VEXTEC is honored to be part of this year’s JANNAF Liquid Propulsion Subcommittee (LPS) Advanced Materials Panel (AMP) Additive Manufacturing for Propulsion Applications Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) in Huntsville, AL. VEXTEC (supported by Aerojet Rocketdyne) presented results from a recent SBIR program that developed an additive manufacturing certification framework for Air Force applications, with the objective of accelerating the qualification and adoption process for new additive manufactured materials, augmenting the traditional verification process with a model-informed software tool called VPS-MICRO®. The purpose of the JANNAF (Joint Army, Navy, NASA Air Force) is to promote and facilitate exchange of technical and programmatic information among the Military Departments, Defense Agencies,
NASA, U.S. industry and academia; to establish standards; to effect coordination and avoid unnecessary duplication of basic research, applied research, advanced technology development, advanced component development and prototypes, and system development and demonstration programs in the areas of missile, gun, and space propulsion and energetics; to accomplish problem solving in areas of joint interest; and to support collaboration to maintain and strengthen the domestic rocket propulsion industrial base.
The VEXTEC developed software, VPS-MICRO, is an Integrated Computational Material Engineering (ICME) based tool that predicts the risk of cyclic fatigue failure of an additive manufactured metal part based on the location specific microstructure, defects, residual stress and surface roughness. Using the software eliminates unsuccessful design options early in the design processes. Also, the software greatly reduces the test cost and time needed to determine the statistical confidence in the certified lifetime instead of having to acquire a large population of fatigue tests needed to do the same.
Leave A Comment