image: SwRI has received a two-year, $3.2 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to predict the structural life of individual components made with Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. SwRI Lead Engineer Dr. James Sobotka, who oversees the project, will use fatigue testing to evaluate AM components.
Credit: Southwest Research Institute
SAN ANTONIO — April 7, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has received a two-year, $3.2 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to predict the structural life of components made with additive manufacturing (AM). Researchers will update the SwRI-created DARWIN® software to support this work.
AM machines build parts by incrementally adding metal via sophisticated computer controls. AM processes create components with intricate design qualities and support parts consolidation. It appeals to a wide range of users, including the aerospace, medical, and manufacturing industries. However, metals produced by AM processes show more variability than conventional wrought alloys due to the formation of anomalies in AM alloys. These issues have slowed the adoption of AM parts, particularly in industries with tight quality controls.
SwRI’s project, known as OPAL or “One Part And Life,” was selected by DARPA’s Structures Uniquely Resolved to Guarantee Endurance (SURGE) program. This initiative seeks to rethink current part qualifications in AM and explore a new approach to predict the life of an AM part at production.
“Our key goal is to determine a predictable lifespan for each part produced by an AM machine,” said SwRI Lead Engineer Dr. James Sobotka, who oversees the project. “This approach has never really been attempted before. Currently, we use statistical techniques to predict the minimum lives of these parts based on large datasets. As a result, perfectly good parts are discarded long before wearing out.
“For the first time ever, advanced technology provides an opportunity to monitor manufactured parts and analyze the data effectively,” Sobotka said.
Using sophisticated sensors, the OPAL team will track the manufacturing process, collecting temperature, light spectrum and other data. New tools will process the data and create 3D maps of the microstructure and defects in every part. Then SwRI-developed DARWIN software will ingest these maps to provide a risk-informed life estimate. DARWIN is a commercial fracture mechanics and reliability assessment software tool that analyzes metallic structural components to support damage-tolerant design. The OPAL project will improve DARWIN, providing part-by-part life estimates using the measured defect locations, sizes and influence of microstructural features on fatigue crack growth rates.
“With SwRI’s approach, we can more accurately predict lifespan to reduce costs and to extend the life of high-quality parts versus conventional approaches, providing significant benefits to manufacturers,” Sobotka said. “If you have a high-quality part, there's a good chance you're utilizing only a fraction of its potential lifespan — perhaps as little as a quarter or even a tenth of its useful life. Statistical certification approaches lack the detailed insights into the manufacturing process that we have now. OPAL represents a big leap into the future.”
For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/markets/manufacturing-construction/manufacturing-technologies/manufacturing-process-improvement/additive-manufacturing.