ICME-Driven Software for the Deposition of Functionally Graded Materials

Despite many advantages functionally graded materials (FGM) offer for munitions, their implementation is limited by the lack of automated design and deposition software robustly integrated with Directed Energy Deposition (DED) hardware. To fully leverage FGM, the capability for simultaneous on-demand selective deposition of multiple materials within the same melt-pool is essential. Hence, to automate the production of optimal manufacturing paths for parts via DED additive manufacturing (AM), deleterious material phases and thermal history effect are to be avoided within a FGM design/deposition software built on a foundation of in-situ alloy design at the melt-pool length scale. MRL proposes the development, verification, and validation of a novel software for autonomous manufacturing optimization of FGM components on agnostic hardware, built on cyber-physical domain integration using ICME (Integrated Computational Materials Engineering) approaches.