Application of Lightweighting Technology to Military Aircraft, Vessels, and Vehicles (2012) / Chapter Skim
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1 Background and Motivation
1 Background and Motivation
Pages 7-28
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From page 7... ...
Historically, reducing the weight -- or "lightweighting" -- of military land vehicles, mari time vessels, and aircraft has been motivated by the desire to reduce fuel use and costs and the need to improve vehicle transportability. Reducing DoD fuel consumption and costs remains a critically important reason for lightweighting.
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From page 8... ...
8 APPLICATION OF LIGHTWEIGHTING TECHNOLOGY TO MILITARY AIRCRAFT, VESSELS, AND VEHICLES FIGURE 1-1 The "iron triangle." SOURCE: Adapted from G Bochene, TARDEC, presentation to the 2007 Combat Vehicles Conference, October 24, 2007.
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From page 9... ...
The statement of task, given in Box 1-1, called for a study that would focus on military vehicles, but also address commercial vehicles. The Committee on Benchmarking the Technology and Application of Lightweighting was asked explicitly to look beyond materials alone6 and to also consider lightweight design, the availability of lightweight materials from domestic manufacturers, and the performance of lightweight materials and their manufacturing technologies (the technologies used to process and manufacture the materials as well as those used to manufacture components, structures, and other shapes from the materials)
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From page 10... ...
Task II Assess and benchmark the current state of lightweighting implementation in land, sea, and air ve hicles in the military and civil sectors, with a primary emphasis on military systems and equipment. Task III Make recommendations for ways in which the use of lightweight materials and lightweight solu tions might be better implemented in military and dual-use systems.
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From page 11... ...
Numerous reports over the past decade have advised the DoD on topics related to lightweight or otherwise advanced materials. Other reports have addressed related topics, such as technology transition and systems engineering, that are central to the broad view of and approach to lightweighting that the committee has adopted.
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From page 12... ...
The committee views lightweighting as a means of not only reducing fuel consumption and costs and the associated logistical requirements but also achieving a variety of desirable features. The definition of lightweight ing established by the committee and used in its assessments is shown in Box 1-2.
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From page 13... ...
11 In making its assessments of lightweighting in air, sea, and land vehicles, the committee assigned qualitative rankings of the importance of each general class of attribute to each class of vehicle, with 1 the most important and 3 the least important. These rankings, summarized in Table 1-1, were developed based on the presentations made to the committee at its meetings and the collective experience of committee members.
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From page 14... ...
For example, operational support capability is a primary consideration for aircraft but of secondary importance for land vehicles and marine vessels. Note also that the "Aircraft" category contains all aircraft flown by the military: fighters, transports, and UAVs.
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Specifically, a critical limitation to the introduction of new materials into military vehicles is the extended period required for materials development and qualification. The time required can vary widely -- from 2 to 3 years for derivative materials on an expedited schedule, up to a decade or longer for significant new or emerging materials or processes.
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From page 16... ...
The product design and development cycle outpaces the materials development cycle by a significant margin, leading to a mismatch that hampers the insertion of new materials into engineering products. The "gated" processes that are followed for development of new products or systems, such as the process specified by the Defense Acquisition Guide and DoD Instruction 5000.02, require technologies to be relatively mature before insertion at the initiation of a program.
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From page 17... ...
The fundamental physics codes developed for this purpose are relevant for all materials design efforts. For example, work at Sandia National Laboratories has resulted in open-source tools for molecular modeling that have been used extensively and are continuously updated to add more fundamental physics information and to increase computational speed.
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From page 18... ...
Three DoD mechanisms for doing this are accelerated insertion of materials, advanced technology demonstrations (and advanced concept technology demonstrations)
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From page 19... ...
Among them are several NRC reports published over the past 8 years, including the following: Materials Research to Meet 21st Century Defense Needs (2003) ,24 • Use of Lightweight Materials in 21st Century Army Trucks (2003)
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From page 20... ...
2008. Integrated Computational Materials Engineering: A Transformational Discipline for Improved Competitiveness and National Security.
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From page 21... ...
Health-monitoring sensors integrated into structures would have to be very small and to be incorporated into the internal structure in places that would be difficult to examine with an outside source. 1.6.2 Use of Lightweight Materials in 21st Century Army Trucks A study focused specifically on lightweight materials for future military trucks, Use of Lightweight Materials in 21st Century Army Trucks,31 was motivated by the Army's requirements for improved vehicle transportability and mobility.
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From page 22... ...
1.6.3 Accelerating Technology Transition Published in 2004, the NRC report Accelerating Technology Transition: Bridging the Valley of Death for Materials and Processes in Defense Systems addressed best industry practices for the accelerated transition of new materials and processes into application.32 Case studies included Formula 1 racing cars and America's Cup racing boats. In these cases, the risk/reward balance favored early adoption of emerging materials technology, encom passing new materials, manufacturing processes, and modeling.
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From page 23... ...
In both cases, Title III support encourages and enables domestic firms to improve capabilities to produce higher-quality, lower-cost materials. 1.6.5 Integrated Computational Materials Engineering Integrated Computational Materials Engineering: A Transformational Discipline for Improved Competitive ness and National Security, published in 2008, defined integrated computational materials engineering as "the 36 Furtherinformation on the DPA Title III program is available at http://www.wpafb.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?
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From page 24... ...
Available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/t77k837710154345/. integration of materials information, captured in computational tools, with engineering product performance analysis and manufacturing-process simulation."37 ICME enables the integration of manufacturing and design via advanced materials models.
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From page 25... ...
2008. Integrated Computational Materials Engineering: A Transformational Discipline for Improved Competitiveness and National Security.
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From page 26... ...
One of the consequences has been that the product design and development cycle now outpaces the materials development cycle by a significant margin, leading to a mismatch that hampers the insertion of new materials into engineering products. One of the related deficiencies identified in the reports is the lack of a comprehensive toolbox of validated physics-based material models that have the capabilities to span the pertinent range of time and length scales.
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From page 27... ...
52 According to Defense Acquisitions: How DOD Acquires Weapon Systems and Recent Efforts to Reform the Process , Congressional Re search Service, April 23, 2010, "The rules governing the acquisition process are set forth in DOD Instruction (DODI) 5000.02, Operation of the Defense Acquisition System.
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From page 28... ...
But the realization of such benefits requires not only the discovery and development of improved lightweight materials (those having high specific performance) but also, more critically, the use of systems-level design approaches that explicitly include lightweighting.
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