FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Brentwood, TN, May 15, 2025 – The US Navy’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program awarded VEXTEC a Phase I contract to modernize predictive lifing capabilities for components that are subjected to corrosive environments. Currently, the US Navy spends $3-$4 billion/year on corrosion mitigation activities, with a significant portion spent on the premature replacement or repair of components. Predictive technologies that incorporate better understanding of how corrosion mechanisms influence fatigue performance can be utilized to safely gain additional operation life from these components.

In this 6-month Phase I program, VEXTEC will investigate how its commercially available computational software VPS-MICRO^® can be linked to corrosion modeling schemes (pits, surface cracks, and near-surface cracks) for metallic alloys that are of interest to the Navy, and that an integrated cumulative damage growth simulation software tool is feasible for further development in a potential Phase II program. VEXTEC will collaborate with Dr. James Burns, a recognized expert in corrosion fatigue testing and modeling, to understand corrosion’s role in creating surface roughness conditions.

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.

Brentwood, TN, October 10, 2022 – The United States Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office (USAF RSO) has signed-on for a yearlong Phase III program with VEXTEC Corporation. The Phase III program will deploy VEXTEC’s VPS-MICRO computational predictive software to USAF engineering teams at the forefront of metal additive manufacturing (AM) for critical sustainment activities.

VEXTEC’s successful SBIR Phase II AM program with RSO, born out of an open call Pitch Day solicitation, catalyzed USAF interest in predicting risk of fatigue failure of AM metal parts. A demonstration project at the close of Phase II was coordinated between VEXTEC and Air Force Life Cycle Management Center – Propulsion Directorate (AFLCMC/LP) at Tinker Air Force Base. VPS-MICRO was able to provide quantitative predictive capabilities, that gave engineers and managers actionable information before any AM parts were even built.

“The Air Force wants to develop more digital tools to be able to take full advantage of the potential AM can provide,” stated Dr. Bob Tryon, VEXTEC Chief Technology Officer. “This Phase III program is structured such that, not only will VPS-MICRO be delivered to engineers who specialize in risk assessment, but standard work protocols will effectively integrate this technology into the teams’ workflows at Tinker. This will give the Air Force additional resource support to additively manufacture their own metal parts.”

The ultimate goal of the Phase III is to highlight how digital predictive tools can complement existing testing schemes, to accelerate risk prediction and alternative material qualification for new and legacy components that utilize AM.

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.

October 5, 2016 -The United States Air Force (USAF) recognizes that rising procurement cost and shrinking budgets require sustainment of existing aircraft. An improved life cycle management tool that helps inform sustainment decisions and extends remaining useful life of aircraft is essential for decreasing total ownership costs. To facilitate this effort, the USAF has awarded a new Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to VEXTEC to develop a software that can be used to predict the effect of corrosion on the lifetime assessment of airborne systems.

Quantification of corrosion damage is important to the management of the structural integrity of an airframe, and current corrosion damage modeling methods are expensive and provide only rough estimates of damage. Cracking due to corrosion is a complex problem that needs to integrate multiple physics-of-failure modes for accurate simulation of the damage state and better prediction of failure risk. VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management® (VLM®) proprietary software is a multi-disciplinary, multi-scale systems engineering software in which failure models are developed for all of the important components in a system, such as an airframe. The result of this Phase II program will be an integrated computational software that combines state-of-the-art corrosion and structural integrity models, and demonstrates prediction of a corrosion-assisted failure on an aircraft component.

“VEXTEC is in an extraordinary position to develop a probabilistic corrosion assisted cracking tool capable of determining the locations and intervals for inspection of current aircraft along with improving the structural designs for future aircraft,” stated Dr. Animesh Dey, VEXTEC Chief Product Development Officer (CPDO). “VLM services and software have helped clients accelerate product development, reduce physical testing costs, improve product designs and material specification during development, and helped clients resolve field performance issues.”

It is envisioned that the software will be used to optimize inspection and maintenance of aging aircraft. It will also aid in the design of corrosion-tolerant structures. The capability will enhance the overall scope of VLM to become a general purpose, multi-disciplinary virtual design, analysis and inspection tool. VEXTEC will work closely with the USAF, in particular the Aircraft Structural Integrity Program (ASIP) managers in this Phase II. The collaboration will help to commercialize the technology being developed in Phase II via integration with ASIP sustainment practices.

About VEXTEC:

VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management (VLM) is a unique integration of engineering analysis, computational materials science and condition monitoring protected by seven patents. The VLM process helps companies predict and enhance the reliability and performance of critical components during design, testing, manufacturing and service. Since 2000, VEXTEC’s Virtual Twin® has provided predictive analytics prognostics and life extension for hundreds of different products. To learn more, visit www.vextec.com.

“We are excited about this award,” says Dr. Sanjeev Kulkarni, VEXTEC’s Vice President for Sales & Business Development, “along with the two additional awards that we have received in recent weeks, one from the USAF and the other from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). We appreciate the recognition of maturity related to VEXTEC’s technology”. The key in this award is VEXTEC’s method for modeling damage as microstructurally small and physically small cracks by capturing the microstructure of the material and crack closure effects prior to transition to long crack regime.

According to Dr. Robert Tryon, the Principal Investigator on this project and VEXTEC, CTO, “There is a broad potential benefit of this technology in any industry such as Aerospace, Automotive, Energy and Medical Devices, where determining the fatigue life of structures is important along with the direct linking of this to tools used for structural design. VEXTEC sees the generation of significant potential value with the successful transition of these developments for customers in these and other markets.”

Founded in 2000, VEXTEC Corporation has developed patented technology on virtual material modeling and predicting product durability. VEXTEC offers its Virtual Life Management^® (VLM^®) software and services to a variety of commercial and government customers.

A limiting factor in the current approach for predicting corrosion influenced part life is that corrosion and fatigue failure mechanisms are modeled separately rather than together. Seldom are synergistic damage processes of corrosion and fatigue explicitly modeled in commercially available software applications used by OEMs. However, recent developments in unified fatigue modeling are bringing corrosion and fatigue modeling techniques together by reducing the size of the initial surface flaw in damage tolerance analysis to create a total fatigue life approach that can address the microstructure of the corroded surface.

“We are extremely pleased to be recognized with this highly competitive award from the USAF,” said Dr. Robert Tryon (CTO, Co-Founder of VEXTEC).  “Not only is this an important step for the USAF in designing a corrosive resistant fleet of the future, but for VEXTEC as we continue to add modules and functionality to our proprietary Virtual Life Management® (VLM®) software.”

While the primary goal of Phase I is to demonstrate the conceptual design of a corrosion fatigue prediction tool, the overall goal of the SBIR program is to develop mature technologies that can be commercialized for sale in the private sector and/or military markets. To this end, VEXTEC has developed a roadmap for this technology that will take this concept from Phase I demonstration to a valuable asset for the defense and aerospace industry. Ultimately, this technology will enable alloy by design in support of all new reliable and sustainable aircraft designs.