Atch 3 - Final MASS SOO.pdf

FA8650-22-S-5011

Attachment 3

Statement of Objectives (SOO) for

Multitude of Attritable Composite Structures (MASS)

1. Statement of Objective/Needs:

Attritable vehicles are needed for future highly contested battlefields. These vehicles must be light-weight to meet range and loiter time requirements for far-reaching strike missions or time-intensive intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Also, for the success of these missions, they must be capable of carrying the required payloads.

In order to minimize or completely avoid sustainment costs, the structural soundness of the attritable vehicle must be appropriate for its limited life. To provide the flexibility to counter emerging and changing threats, attritable vehicles must have the ability to be quickly designed, built, and fielded. Most importantly, these systems must be low cost to decrease mission costs, make losses acceptable, and create the potential to surge in numbers and bring the mass of swarms to the fight.

Additive printing of continuous fiber structural composites properties are approaching the mechanical performance of traditionally manufactured composites. They are poised to enable new light-weight designs (including topology optimized and bio-inspired designs), low-cost (perhaps tool-less) manufacturing, rapid design changes for structural composites, and support the larger digital enterprise.

Traditional structural composite materials development would involve fixing manufacturing process parameters and then mechanical validation via a substantial number of test coupons in order to develop a set of “B-basis allowables” (MIL-HDBK- 17-1F (Composite Materials Handbook-17)) and predict failure. An equivalency test matrix would be needed to be completed for changes in the material constituents or process. Both processes are expensive, time-consuming, inhibit agility, and represent a substantial barrier to transition of new composite materials and processes.

The digital enterprise seeks to create digital representations, or “digital twins”, of real world processes, microstructures, properties, vehicle structures, and integrated vehicles to better manage, improve, and exploit opportunities with increased mission effectiveness and decreased development and operational cost. Physics-based, Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) processing and performance tools have been developed under sponsorship by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate and seek to predict the responses to changes in the processing-structure-property relationships. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools for understanding and correlating additive manufacturing processes, microstructures, and properties are also being developed.

The Structural Materials Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate (AFRL/RXCC) seeks to leverage and integrate current ICME tools, AI/ML tools, and continuous fiber additively printed composite capability to create a “digital twin” of a new composite material with substantial impact to attritable air vehicles. The same process and material will be evaluated by the traditional, empirically based “B-basis allowables” process and the two processes will be compared in terms of speed, cost, and accuracy to achieve digital-assisted and empirical “B-basis allowables” for a promising new material. The two processes will also be evaluated for their agility to changes in constituents and processing conditions. While firm B-basis allowables targets for attritable vehicles are yet to be established, a broad range of 75-90% of traditional structural composite materials’ allowables is anticipated.

2. Tasks 2.1) Propose a continuous fiber, additively printed materials system and process that is, or will be, competitive with traditionally manufactured composites in terms of mechanical performance, cost, and speed. The proposed process and material(s) shall have viability in the fabrication of attritable vehicle structures and topologically optimized structures.

The contractor shall technically support and rationalize each aspect of the proposed process and materials selection.

2.2) Develop an integrated framework that leverages digital tools (ICME, AI/ML, etc.) to predict the “B-basis allowables” for the material that would result from the additive process selected.

2.3) Develop a digital engineering (DE) framework which optimizes the build process prior to execution through simulation and demonstrate a selected instance of a DE build structure. The data contained in the DE framework shall be usable for the creation of a digital twin for qualification, design, and lifing.

2.4) Perform constituent testing to parameterize processing models, predict the constraints on deposition for additively printed continuous fiber reinforced composite processing, including path planning, and make a blind predictions for the anticipated values for the “B-basis allowables”.

2.5) Fabricate materials coupons of sufficient quantity to perform multi-axis testing with full-field characterization in order to generate B-Basis Allowables of laminated composites.

2.6) Perform mechanical testing to empirically determine B-Basis Allowables of laminated composites.

2.7) Validate processing model development, digital tools development, and generate data for artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) analysis.

2.8) Propose combinations of empirical and digital derived prediction that leads to favorable trades in speed, cost, and accuracy.

2.9) Validate select approaches for the B-Basis allowables generation for a continuous fiber reinforced composite structures element to be used in attritable vehicles via testing with full-field characterization.

2.10) Utilize the accumulated data to qualify a continuous fiber additive manufacturing process for the fabrication of attritable vehicle load bearing structures.

2.11) The contractor shall interact with organizations, such as the CMH-17 organization, and standards developers to ensure proliferation of the methods and data resulting from this effort into their publications.

3. Deliverable Items:

a. Data Items: The Contractor shall deliver in accordance with the DD Form 1423, Contract Data Requirements List (CDRLs) as attached to the BAA.

b. Software: To be specified as applicable.

c. Hardware: To be specified as applicable.

d. Other: To be specified as applicable.

4. Schedule:

a. Overall effort: 63 months.

b. Data Items: As specified on individual CDRLs.

c. Software: As specified on individual CDRLs.

d. Hardware: As specified on individual CDRLs.

e. Other: To be specified.

5. Security Requirements:

a. Operations Security (OPSEC) - The contractor shall participate in all activities associated with the disciplines of the organization’s Industrial Security, Information Security, Personnel Security, Operations Security (OPSEC), and Antiterrorism programs, following appropriate measures in each program as required for this particular contract. Security measures are required to reduce program vulnerability from successful adversary collection, exploitation of critical information, and violations of export control requirements. The prime contractor shall ensure all subcontractors, if applicable, conform to these requirements as required by the prime contractor.

b. Program Protection Plan (PPP) – Any potential critical program information (CPI) generated as part of this effort will be reviewed to determine the need for a PPP or to be included as part of an existing PPP.