NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing additive manufacturing technologies (FL)

该区域创新引擎发展奖的重点是试点AM（增材制造）未来合作伙伴关系，该合作伙伴关系于2022年5月宣布。该项目协调支持采用增材制造（AM）的小型企业供应商。AM Forward Florida将推动整个佛罗里达的创新、经济发展、社区投资和就业增长。AM Forward的赞助公司包括波音、通用航空、霍尼韦尔航空、洛克希德·马丁、诺斯罗普·格鲁曼、雷神技术和西门子能源。每一个都将在这个项目中发挥重要作用，为生产技术和材料的要求和未来需求提供信息。因此，项目团队将探索如何最好地加快工业生产供应商的资格认证（包括小型制造商合作伙伴Sintavia、Keystone和ACMT Aero）。新一代工程师和技术人员也将推动增材制造的采用，这是一支反映不同经验的劳动力队伍。该项目的合作伙伴包括全国领先的少数族裔服务机构，包括佛罗里达国际大学、佛罗里达农工大学和佛罗里达州立大学工程学院、中佛罗里达大学和佛罗里达州旗舰研究型大学佛罗里达大学。在18个月的实践中，提案团队将在全州范围内举办六场研讨会——三场参与者研讨会和三场利益相关者研讨会，以确定佛罗里达州制造业创新生态系统的最佳方向。该项目将解决该州供应商基础目前的限制，该州是美国制造业工作岗位集中度第五低的州。为了扭转这一局面，该项目将探索基于区域的AM，寻求材料配方、集成先进机器人和复合材料制造方面的突破。将探索一系列机器类型、材料和测试流程，以确保AM有效地部署到佛罗里达州公司/最终用户附近的供应链中。工业增材制造依赖于数据管理、拓扑和分析来进行设计优化、构建准备和模拟、现场监测、鉴定和测试。基于概率建模和机器学习的数据驱动资格认证方法将为大学研究奠定基础。这些重点将集中在端到端解决方案、高效设计、自动化质量方法、确保可重复性和支持大吞吐量的可扩展性上。该NSF引擎开发奖将使团队能够开发一个完整的NSF引擎提案，使其更加明智、现实和可实现。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on piloting the AM (Additive Manufacturing) Forward partnership announced in May 2022. This project coordinates support for small business suppliers adopting additive manufacturing (AM). AM Forward Florida will drive innovation, economic development, community investment, and job growth across Florida. AM Forward's sponsor companies include Boeing, GE Aviation, Honeywell Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, and Siemens Energy. Each will play an important role in this project, informing requirements and future demand for production technology and materials. The project team will thus explore how best to expedite the qualification of suppliers for industrial production (including small manufacturer partners Sintavia, Keystone, and ACMT Aero). Also driving AM adoption will be a new generation of engineers and technicians - a workforce reflecting diverse experiences. Partners in this project include the nation's leading minority-serving institutions, including Florida International University, Florida A&M University and Florida State University College of Engineering, University of Central Florida, and the University of Florida, the state's flagship research university.Over 18 months of performance, the proposing team will hold six workshops - three participant workshops and three stakeholder workshops - across the state to discern the best orientation of Florida's manufacturing innovation ecosystem. The project will address current limitations in the state’s supplier base, with the fifth lowest concentration of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. To reverse this, the project will explore regionally-based AM, pursuing breakthroughs in material formulations, integrated advanced robotics, and composite manufacturing. A range of machine types, materials, and testing processes will be explored to ensure effective AM deployment into Florida supply chains near companies/end-users. Industrial additive manufacturing depends on data management, topology, and analytics for design optimization, build preparation and simulation, in situ monitoring, qualification, and testing. Data-driven qualification approaches based on probabilistic modeling and machine learning will underpin university research. These thrusts will focus on end-to-end solutions, efficient design, automated quality methodologies, ensure repeatability, and support scalability for large throughput. This NSF Engine Development Award will enable the team to develop a full NSF Engine proposal, making it much more informed, realistic, and attainable.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.