DARPA awards NCAME up to $2.8M for transformative AM qualification research
Mechanical Engineering
By Jeremy Henderson
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is backing Auburn Engineering’s National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence, or NCAME, to help transform how metal parts are qualified for use.
Through a program known as SURGE, or Structures Uniquely Resolved to Guarantee Endurance, DARPA awarded NCAME up to $2.8 million over four years to support efforts to accelerate and reduce the cost of certifying additively manufactured metal components.
Qualifying a part requires tuning a specific machine to repeatedly produce identical results — a process that can take years and cost millions. SURGE seeks to replace that model with a data-driven approach that predicts each part's performance and lifespan at the point of production.
“We are supporting this DARPA initiative with NCAME’s advanced non-destructive evaluation capabilities,” said Shuai Shao, associate director for research and innovation and the McWane Associate Professor of mechanical engineering. “These methods allow us to detect and characterize defects with the precision needed to link manufacturing processes to performance.”
NCAME’s work focuses on understanding how microstructural features and defects influence durability, particularly fatigue and fracture behavior, said director Nima Shamsaei. The effort also includes development of probabilistic models to account for variability in additive manufacturing, improving confidence in performance predictions.
“Distributed, on-demand production has always been the promise of additive manufacturing,” Shamsaei said. “Through SURGE, we’re helping to make that promise a practical reality.”