Noncontact Acoustic Emission Testing
Laser Doppler Vibrometry provides a method to detect Acoustic Emission (AE) events with out direct contact with the sample. This makes AE monitoring possible for systems where direct contact will alter the response such as thin plat vibration and Additive Manufacturing procedures
DLA201-002: Grain Boundary Engineering in Additive Manufacturing
Texas Research Institute Austin, Inc. (TRI Austin) A low cost Ultrasonic (UT) system that can be used during Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) Aditive Manufacturing (AM) to control microstructural features of a metallic system will be developed. Success will be evaluted via in situ NDE methods during the AM process, in an effort to detect subpar builds. A wide range of ultrasonic frequencies, intesities and trasducer arrays willl be evaluated to determine how variations in such parameters can alter grains of a given metallic microstructure. This methodology aims to reduce property variation and defects across AM builds to improve part reliability. The system and procedures developed will provide a template that can be extended to many metallic systems and deployed in various AM environments.
Crack Nucleation and Growth Monitoring in High Cycle Fatigue
Hight Throughput fatigue testing is generally time cosuming to achieve, as a result, mode 1 bending has been implimented to achieve a fully reversed fatigue loading regime by applying a vibration loading to achieve high cycle fatigue failure in a shorter time. The dificualty with implimentation of such a system is the lack of ability to detect damage initiation with convnetional methods. This project aims to enhance the typical resonant frequency damage dection method with earlier dectiona via In Situ Acoustic Emisson Monitoring
Coal Based Composite Developement
A combination of Nondestructive (NDE) Methods are being used to evaluate the mechanical response of coal reinforced polymer composites across length scales to allow for optimized formulations given perfered properrties.
Further Details Coming Soon