DATE:                        Thursday, 11.16.23 

TIME:                         4:00pm

LOCATION:             31-270

SPEAKER:                Zachary Cordero, Edgerton Career Development Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT

TOPIC:                       Additive Manufacturing and its Role in the Post-Covid Aviation Industry

ABSTRACT:

Air travel demand is returning quickly post-Covid, but a confluence of issues is making it difficult for the production supply chain to keep up. First, anti-competitive industry consolidation over the past several decades has decimated production capacity and resulted in shortages of key components (e.g., castings). Second, layoffs and buyouts during COVID caused a massive brain drain in heavy industry which is surprisingly reliant on skilled technicians. Third, engine reliability issues (e.g., GTF, LEAP) have grounded new aircraft, causing older aircraft to remain in-service longer. These factors are now forcing industry to consider alternative means of making parts, and additive manufacturing has emerged as a potential route for alleviating supply chain issues, lowering part costs, and getting planes flying again. This talk will summarize some of the challenges currently limiting additively manufactured hardware in safety-critical applications and my lab’s efforts to overcome these issues using fundamental materials science principles. In particular, I will describe specialized post-processing heat treatments, developed in my lab, which improve the creep-resistance of 3D-printed Ni-base superalloys, thus enabling their use in the hot section of mature aeroengines.

BIO:
Zack Cordero is the Edgerton Career Development Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT where he leads the Aerospace Materials and Structures Laboratory. He received an SB in physics and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, Zack held appointments as a postdoctoral fellow in the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and as an assistant professor in the Materials Science and NanoEngineering department at Rice University. Zack’s research at MIT integrates materials processing, mechanics of materials, and structural design to develop new materials and structures for aerospace applications.