America Makes will soon be closing out its initial round of project calls (October 30th) for their first Government Driven Rapid Innovation Call. The project revolves around an understanding that additive manufacturing of metal lattice structures presents a unique opportunity to tailor product performance and weight. Hence, lattice structures have been considered for various automotive, medical, aerospace, energy, and defense applications. While these complex geometric features offer another beneficial dimension of design freedom, qualification of products which incorporate these features can be financially belabored with trial and error approaches at the full component or sub-element scales due to a lack of sufficient tools and methods to assess lattice structure mechanical performance. There exists an unaddressed need to develop and validate test coupon designs and methods which facilitate quantifying the intrinsic mechanical behavior of additively manufactured metal lattice structures.
Its suggested that project approaches should systematically address and eliminate sources of potential or known variation for the tensile testing of metal laser powder bed fusion lattice structures. Proposers are encouraged to consider tensile testing of 316 stainless steel, Ti-6Al-4V, or both materials.
Read more about the project as well as submit an RFP here
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