SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project may be characterized by major advances in analysis of injection-molded parts, providing notable societal benefits through innovative new uses of these materials. Of particular note in this regard is the automotive industry. Despite the long held promise of composite materials in automotive applications, the industry has been slow to adopt widespread use of composites due to uncertainties in performance under challenging loading conditions. A successful rollout of the envisioned software will bring transformational change to this industry, leading to notable long-term societal benefits related to energy efficiency and safety. Beyond the automotive industry, chopped fiber structural components are ubiquitous in consumer products, aerospace components, and electronics. The company's goal is to provide accurate solutions involving complex material behavior, producing parts designed for maximum efficiency and achieved at initial fabrication rather than after multiple production iterations. The result is a disruptive technology that will dramatically lower the cost of production. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the immense technical challenge associated with nonlinear material modeling to failure of structural components made using chopped fiber composite materials. The fiber volume fractions and orientations of a chopped fiber composite material produce wild microstructural configurations that may vary throughout the structure. The problem is significantly amplified by the complex deformation mechanisms occurring in typical polymer matrix materials. Moreover, polymer behavior is dramatically influenced by environmental and loading conditions. Existing software solutions for the engineering analysis of chopped fiber structural components are either inadequate due to gross oversimplifications or, at the other extreme, overly complex to implement, thereby rendering them useless to the typical design engineer. Lack of an adequate software solution results in expensive over-design and dramatically longer cycles to market. The company's goal is to provide accurate solutions involving complex material behavior, producing parts designed for maximum efficiency and achieved at initial fabrication rather than after multiple production iterations. A hallmark of the company's software is an emphasis on simplicity while still producing high fidelity stress analyses simulating complex nonlinear material behaviors.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project relates to the notion of distributed manufacturing using 3D printing, where structural parts may be manufactured onsite, meeting on-demand needs while eliminating transportation costs and inventory storage. Unique, one-off prints, such as may often occur in the medical industry are another virtue of 3D print technology. For these reasons, virtually every major US manufacturing industry is exploring avenues to utilize 3D printing. While 3D printing is unquestionably entering the mainstream of manufacturing technology, a glaring gap in advancing the industry is the simulation of the performance of an "as manufactured" part. A common question surrounding 3D print manufacturing today is: "How do I know if my part will perform as envisioned?" The proposed technology brings an industry leading software simulation to the product engineer and designer to answer this very question, enabling engineers to predict part performance, prior to attempting a build. The speed and simplicity of the software solution is transformative, accelerating the adoption of this disruptive manufacturing technology.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project addresses the technical challenge of predicting structural performance of an "as manufactured" fiber-reinforced 3D printed part. Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers the product engineer or designer tremendous freedom to create parts not achievable by more traditional processes. However, parts produced by AM are fundamentally different than those produced by conventional methods. For example, a machined aluminum part is largely homogenous, while a 3D printed part allows for internal lattice (infill) structures. A 3D printed part can also exhibit a multitude of process anomalies such as voids, delamination between layers, warping produced by residual stresses as the part cools, and, in the case of fiber filled plastics, fiber orientation that varies throughout the part. Collectively, these features can have a dramatic impact on the ultimate performance of the part and must be understood by the engineer early in the design stage. This project seeks to develop a commercial software simulation product that predicts the structural performance of a part produced by 3D printing, while optimizing the infill (lattice) structure for strength and weight. Speed, simplicity, and high-fidelity results are hallmarks of the proposed solution and are at the core of the value proposition.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.