Case Study: Aerojet Rocketdyne predicts fatigue life debit in additively manufactured parts with VEXTEC's VPS-MICRO

Aerojet Rocketdyne predicts 30-60% AM cost savings with VEXTEC

Aerojet Rocketdyne faced a challenge in adopting metallic additive manufacturing (AM) for aerospace components. While AM offered significant cost savings, the fatigue performance of parts with hard-to-machine, as-printed surfaces was difficult to predict, leading to a reliance on extensive and costly physical testing. VEXTEC Corporation addressed this challenge with its VPS-MICRO® software, which was enhanced to model the impact of these surface features.

VEXTEC implemented a solution using its VPS-MICRO software to computationally predict the fatigue life debit caused by as-printed surface roughness. The software models the interaction between surface geometric effects and the material's microstructure. As a result, VEXTEC successfully predicted the knock-down in fatigue life for AM specimens without modifying its base model, demonstrating that computational modeling can drastically reduce the time and cost compared to physical testing.

Aerojet Rocketdyne