UB, LIFT launch hypersonic materials project

UB engineers are partnering with LIFT, the Detroit-based national manufacturing innovation institute, on a project to accelerate development of materials for hypersonic systems.

The program will aid in faster design and deployment of hypersonic vehicles, lower-cost development processes, improved vehicle performance and maturation of the supply base for hypersonic components and vehicles.

“We are incredibly excited to partner with LIFT on this innovative research project, which supports the nation’s defense and advanced manufacturing sectors while enhancing national security,” says James Chen, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

LIFT will provide UB with $626,558 in research funding, with UB contributing $156,639 in in-kind services.

As part of the project, LIFT’s ongoing Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) tool chain development will be expanded to include the discovery, design and simulation of ceramics and ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), which Chen, students and other UB faculty will help support.

“The team at Buffalo has a unique skillset related to ICME for ceramics and ceramic matrix composites that are subjected to extreme environments,” notes Noel Mack, chief technology officer at LIFT. “That skillset means simulations can happen in a shorter period of time using standard computing equipment, enabling the simulations to have relevance to manufacturers and enabling the development of hypersonic materials faster.”

The technology readiness level of ICME for ceramics and CMCs is much lower than that for other materials. As a result, there is no commercial off-the-shelf system to put in use. Experts must manually program the fundamental physics, which are very complex for hybrid materials in hypersonic environments.

The UB team will build the processing-structure-properties-performance relationships for ceramics and CMCs in the ICME space, along with the machine learning, to make these simulation tools computationally efficient.

The goal is to create a manufacturing supply chain for new metallic alloy powders, which, along with relevant ceramics, will be manufactured and tested to confirm that physical properties align with ICME models.

Operating at speeds of Mach 5 or higher, hypersonic and counter-hypersonic vehicles are among the Department of Defense’s top priorities, as well as development of a safe and secure domestic supply base. This project, along with the ongoing work being led by LIFT through the Department of Defense’s Hypersonics Challenge, are part of the institute’s broader hypersonic materials research portfolio.