Predicting Deformation and Cracking as a Function of additive manufacturing process parameters, Year 1

The goal is to be able to optimize process parameters of the additive manufacturing process to reduce deformation, cracking, and residual stress leading to mature additive manufacturing for part-level flight design applications. Currently this optimization is done experimentally by manufacturing samples under different parameter settings and then performing stress testing. This is a slow and expensive process. This task is improving simulation models to predict part level deformation and cracking during the Additive Manufacturing process which will reduce the design time of additively manufactured components and will enable machine learning process optimization resulting in increased part reliability.