Historicalarchived
Commercialization of Composite Structure Design Technology Moves Toward Broad Industry Use
AIR VEHICLES DIRECTORATE
Officials from the Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) Division, and the Air Vehicles Directorate, announced recently that key structural analysis software developed under the Composites Affordability Initiative (CAI) team banner, will be commercialized by ABAQUS, Inc., ensuring the long-term viability of the government/industry investment in advanced structural analysis tools. Typical finite element analysis has been used to predict where and under what conditions a structure will fail. In order to increase the confidence to use advanced composite structural designs (being matured under CAI), improvements to this predictive capability have been successfully pursued. However, initial failure of a structure is not the only concern. Users are also concerned about how the damage will progress in order to understand the full impact of damage and the durability of the structural design. The Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT) was developed by Boeing under contract with the CAI team. VCCT plays an important role by providing unprecedented capability for the design of aerospace structures involving composites. Under ManTech leadership, Boeing developed, refined and proved the VCCT approach for predicting the reliability of major composite structural components over the past several years. Boeing and ABAQUS, Inc. have applied for a patent on VCCT. ABAQUS, Inc., will market the technology commercially.
Applications
- Military and Commercial Significance:
- This software extends new and unprecedented capabilities to state-of-the-art structural analysis tools by allowing the user to not only predict when the structure will fail, but also how that damage will grow and progress, thereby allowing all concerned a more complete picture of the durability and damage tolerance of advanced composite structures. The technology is currently being used extensively within the Boeing 7E7 and the Air Force's X-45C programs.
- In the short term, the agreement provides that ABAQUS, Inc., will commercialize the technology for use by Boeing, its suppliers and other third parties. In the longer term, the technology will be made generally available to all ABAQUS, Inc., customers as an integrated part of the ABAQUS software suite.
- Technical experts from ABAQUS, Inc., were asked by NASA and industry leaders to add crack propagation capability to their analysis tools. The CAI had already addressed that deficiency in analysis code and ABAQUS, Inc., decided to commercialize their approach. " This technology will provide significant new capabilities for virtual testing of composite structures, and working with ABAQUS, Inc., makes the technology commercially available to Boeing and its supplier community," commented Senior Staff Scientist for the National Institute of Aerospace, Ronald Krueger. "VCCT is a required state-of-the-art technology for anyone in the composites business."
- The CAI team is led by ManTech of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, and includes representatives from the Air Vehicles Directorate, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Bell Helicopter.
Provenance
- Original
- https://dodtechmatch.com/dod/successstories/view.aspx?id=60071
- Archived copy
- Wayback Machine snapshot
This record was recovered from a public web archive of dodtechmatch.com and is preserved for historical reference. It may be outdated. Not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Contact details from the original listing have been withheld.