Sep 24, 2015 | By Benedict
Sandia Labs, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are a science and technology firm who specialise in resolving the USA’s most challenging security issues.
The laboratories are operated and managed by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Sandia Corporation operates Sandia National Laboratories as a contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and supports numerous federal, state, and local government agencies, companies, and organizations.
Images from Sandia
Sandia is currently up to its necks in additive manufacturing research, and is combining 3D printing with ‘topology optimization’ technology in order to produce better parts for national security systems and other projects. Topology optimization is a mathematical approach to design which helps engineers, such as those at Sandia, to find the best concept design that meets design requirements. The technique optimizes material layout within a given design space.
The blissful wedlock of topology optimization and additive manufacturing opens possibilities for complex shapes that conventional manufacturing methods just can’t handle. Partnering the technologies also offers the potential to embed sensors or wiring within a structure as it forms or combine parts to save time and money, reducing the number of joints or other interfaces that could be points of failure: a crucial advantage when working in the field of national security. Materials assurance, a key to certification and qualification, is “the first, most immediate obstacle that we need to overcome,” says Andre Claudet, a manager in the Precision Mechanical Systems department.
There are certain serious precautions and safeguards that must be made when using such technology. Before the techniques can be widely employed in high-reliability, high-consequence uses, researchers must understand both how to create the best shapes and guarantee material properties.
“There are aspects of this marriage between additive manufacturing and topology optimization that are going to be critical for us to address if we’re really going to do this well,” said Simulation Modeling Sciences manager Ted Blacker. “If all you do is make the same old parts a new way, it’s taking advantage of only a fraction of what is possible in additive manufacturing. And if you make these new optimal parts but you can’t assure material quality, they’re of no use.”
Ted Blacker
Sandia is equipped to tackle the problem because of its expertise in computational mechanics and analysis tools it developed in engineering codes such as Sierra and Alegra, modeling tools such as Cubit and expertise with high-performance computers. Sandia also has experience in handling large amounts of data, employs staff who know how to write and adjust codes, has skill in materials science and a history of inventing additive manufacturing techniques. The technology firm also developed Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS), a process to 3D print complex metal parts from powders, and Robocasting, a 3D process that forces ceramic slurry through a pressurized needle to form a part that is fired in a furnace to harden it. Both processes have been commercialized.
Materials Engineering and Manufacturing Science and Technology senior manager Mark Smith believes that Sandia can make significant progress toward tying materials assurance and topology optimization together in three to five years but said it could take a decade or more to reach the ultimate design optimization goal.
Additive manufacturing won't replace traditional manufacturing for everything, Smith said. "We're not going to print a complex mechanical assembly with precision moving part anytime in the near future," he said. "But there may be some applications where it offers unique advantages for us."
Researchers must balance what can be accomplished now against the work still needed to qualify parts. “I don’t want to minimize the potential benefit but I also don’t want to minimize that there’s still a lot of work to be done,” concluded Anthony Geller, manager of the Fluid and Reactive Processes department.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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quick....add "national security" to any article, so you can get joe public to fund research of anything, to aid the imaginary war on the bad guys....