The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative proposals to rethink and accelerate distributed additive manufacturing of critical structural parts. Structures Uniquely Resolved to Guarantee Endurance (SURGE) will develop methods to predict part life directly from data collected during additive manufacturing (AM) in a way that is transferable across disparate machines, materials, locations, and geometries. Research will merge in-situ sensing technologies, process modeling, and microstructure-based fatigue life methods to quantify the useful life of manufactured hardware. Predictions will be backed by extensive experimental validation demonstrating a new paradigm for efficient part qualification. Proposed research must investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in distributed AM capability. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.
