Multi-material Additive Manufacturing for Advanced Space Systems

ABSTRACT: A multi-material additive manufacturing (AM) approach that uses space compatible material to produce spacecraft components is proposed here. AM is an alternative to traditional fabrication methodologies that reduces led-time and improve quality for commercial entities that consider this technology for rapid prototyping and manufacture of critical time sensitive components. Metallic parts fabricated using current, conventional Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technologies are known to have high residual stresses, inconsistent density characterized by localized defects and anisotropic microstructure due to complex thermal history and variable cooling rates. There is a lack of methodology for quantifying and certifying mechanical properties due to their anisotropic nature and variability in AM machines/processes which is delaying the widespread adaption of AM technology for part fabrication/repair. There are no software packages currently available that are capable of efficiently modeling/simulating the AM process. For metal AM process this team offers revolutionary integrated physics-based design/analysis software with Selective Laser Melting manufacturing. For polymer reinforced plastics the team offers a 3D print computational tool that includes material characterization, machine G-code data processing, mesh generation from G-Code, STL file smoothing, assessment of distortion, residual stress, deflection, and damage/fracture evolution using coupled thermo-mechanical solution.; BENEFIT: The key benefits of this proposed innovation is that it would provide higher level process control for precision manufacturing, controlled results to ensure additive properties meet or exceed wrought properties and a way forward to ensure as-manufactured parts are equivalent to as-designed. A successful application of this innovation would follow two directions. The first would be towards continued development in the laboratory where processes defined in this research would be extended and perfected to address on-going concerns of process control and feedback in additive platforms. The second direction would be to develop software and feedback control to make a product for the immediate real-term needs. This effort will lead to meet the combined needs of government agencies, large corporations, small dynamic corporations, entrepreneurs, hundreds of industries and thousands of potential large scale end-users. From medical devices to aerospace components, application would only be limited by the imagination of the developers.