In Short:
DARPA has awarded a project to researchers from MIT, CMU, and Lehigh University focused on optimizing multi-material structures for aerospace technologies. The team will create advanced design tools for bladed disks in jet engines, combining traditional mechanics with AI. This project aims to improve rocket engine reliability and efficiency by allowing selective material use in various component areas, enhancing performance and sustainability.
Award from DARPA brings together researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and Lehigh University under the Multiobjective Engineering and Testing of Alloy Structures (METALS) program. The collaborative effort focuses on developing innovative design tools for the simultaneous optimization of shape and compositional gradients in multi-material structures. The research aims to complement emerging high-throughput materials testing techniques, with a particular emphasis on the bladed disk (blisk) geometry, which is commonly found in turbomachinery, including jet and rocket engines, serving as a significant challenge for the team.
Zachary Cordero, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) and the project’s lead principal investigator, commented, “This project could have important implications across a wide range of aerospace technologies. Insights from this work may enable more reliable, reusable rocket engines that will power the next generation of heavy-lift launch vehicles. This project merges classical mechanics analyses with cutting-edge generative AI design technologies to unlock the plastic reserve of compositionally graded alloys, allowing safe operation in previously inaccessible conditions.”
Different regions of blisks demand specific thermomechanical properties and performance characteristics, such as resistance to creep, low cycle fatigue, and high strength. Large-scale production processes must also account for cost and sustainability metrics, including the sourcing and recycling of alloys in the design phase.
Cordero elaborated, “Currently, with standard manufacturing and design procedures, one must come up with a single magical material, composition, and processing parameters to meet ‘one part-one material’ constraints. Desired properties are often mutually exclusive, prompting inefficient design tradeoffs and compromises.”
While a single-material approach may be optimal for a particular location within a component, it can leave other areas vulnerable to failure or necessitate the use of critical materials throughout an entire part, even when they may only be required in specific locations. The rapid advancements in additive manufacturing processes, which facilitate voxel-based composition and property control, present the team with unique opportunities for substantial performance enhancements in structural components.
Cordero’s team consists of notable collaborators, including Zoltan Spakovszky, T. Wilson (1953) Professor in Aeronautics in AeroAstro; A. John Hart, Class of 1922 Professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Faez Ahmed, ABS Career Development Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering at MIT; S. Mohadeseh Taheri-Mousavi, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at CMU; and Natasha Vermaak, associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh.
The team’s expertise encompasses hybrid integrated computational material engineering, machine-learning-based material and process design, precision instrumentation, metrology, topology optimization, deep generative modeling, additive manufacturing, materials characterization, thermostructural analysis, and turbomachinery.
Hart noted, “It is especially rewarding to work with the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers collaborating on the METALS project, spanning from developing new computational approaches to building test rigs operating under extreme conditions. It is a truly unique opportunity to build breakthrough capabilities that could underlie the propulsion systems of the future, leveraging digital design and manufacturing technologies.”
This research is funded by DARPA under contract HR00112420303. The views, opinions, and/or findings expressed are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
