The industrial competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers depends on their ability to reduce the time from product concept to market while decreasing product cost. This is as true for well-established “commodity” industries, such as automotive and aerospace, as it is for rapidly growing or emerging industries, such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. Manufacturing is a critical step in realizing such reductions in product cycle time: for many industries and products, the rapid, low cost development of manufacturing processes is needed to create new materials with complex product shapes and higher performance at the same or lower cost as the competing, older materials and methods.

To realize such improvements in manufacturing, we are working to develop robust measurement methods, standards, and materials and process data that will help in the design, monitoring, and control of manufacturing processes. An increasingly important step in manufacturing is process modeling. Development of optimized manufacturing processes, such as stamping of complex auto panels or machining of large aircraft components, is time consuming and labor intensive. In many cases, the resulting processes are far from optimal because materials variability, caused for example, by residual stresses or strain localization during processing, leads to lower yields. Our approach is to develop and combine higher precision, spatially localized measurement methods with realistic, physics-based modeling of manufacturing processes and materials process data to create more useful process modeling tools.

Depending on the stage of the research, our research is often conducted in close collaboration with industrial consortia and standards organizations. This close working relationship developed through these organizations not only ensures the relevance of our research but also promotes rapid transfer of our research to industry for implementation.

The performance of metallic components in products is strongly dependent on processing conditions that determine microstructural features, such as grain size and shape, texture, the distribution of crystalline phases, macro- and microsegregation, and defect structure and distribution. NIST expertise is applied from a wide range of disciplines, including thermodynamics, electrochemistry, fluid mechanics, diffusion, X-ray, and thermal analysis, to develop measurement methods and understand the influence of processing steps for industries as diverse as automotive, aerospace, microelectronics, and defense. Two major MSEL efforts in polymer processing and forming of lightweight metals are centered on unique measurement facilities. Rapidly growing and emerging industries such as biotechnology and nanotechnology also are dependent upon the development of new advanced manufacturing methods that can produce metallic components with the desired characteristics and performance. Related projects with significant manufacturing processes components can be found in our programs on nanocharacterization, materials for micro- and optoelectronics, and the interface of materials with biology.

Forming of Lightweight Metals

Automobile manufacturing is a materials intensive industry that involves about 10 percent of the U.S. workforce. In spite of the use of the most advanced, cost-effective technologies, this globally competitive industry still has productivity issues related to measurement science and data. Chief among these is the difficulty encountered in die manufacture for sheet metal forming. In an ATP-sponsored workshop held in 2000, the main obstacle to reducing the time between accepting a new design and actual production of parts was identified as producing working die sets. To benefit from the weight saving of high strength steel and aluminum alloys, a whole new level of formability measurement methods and data is needed, together with a better understanding of the physics behind metal deformation. We are working to fill this need.

Polymers Processing

Polymers have become ubiquitous in the modern economy because of their ease of processing, high functionality, and low cost. However, these materials can exhibit complex and sometimes catastrophic responses to the forces imposed during manufacturing, thereby limiting processing rates and the ability to predict ultimate properties. The focus of our polymer research is on microscale processing, modeling of processing instabilities, and on-line process monitoring of polymers. Our unique extrusion visualization facility combines in-line microscopy and light scattering for the study of polymer blends, extrusion instabilities, and the action of additives. Current applications focus on under-standing and controlling the "sharkskin instability" in polymer extrusion and observation of the dielectric properties of polymer nanocomposites. Fluorescence techniques are developed to measure critical process parameters such as polymer temperature and orientation that were hitherto inaccessible. These measurements are carried out in close collaboration with interested industrial partners.

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