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Douglas N. Wells

Publications and source records attributed to Douglas N. Wells.

Agency Additive Manufacturing (AM) Certification Support Team (AACT) Risk Reduction – Safe Life Category: Fracture Control Framework for Un-inspectable Fracture Critical AM Parts

The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) was requested to support the development of a governing philosophy to provide a consistent and systematic approach for fracture control certification of additive manufacturing (AM) hardware that cannot be reliably inspected. The overall goal of the NESC assessment was to make progress toward a framework for general certification of un-inspectable fracture critical AM hardware and toward approaches for evaluating risks associated with these components. This report contains the results of the assessment.

Additive Manufacturing↗

NASA’S Current Efforts and Applications of NDE to Improve Space Flight Safety

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continues to push the boundary of manned flight. Current mission profiles include flights to the moon and mars. Many of these missions require advance manufacturing and planned off planet resource utilization. As NASA continues to develop highly advance materials and manufacturing techniques to meet these mission profiles, inspection of these increasingly complex parts has had to evolve as well. Additive manufacturing is coming to the forefront as a primary manufacturing technique but offers unique challenges when inspection and certification are required. NASA has been working diligently to be a leader in developing and utilizing inspection techniques capable of inspecting these highly advanced parts. Additionally additive manufacturing techniques can also be used to build parts in space and provides a vehicle for in-situ resource utilization for off world missions. As NASA and its commercial crew partners move forward inspection techniques will need to continue to advance to ensure safe manned space flight. In this talk NASA will highlight many of the advanced nondestructive evaluation efforts going on across the agency. As well as highlights for points of infusion for helping NASA meet it’s future missions.

NDE↗