Engineering Papers⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Johnson, Kyle Leslie

Publications and source records attributed to Johnson, Kyle Leslie.

BeyondFingerprinting: AI-guided discovery of robust materials & processes

BeyondFingerprinting was a 2021-2024 Sandia Grand Challenge LDRD exploring the potential to develop new resilient materials and manufacturing processes by taking an artificial-intelligence (AI)-guided approach that integrates human-subject-matter expertise with algorithms enriched with physics-based constraints to unearth process-structure-property correlations. Such algorithms, trained on high-throughput experiments and simulations, are shown to serve as surrogate models that efficiently detect key “fingerprints” in materials data, prognose material performance, and guide effective process improvements. To accelerate broader adoption across mission areas, this AI-guided approach was demonstrated with three complex process-centric exemplars: electroplating, physical vapor deposition, and laser powder bed fusion. Together, these exemplars impact nearly every hardware component relevant to DOE and NNSA national security missions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Compensating for Sintering Distortion in Additively Manufactured Shaped Charge Liners using Physics-Informed Machine Learning

Copper is a challenging material to process using laser-based additive manufacturing due to its high reflectivity and high thermal conductivity. Sintering-based processes can produce solid copper parts without the processing challenges and defects associated with laser melting; however, sintering can also cause distortion in copper parts, especially those with thin walls. In this study, we use physics-informed Gaussian process regression to predict and compensate for sintering distortion in thin-walled copper parts produced using a Markforged Metal X bound powder extrusion (BPE) additive manufacturing system. Through experimental characterization and computational simulation of copper’s viscoelastic sintering behavior, we can predict sintering deformation. We can then manufacture, simulate, and test parts with various compensation scaling factors to inform Gaussian process regression and predict a compensated as-printed (pre-sintered) part geometry that produces the desired final (post-sintered) part.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Predicting Failure Using Deep Learning SAND Report

Accurate prediction of ductile failure is critical to Sandia’s NW mission, but the models are computationally heavy. The costs of including high-fidelity physics and mechanics that are germane to the failure mechanisms are often too burdensome for analysts either because of the person-hours it requires to input them or because of the additional computational time, or both. In an effort to deliver analysts a tool for representing these phenomena with minimal impact to their existing workflow, our project sought to develop modern data-driven methods that would add microstructural information to business-as-usual calculations and expedite failure predictions. The goal is a tool that receives as input a structural model with stress and strain fields, as well as a machine-learned model, and output predictions of structural response in time, including failure. As such, our project spent substantial time performing high-fidelity, three-dimensional experiments to elucidate materials mechanisms of void nucleation and evolution. We developed crystal-plasticity finite-element models from the experimental observations to enrich the findings with fields not readily measured. We developed engineering length-scale simulations of replicated test specimens to understand how the engineering fields evolve in the presence of fine-scale defects. Finally, we developed deep learning convolutional neural networks, and graph-based neural networks to encode the findings of the experiments and simulations and make forward predictions in time for structural performance. This project demonstrated the power of data-driven methods for model development, which have the potential to vastly increase both the accuracy and speed of failure predictions. These benefits and the methods necessary to develop them are highlighted in this report. However, many challenges remain to implementing these in real applications, and these are discussed along with potential methods for overcoming them.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗