RADIABEAM TECHNOLOGIES, LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N171-070

Description

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology, through its unique layer-by-layer, freeform fabrication capability, has the potential to reduce supply chain issues and enable new components with superior performance at reduced cost for the Navy. Although the development of metal AM techniques has made significant advances in recent years, unique processing and material development issues will require the use non-destructive evaluation (NDE) for critical AM fabricated parts. X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) has been demonstrated as a valuable tool in identifying porosity, cracks, and delamination in metal AM fabricated parts. While commercial off-the-shelf X-ray CT systems have been found suitable for NDE of small (10s of mm) AM parts, for larger AM parts (100s 1000s mm) no such X-ray CT systems exist. This proposal addresses NDE requirements for powder-bed fusion (PBF) and direct energy deposition (DED) AM fabricated parts ranging in size from 100s mm to 1000s mm scale and for materials ranging (in density) from aluminum to tungsten. In Phase I we will develop a conceptual design for the Adaptive, Multi-Energy Computed Tomography system for Large Additively Manufactured Parts (AMECT-LAMP), and demonstrate feasibility with analytical modeling and testing. In Phase II we will develop a prototype AMECT-LAMP, and experimentally verify its performance.