SAE Industry Technologies Consortia and Members Launch Data Consortium

SAE Industry Technologies Consortia, along with charter members GE, Moog, Liberty Powder Metals, Westmoreland Mechanical Testing & Research, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Innovative 3D Manufacturing and Tronosjet Maintenance are forming the SAE AMS-Additive Manufacturing Data Consortium (SAE AMS-AMDC) to support the development of aerospace material specifications for additive manufacturing.

“Born from an industry need and initiative, SAE AMS-AMDC was created to support the aerospace industry’s growing use of additive manufacturing through the development of datasets required for material specifications,” says Laurie Strom, executive vice president and chief operating officer of SAE ITC. “Rigorous material specifications are part of the bedrock of material usage in aerospace applications, which in turn support the material handbooks used by the design engineers and qualification programs of the FAA, EASA and other certification bodies.”

Based on a request from the FAA to apply an expert approach for specifying additively manufactured materials, more than 600 members of the SAE AMS-AM committee have created material, feedstock and process specifications for both metals and non-metals over the past 5 years. To continue the advancement of these specifications, membership identified the need for a further flow of datasets on which to base the material specifications.

The members of SAE AMS-AMDC will collectively build and share datasets, each contributing expertise and capabilities to design, build, treat, test and analyze test articles. They will also contribute data from previous or ongoing projects.  AMDC will prepare the datasets for use by the SAE AMS-AM committee to build new material specifications. 

Efforts toward material specifications are supported by regulators support this effort, as evidenced by Simon Waite, senior expert, materials, certification directorate at the European Aviation Safety Agency, who says: “In the context of the regulators move towards ‘performance’ based regulation, EASA recognizes the potential benefit to the industry of using ‘common’ materials, supported by developing guidance, and shared database approaches.”

For more information about SAE AMS-AMDC, including membership and information about the charter member organizations, click here.  

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.