$2.7 million naval research grant funds CCM project

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently awarded the Center for Composite Materials (CCM) $2.7 million over two years to continue its investigation and development of automated molding technologies for advanced composites.

The Advanced Materials Intelligent Processing Center (AMIPC) was established at UD in 1997 as a national resource to reduce the labor and processing costs of composites manufacturing, with a focus on liquid molding processes.

The initial AMIPC program was led by Suresh Advani, CCM and mechanical engineering. He and John W. Gillespie Jr., CCM, materials science and civil engineering, are co-principal investigators on the Phase Three program.

"Through the AMIPC program, we're establishing a virtual manufacturing environment for liquid molding processes," Advani said. "When CCM initiated its focus on manufacturing science back in 1985, a significant part of the research was the development of simulations for process modeling. Now, we're taking the next step and combining these simulations with sensors to eliminate defects during manufacturing."

Industry has been involved since the program was initiated to ensure the relevance of the basic research being conducted.

"Boeing helped us by sharing their current roadblocks to establishing automation and improving yield," Advani said. "That provided us with issues we could address in our science-based modeling efforts. Honeywell contributed by developing the user interface for our intelligent manufacturing process."

The first two phases of the AMIPC program focused on resin transfer molding (RTM), a mature technology but one that is limited in terms of the scale and volume of parts it can produce. Phase Three expands on the earlier work to address vacuum-assisted RTM (VARTM), a process that is poised for exponential growth based on its capability to produce large-scale parts.

"We're well-positioned to be a leader in establishing and transitioning the science base for VARTM," Gillespie said. "We have the unique capability to establish 'intelligent' workcells to prove out simulations, sensors and controls before we transition them to government labs and industrial sponsor sites for feedback."

One such workcell already has been transitioned to the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Carderock Division (NSWC-CD), which is serving as a beta site for models and simulations developed under the AMIPC program.

"We plan to work closely with the UD researchers in testing the tools that they develop," Roger M. Crane, at NSWC-CD, said, "as well as with the end users to transfer the technology."

"We have worked closely with the Navy since this program was initiated," Gillespie said, "which is part of the reason for our success. We're not only conducting basic research and educating students but also successfully transitioning our research to DOD [Department of Defense] agencies and industry."

In addition to funding the AMIPC program, ONR also provided support for the establishment of an intelligent VARTM testbed at CCM through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP).

James Kelly, naval research program manager for the AMIPC program, strongly endorses the program.

"What we found in working with other universities in the past," he said, "is that many of them conduct research on a single aspect of composites design or processing. The uniqueness of the program at Delaware is that the researchers are looking at all of the issues and integrating them in an effort to make manufacturing more cost-effective." The technology being developed under the AMIPC will also be applied to the civil infrastructure, marine, aerospace and transportation industries.

–Diane Kukich