The NASA Advanced Composites Consortium (ACC), a public-private partnership, seeks to develop and transition technology that will
enable a reduction in the time required to develop and certify new aircraft structures
that utilize advanced composite materials. The consortium includes NASA, the Federal
Aviation Administration, Aurora Flight Sciences, The Boeing Company, Collier Research,
General Electric Aviation, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Orbital ATK, Spirit AeroSystems,
University of South Carolina (USC), United Technologies Corporation (UTC), Wichita
State University (WSU), and the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA).
Current Projects:
- Progressive Damage Analysis
Develop strength and life prediction analysis tools for complex advanced composite structures and standardize procedures for their reliable use. The framework and the development of procedures will reduce design iterations and expedite building blocks of analysis and certification testing for advanced composite structures.
Team: Boeing (Lead), Lockheed Martin, UTC, WSU (Waruna Seneviratne, Upul Palliyaguru, Shenal Perera), USC, NASA
- High Energy Dynamic Impact
Develop predictive analysis methods for high energy dynamic impact to enable smarter testing and reduce number of required tests for advanced composite structures prior to certification
Team: Boeing, UTC, WSU (Gerardo Olivares, Suresh Raju), USC, NASA
- Rapid Tools
Develop and validate design tools for producing more realistic and robust preliminary designs that are less prone for costly changes that lead to program delays later in the development cycle. Team will evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of these tools for design criteria associated with damage tolerance, bonding, and automated manufacturing processes.
Team: Collier, Boeing, UTC, Aurora, Orbital ATK, USC, WSU (Waruna Seneviratne, Upul Palliyaguru), NASA
- Laminate Cure Defects Process Model Development team
Develop and demonstrate new computational methods to relate manufacturing parameters to defect formation, and connect to commercial design and analysis software to allow structural optimization, while resolving predicted manufacturing issues. Outcome of this research will lead to fewer manufacturing iterations and quality issues, great process control supporting product certification, and improvements to preliminary design.
Team: UTC, Boeing, Collier, WSU (Waruna Seneviratne, Upul Palliyaguru), NASA