the cost of the program has nearly doubled in the last 12 years, from approximately $200 billion in 2001 to nearly $400 billion today. Add to this the changing landscape of war, in which the next generation of threat and action has shifted from the large (tanks, aircraft) to the small (mobile assault groups, improvised weapons, drone missions). Mr. Thompson posits that the current US strategy of pivoting to threats across the Pacific Ocean could leave the shorter-range F-35 in danger of irrelevance, whenever it does become combat ready. Another article this week, “Half-inch crack blamed for F-35 fighter jet grounding: sources”, details a report of a 0.6” engine blade crack located on February 19 by electromagnetic testing which has grounded all 51 operational F-35 jets. Metallurgical and fractographic analyses have since led to the determination that thermal creep, resulting from the test engine being run for a long time at high temperature, was the cause of the detected crack.

So how does the sequester factor into this? The government-imposed budget cuts will require over $500 billion in spending cuts by the Pentagon (or approximately cuts of 10% per yearly budget for the next 10 years). While this may not impact the F-35 in the short-term – Mr. Thompson states that the Pentagon authorized nearly $5 billion of further funding for the aircraft just before the original sequestration deadline on January 2 – the cuts will cause the schedule of new aircraft acquisition and testing to slip, assuredly raising costs in the long-term.

While all of the above issues may be pressing for the new fighter jet, we would like to focus on a secondary issue brought up by Mr. Thompson. The production delays of the new fighter have forced the military to spend over $5 billion to extend the service lives of the current aging fleet of vehicles, in the forms of reduced flights, inspections and scheduled maintenance. These combat-ready weapon systems may not be as fortunate to have pre-sequester dollars earmarked for them. Even the F-35, being built at the same time it is being re-designed, has already seen significant repair expenditures on the planes currently in use for testing and training (to the tune of $373 million). If there were ways to help the military forecast its maintenance needs based on design, materials, and operation, it would greatly reduce this back-end cost. Indeed, any company interested in reducing maintenance and improving service life of their products would benefit from these capabilities.

VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management (VLM) technology is a suite of software we have developed that can be implemented at any point in the life-cycle of a product, whether that product is a $120 million military airplane, a connecting rod in a commercial diesel engine, or a biomedical implant wire. VLM offers its users the unique capability to understand (in a virtual environment) the fleet-wide effects of proposed changes in a product’s design, material supplier quality, end-user operational severity, and a host of other factors. We have numerous success stories on our “Case Studies” page, and would be happy to talk with those whose budgets are currently being “sequestered” in their own companies.