| Scope |
This symposium will bring together practitioners and decision-makers from multiple sectors, i.e. industry, academia, and government, to discuss the state-of-the-art and paths-forward in development and adoption of computational materials technologies in industries’ qualification and certification (Q&C) activities. The primary objectives of the symposium are to provide a detailed overview of the key elements relevant to the development and adoption of computational materials technologies in Q&C activities; facilitate continued collaborative discussions among the industrial, regulatory, and scientific communities including identification of areas for government and industry R&D investments; discuss the needs and requirements of the federal agencies and regulatory bodies in this arena; and increase airworthiness and the certifying authorities’ awareness and acceptance of computational materials informed methods for Q&C of structural or flight-critical parts made with metallic process intensive materials (PIM).
The motivation for organizing this symposium arose from several events that occurred over the past four years. In mid-November of 2019, a Workshop on Materials and Methods for Rapid Manufacturing for Commercial and Urban Aviation, organized by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, was held in Washington DC. Subsequently, a Technical Interchange Meeting on Computational Materials Approaches for Qualification by Analysis, organized by NASA, NIST, and the FAA, was held on January 15-16 2020 at NASA Langley Research Center. Largely as a result of these two meetings, in September 2020 the Computational Materials for Qualification and Certification (CM4QC) Steering Group (SG) was established, including 25 member organizations, with a mission to explore strategies for maturing and developing trust in Computational Materials (CM) capabilities for use in the qualification and certification (Q&C) of metallic PIM for aeronautics applications, including but not limited to metals additive manufacturing (MAM). The culmination of the group’s activities will be a roadmap document that is on track to be completed by the end of 2023. The roadmap is a community vision spanning topics related to the use of CM capabilities as a component of industry’s Q&C framework; identification of the relevant regulatory gaps, enablers and requirements, including acceptable levels of V&V; identification of key CM and enabling technologies, assessment of their current maturity levels, and required future development and opportunities for investment. Part of this symposium will entail presentations focused on the roadmapping activities of the SG.
We are seeking contributed abstracts focused specifically on the use of computational materials tools in qualification and certification activities, covering topical areas that include but are not limited to:
• Challenges and opportunities for the adoption and use of computational materials-informed approaches in the qualification and certification domain (including understanding of regulatory requirements / considerations and industry vision).
• Computational materials methods and capabilities that may support the industry vision for computational materials in the Q&C domain, with particular focus on their levels of maturity in that context.
• Verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification methods and capabilities that are needed to meet regulatory requirements.
• The computational materials ecosystem supporting the industry vision. Some elements of the ecosystem include: training, education, testing, data sources, standards (including best practice guides for how to use CM for Q&C), organizational culture change relative to broader adoption of CM, and examples of government / industry partnerships
In addition, we will devote a session to presentations on, and a discussion of, the activities of the CM4QC SG; and we will conduct a panel session to discuss the various topics covered in the symposium. |