Sep 12, 2022

A new U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) research project to Southern University, Louisiana State University, and Auburn University is expected to contribute significantly to ASTM International’s newly established Consortium on Materials Data & Standardization (CMDS).

The newly funded $4 million NSF EPSCoR award is to conduct research on rapid qualification for additively manufactured (AM) critical components used in key industries including aviation, space, and medical industries.

“NSF is excited to witness the transition of a fundamental research to applied aligned with the current need of the industry,” says Subrata Acharya, Ph.D., program officer, NSF. “We have a mission to progress the science and engineering fields and we value bridging academic institutes and the AM industry”.

“Lacking in-depth knowledge of additive manufacturing process-structure-property (PSP) relationships, current part qualification efforts are component-testing heavy, time consuming, and account for over 50% of production cost,” notes Patrick Mensah, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, Southern University and A&M College.

The research generated under this project will help establish a rapid qualification framework for AM parts, based on experimental and simulation databases of PSP relationships, that will support expedited adoption of these technologies across critical applications.

ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) recently launched the CMDS initiative. The effort brings together key organizations from across the entire AM value stream to collaborate on standardization requirements for AM materials data generation supporting qualification and certification.

“The ASTM CMDS approach is particularly focused on determining key PSP relationships necessary to develop methods for generating machine-agnostic materials data and this NSF funded project is well aligned with this approach,” says Mohsen Seifi, Ph.D., ASTM’s vice president of global advanced manufacturing programs.

“The goal of the project is to address current challenges related to exhaustive data-driven qualification practices, transferability of the data, and correlating material property data to part performance for additive manufacturing processes,” notes Nima Shamsaei, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence and professor of mechanical engineering at Auburn University. “The project outcomes are to provide the industry with a much needed rapid, prediction-based qualification strategy.”

Mensah and Shamsaei join Shengmin Guo, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering at Louisiana State University, and Shuai Shao, Ph.D., associate professor of mechanical engineering at Auburn University, as Co-PI’s of the project.

AM COE Media Contact: Tessa Sulkes, tel +1.610.832.9677; tsulkes@astm.org

Release #11537

###