Questek Innovations LLC, Evanston, Ill., was recently awarded six separate projects from the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army to develop technologies and design new alloys specifically tailored to the unique processing conditions and materials-related challenges of additive manufacturing. These include one Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project, two SBIR Phase I projects, and three Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I projects focused on aluminum, titanium, and steel systems. The combined funding contract value exceeds $2 million.
“A materials-based approach to addressing the challenges of additive manufacturing is crucial for accelerating the development of this technology and achieving, or even surpassing, the performance of traditionally-processed alloys,” says ASM Fellow Aziz Asphahani, Questek’s Chief Executive Officer. “We look forward to the outcomes of these projects, and the prospect of adopting ICME-designed alloys as the first-generation, high-performance additive manufacturing materials.”
The awarded projects include the following:
Under an Office of Naval Research (ONR)-funded Phase II SBIR project (Topic N141-062) titled “Computational Design of Aluminum Alloys for use in Additive Manufacturing,” Questek is furthering the development of three Questek-designed aluminum alloys specifically for processing by Direct Metal Laser Sintering AM. The goal of this program is to combine AlSiMg alloys, which can be printed without cracking but have low strength, with the 6061/7050 alloys, which have high strength but which crack during additive manufacturing. corrosion tests.
Under a U.S. Navy Phase I STTR project (Topic N16A-007) titled “Optimized High Performance Stainless Steel Powder for Additive Manufacturing,” Questek is developing a new powder specification for high-strength martensitic precipitation-hardenable 17-4 stainless steel, optimized specifically for selective laser melting (SLM) technologies.
Under an ONR-funded Phase I STTR project (Topic N16A-022) titled “Integrated Computational Material Engineering Tool Set for Additive Manufacturing of Stainless Steel (316L),” Questek is developing an “Integrated Model Toolkit” that enables the modeling of AM process by predicting local composition, microstructure, residual stresses, defects, and mechanical properties for stainless steel 316L aerospace components.
Under a U.S. Army Phase I SBIR project (Topic A15-104) titled “Application of ICME to Optimize Processing of State-of-the-art Gear Steels in Additive Manufacturing,” Questek atomized, built via LENS and DMLS AM processes and evaluated its high-performance carburizable Ferrium® C64® steel.
Under an ONR-funded Phase I SBIR project (Topic N161-071) titled “Additive Manufacturing Development of Naval Platform Heat Exchangers,” Questek is extending its ICME tools to evaluate materials for the DMLS production of heat exchangers. The project includes fabrication of test specimens to address one of the unique challenges to AM of heat exchangers: minimum component thickness.
Under a U.S. Navy Phase I STTR project (Topic N16A-004) titled “Quantifying Uncertainty in the Mechanical Performance of Additively Manufactured Parts Due to Material and Process Variation,” Questek is extending the Accelerated Insertion of Materials framework for managing the uncertainty of material properties to the mechanical performance of laser power bed additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V materials.
