The CTMA Connector October 2011 DOD Maintenance

Welcome to The CTMA Connector, a monthly newsletter designed to provide news and ideas about the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program. The CTMA program is a joint Department of Defense/National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (DoD/NCMS) effort promoting collaborative technology development between industry and the DoD maintenance and repair facilities. This newsletter highlights ongoing projects, serves as a forum for promoting new project ideas, and provides other news of interest to the program. Our goal is to stimulate your participation and solicit your input. Feel free to submit items for the newsletter as well as any suggestions to make it more useful. More information about the program can be found at http://ctma.ncms.org/.To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CTMA Connector, send a message to:

listserv@listserv.ncms.org with “subscribe CTMANewsletter” or “unsubscribe CTMANewsletter” in the message body.

We welcome the following companies/organizations into NCMS:

ANSYS, Inc. (www.ansys.com)

ANSYS develops, markets and supports engineering simulation software used to foresee how product designs will behave and how manufacturing processes will operate in real-world environments. We continually advance simulation solutions by, first, developing or acquiring the very best technology; then integrating it into a unified and customizable simulation platform that allows engineers to efficiently perform complex simulations involving the interaction of multiple physics; and, finally, providing system services to manage simulation processes and data — all so engineers and product developers can spend more time designing and improving products and less time using software and searching for data.

Four projects are being featured at this years booth:

Imaginestics – IUID for Legacy Parts

Ecylpse International – Enhanced Wiring Integrity Systems

ID Systems – Centralized Fleet Automated Management Systems

Advanced Tooling Corporation – No Mask Tooling for Plating Baths

While you are at the Maintenance Symposium, come vote for one of the three CTMA projects entered into Great Ideas Competition including:

CTMA Project Opportunities

Enabling Interoperability in a NATO Environment; Maintenance and Repair Activities

Having successfully completed the first phase of this effort, the CTMA team will endeavor to follow the same methods and protocols to facilitate interoperability of Maintenance and Repair activities in a Coalition Environment harvesting IUID data across US service components, US Maintenance Centers and NATO Maintenance Centers. This data will serve as the enabler to allow maintenance activities to be conducted within and across joint service as well as international coalition environments. The effort will result in a field evolution to showcase NATO interoperability. The project will test visibility and interoperability of data between a COTS/GOTS US information system, the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA) Automated Information Systems (AIS) and the USMC Maintenance Centers at Albany, GA and Barstow, CA.  This visibility and these transactions would show basic functionality of Coalition Logistics Interoperability (a key logistics enabler in coalition operations) and serve as a cornerstone function as the USMC evolves to a fully functional Naval Logistics Integration (NLI) initiative in the Enterprise Sense and Respond environment.

This effort will demonstrate a scenario depicting the coordinated physical movement of assets from an operational environment such as a NAMSA maintenance and repair facility, or the USMC Maintenance Centers at Albany or Barstow. The data structures describing the assets and the movement will be defined where necessary based on international standards. The relevant data messages will be created and distributed according to the scenario and the actual physical movement and change to the assets. The gaps in data, communication, or technical capability will be identified and addressed. Existing capabilities and emerging contingency tools will be incorporated in the process.

The NCMS Contact is Debra Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038.

Precision Form Correction of Aircraft Fuselage Panels

Laser Shot Peening is increasingly being used in commercial and military aircraft to improve the fatigue resistance of a variety of critical flight components.  In 2008, laser peening forming began commercial application with Boeing to shape the curvature for the thick sections of the large wing panels for the new 747-8 aircraft, helping enable it to become the world’s most efficient aircraft on a per passenger mile basis. This highly precise forming technology can be used to correctively shape components such as the F/A-18 701 wing skins and on a specialty basic for aircraft needing replacement wing and fuselage skins.

In the proposed project, the team would work with NAVAIR to demonstrate and deploy laser shot peening corrective forming of the  F/A-18 701 skin panels in order to adjust as-manufactured panels to the required tolerance in shape.  Laser peening has the unique capability to generate controlled curvature and strain into panels including thick panels as used on wide bodied commercial aircraft wing skins and much thinner (0.050 inch thick) panels such as for aircraft fuselages including the F/A-18 701 skin.

The NCMS Contact is Chuck Ryan, chuckr@ncms.org, 734-995-4905.

Make plans next year for the 2012 CTMA Symposium

26-29 March, San Diego

We appreciate your feedback. Please contact Chuck Ryan with suggestions or input on other topics that would be of interest to you in this newsletter. The CTMA Program is sponsored by the Department of Defense; the content of this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be inferred.