Pi Enhanced Reliability & Confidence Effort (PiERCE)

To address the problems faced by the DoD regarding pi joint reliability, MAM shall utilize an innovative, aligned discontinuous fiber material format from Boston Materials inserted using ultrasonic vibrations to create toughened interfaces at the pi-joint bond line and also between plies of the laminate. By increasing the toughness at these interfaces, failures will be driven deeper into the laminate, resulting in reduced scatter and a more predictable failure mode. A significant additional benefit of reducing the scatter is that the effective design allowable will be increased, allowing for weight reductions and/or increased margins. Using the company’s collective experience in developing adhesive bonding technology and  bond reliability over the past three decades, MAM and their partners Boston Materials and SwRI will execute a program that demonstrates the benefits of these reinforcements and also utilizes models to gain better understanding of the interfaces. The TRUST project from DARPA’s Open Manufacturing program will serve as a launch point, and  the models generated by TRUST will be the baseline.