Metals are an important component of aviation and defense systems, constituting nearly 75 percent of turbine engine components and 66 percent of an airframe’s weight. Nutonian’s machine intelligence software, Eureqa, can discover new relationships in manufacturing data that will slash metals costs and boost performance. The software is currently being used by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Rolls-Royce.
AFRL develops technologies for US air, space and cyberspace forces. They also manage the Metals Affordability Initiative (MAI); a consortium that pools government and industry resources to reduce metallic aircraft component costs and accelerate implementation.
To date, the MAI has transferred 50 technologies into 22 aerospace systems across the USAF and Department of Defense.
As part of MAI’s “Advanced Titanium Alloy Microstructure and Mechanical Property Modeling” program, AFRL and Nutonian teamed up to apply Eureqa to predict how titanium alloys respond to various inputs and conditions during the manufacturing process to yield optimal engine components.
“Developing quantitative models that relate materials processing history to microstructure and properties is an essential part of maximizing the performance of future turbine engine components,” said Dr. Adam Pilchak of AFRL. “These models will help original equipment manufacturers optimize future engines by incorporating microstructures as a design variable, allowing them to ensure they have the right material properties in the right locations.”
Using Eureqa’s analytical models, companies like Allegheny Technologies Incorporated and Precision Castparts Corporation can produce new components for Boeing, GE, Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls-Royce. The models help aerospace manufacturing companies improve the performance of titanium parts for air structures and high-performance turbine engines. Costs are reduced by decreasing material’s design-to-fly time. The models have also been incorporated into Scientific Forming Technologies Corporation’s (SFTC) process simulation software, DEFORM and are now commercially available.
But what’s not being said about using software to predict performance of parts in manufacturing? Eureqa has been developed specifically for replacing technically skilled personnel that traditionally set up analytic models and then reduce the data.
In other words, it’s not designed to help engineers and scientists analyse data more efficiently. Eureqa is designed to replace them entirely in jobs that new product development needs for advanced technology aerospace components.
Eureqa software is dynamic and it’s intelligent, learning adaptively over time. It can cope with data fluctuations from testing in real time. We’ve seen robotics replace millions of workers around the globe. So now the question is: Is the same machine replacement phenomena going to go on in engineering? It seems likely.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
To learn more about Eureqa, visit nutonian.com.