Using Additive Manufacturing as a Pathway to Change the Qualification Paradigm
Abstract
Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers the opportunity to transform design, manufacturing,
and qualification with its unique capabilities. AM is a disruptive technology, allowing the
capability to simultaneously create part and material while tightly controlling and monitoring the
manufacturing process at the voxel level, with the inherent flexibility and agility in printing
layer-by-layer. AM enables the possibility of measuring critical material and part parameters
during manufacturing, thus changing the way we collect data, assess performance, and accept or
qualify parts. It provides an opportunity to shift from the current iterative design-build-test
qualification paradigm using traditional manufacturing processes to design-by-predictivity where
requirements are addressed concurrently and rapidly. The new qualification paradigm driven by
AM provides the opportunity to predict performance probabilistically, to optimally control the
manufacturing process, and to implement accelerated cycles of learning. Exploiting these
capabilities to realize a new uncertainty quantification-driven qualification that is rapid, flexible,
and practical is the focus of this paper.