Texas A&M receives $1.6M to speed certification of critical military AM components
June 5, 2025
Texas A&M, College Station, Texas, USA, has announced it will receive $1.6 million from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Structures Uniquely Resolved to Guarantee Endurance (SURGE) programme. This funding is dedicated to accelerating the process that determines the quality and anticipated lifespan of additively manufactured components used in the military.
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At present, it reportedly takes an average of eighteen months for a supercomputer to evaluate a single 3D part and accurately predict its lifespan or expected date of failure. Texas A&M’s approach to predicting lifespan will increase the speed at which parts are made and deployed in critical applications and accelerate the adoption of Additive Manufacturing technologies in the form of more AM machines at US Department of Defense (DOD) bases. It is also expected to provide millions of dollars in savings for the DOD.
If adopted, the team’s proposed approach could go on to impact the entire Additive Manufacturing industry and make Texas A&M a key player in that transformation.
“This is an exciting moment for the Additive Manufacturing field, a community that increasingly recognises the urgent need to accelerate the qualification of 3D printed parts,” said Dr Mosen Taheri Andani, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M and a member of the grant team. “By integrating in-situ data with the underlying microstructural features formed during printing, the programme will bridge expertise in process monitoring, microstructure characterisation, and property evaluation – paving the way for faster, more reliable deployment of additive-manufactured parts.”
Andani will work with Texas A&M faculty Dr Raymundo Arróyave, Chevron Professor (II) of materials science and engineering; Dr Aala Elwany, professor of industrial and systems engineering; and Dr Ibrahim Karaman, Chevron Professor and head of the department of materials science and engineering. Drs Taheri Andani and Elwany are associated with materials science and engineering.
Prior to the advent of Additive Manufacturing, the evaluation of metal components was based largely on the specific machine or manufacturing process used to produce the parts. However, with additively manufactured parts, each part exhibits its own unique signature of microscopic features or defects, varying in location and size even among parts built on the same machine and using the same batch of raw feedstock. These microstructural defects, while currently unavoidable, play a critical role in determining the rate at which a part may ultimately fail.
“Accelerating the certification of metal Additive Manufacturing parts is extremely challenging,” Andani said. “Our team at Texas A&M is proud to contribute to this effort and help solve a challenge that is vital to advancing national capabilities.”
The $1.6 million awarded to Texas A&M is part of a larger $10.3 million, four-year grant shared with collaborators at the University of Michigan; Auburn University; the University of California, San Diego; ASTM International; and industry partners Addiguru, Metairie, Louisiana, and AlphaStar, Irvine, California.
The key metrics for success on this project are speed and accuracy – a combination that makes the project particularly demanding, Andani explained.
The Texas A&M team will work with Addiguru during the first two-year phase of the grant to develop a sensor package that can be installed directly into a commercial Additive Manufacturing machine to monitor the build process by capturing real-time information from multiple sensor modalities. Once the sensor system is perfected, the team will work to develop an AI-driven, high-resolution defect-detection system capable of reading, combining, and processing data from heterogeneous sensor sources. In parallel, Texas A&M will coordinate with the University of Michigan team, the company AlphaSTAR and ASTM International to accelerate the prediction of microstructural features generated during the Additive Manufacturing process.
“This DARPA project is particularly exciting for us because it represents a unique opportunity to address one of the most critical challenges facing the field today. We are confident that this work will have a transformative impact on industry and help unlock the full potential of Additive Manufacturing at scale,” said Karaman.
