NSF Award
2328112
This Future Manufacturing Seed Grant (FMSG) project supports research into the theoretical and experimental foundation required to use metal additive manufacturing (AM) as a production process for functional end-use parts. Metal AM is a driver for innovation and competitiveness of United States manufacturing because it allows rapid implementation of new part designs to reduce the time-to-market of new products. However, using metal AM as a production process instead of a prototyping tool requires reliably and repeatably manufacturing parts with near-identical structure, surface topography, and properties. Consequently, understanding the uncertainty associated with the process-structure-property-surface (PSPS) relationship is important. Yet, PSPS research is time-consuming and costly because many specimens are required to derive meaningful information and, alternatively, aggregating existing datasets of different studies to expand and enhance insights about the PSPS relationship is not straightforward because of access/permissions and inconsistencies between data formats. Hence, this research specifically aims to address these fundamental problems by leveraging an uncertainty quantification (UQ) framework and machine learning (ML) algorithms to analyze microstructure and surface topography images, and quantify the PSPS relationship. Additionally, a cloud-based database will make the data and knowledge available to other researchers. Research integrates with education and workforce development, specifically underrepresented groups, through a partnership with Virginia Tech (VT), Virginia State University (VSU), a 4-year Historically Black College/University (HBCU), and the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM), a public-private partnership in Virginia.<br/><br/>The research objective of this project is twofold: quantify the uncertainty of the PSPS relationship for laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) of Inconel 718 and, establish a cloud-based database to aggregate and share PSPS data among different researchers, to reduce duplication of effort and accelerate PSPS research by data-sharing. To accomplish this objective, the research aims to combine a UQ framework with ML algorithms to derive data-driven models that relate L-PBF process parameters to metrics that quantify the microstructure and as-built surface topography. The knowledge resulting from this research will (1) quantify the uncertainty of the microstructure and as-built surface topography as a function of the L-PBF process parameters (forward UQ problem); (2) determine the L-PBF process parameters required to obtain specific uncertainty (or probability definition) of microstructure and as-built surface topography (inverse UQ problem); (3) derive an operating map of the solution of the forward and inverse problems and its uncertainty as a function of the L-PBF process parameters; (4) implement a cloud-based database to aggregate microstructure images and surface topography maps that can be cited using a digital object identifier, and enable combining user-generated datasets. The outcomes of this project will reduce technical barriers and spur adoption of metal AM as a viable manufacturing process for functional end-use parts.<br/><br/>This Future Manufacturing research is supported by the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate's Division of Computer and Network Systems (CISE/CNS) and the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate’s Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SBE/SES).<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
