Manufacturing of Stress Physical Scale Models (SPSMs) for Signature Reduction and Resistance to Environmental Stress

The use of stress physical scale models allows the Navy to design ship magnetic field signature reduction systems into Navy vessels. Current methods for fabricating the stress physical scale models (SPSM) are expensive and are not timely enough to allow introduction of the signature reduction system into the ship build early in the cycle. Texas Research Institute Austin (TRI/Austin) is investigating and developing a SPSM fabrication process that will allow rapid turnaround between ship drawings and completed SPSM. The method under development is less expensive than legacy SPSM fabrication processes and appears to have greater capability to more precisely model the ship physically. TRI/Austin will investigate the limitations of the proposed SPSM fabrication system and propose the methods to overcome these limitations. The limitations of the proposed method include lack of a full understanding of the effects of the operational parameters of the fabrication process on the resulting model mechanical and magnetic properties. Other non-material issues that pertain to SPSM fabrication when using the proposed process include scale and shape issues. The objective of the proposed effort is to move a new SPSM fabrication process from the development phase to the full implementation in producing high fidelity Navy SPSM.