Manufacturing Process Optimization of Ultrasonic Bonding of Metallic Composites

The research objective of the proposed work is to apply the foundational knowledge of ultrasonic bonding, metallic composites, microstructure transformation kinetics and material failure criteria to create a multi-scale simulation model for the optimization of ultrasonic additive manufacturing (UAM) of metallic composites. The ultrasonic fabrication will be represented as a superposition of multiple thermal, mechanical and metallurgical phenomena. Each phenomenon will be captured individually in terms of analytical model. A pragmatic framework will be developed in order to couple the individual models to simulate the UAM process. The technical feasibility of analytical modeling will be demonstrated using the existing UAM data and the constitutive data reported in the literature for an aluminum alloy. Instrumented UAM experiments will be performed with the same alloy using high power UAM equipment in order verify model calibration. Subsequently, the analytical modeling will be utilized to determine the UAM processing conditions for an aluminum matrix composite material and the commercial feasibility of the proposed work will be demonstrated by successfully producing a build.