Onsite Structural Restoration Methods for Aircraft Components

Aircraft designed for today’s Navy are being pressed into service beyond their design life resulting in increase in failure rates of parts that were not expected to fail. The Phase II base project will be based on Phase I and Phase I Option work to develop a full restoration system that can be used to restore various aircraft components. The components in a damaged aircraft component will be used for testing and demonstration. The specific technical objectives of Phase II base include: 1) define the metallic melt deposition (MMD) restoration process requirements; 2) design the MMD system; 3) develop a user friendly feature-based approach to facilitate restoration; 4) implement the MMD restoration process; 5) restore representative components; and 6) characterize the mechanical and microstructural properties achieved through the restoration process. The objectives of the Phase II Option will be based on the Phase II work to: 1) extend the feature-based library; 2) restore more components with the additional features to extend the library; 3) characterize the mechanical and microstructural properties achieved through the additional features; and 4) optimize process parameters to achieve process reliability.