USM partner in $5.7M NASA grant

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The University of South Carolina's (UofSC) College of Engineering and Computing will begin a transformation in the manufacturing and simulation processes used in aircraft production with a $5.7M NASA grant. The research team's airframe to spaceframe approach will make urban air mobility possible by dramatically increasing the production rate of aircraft. Urban air mobility refers to in-air transportation within urban areas. It is expected to be a commercially viable market by 2030, but it'll require aircraft to be built in much higher quantities and frequencies. High-selling aircraft like the Airbus A321 can be produced at a rate of up to 70 per month. Michel van Tooren, the initiator of the NASA proposal and former director of UofSC's SmartState Center, predicts that urban air transport will ultimately require 100 aircraft to be produced daily. The SC team - in partnership with Boise State University, University of Southern Mississippi, Benedict College and multiple industry partners - will work to make these production demands possible through the four-year NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) grant. Boise State and USM (Hattiesburg, Miss.) will begin research using experimental and simulation techniques to make the thermoplastic tape that aircraft are built from stronger and more durable. This tape will then be passed to South Carolina's team, which will use advanced manufacturing processes such as automated fiber placement and automated tape layup to build aircraft parts at a higher production rate. The UofSC team will then use thermoplastic welding, instead of nuts and bolts, to fusion bond the parts together. "It's a new level of simulation and it's a new way of manufacturing," van Tooren says, and will "open the door to large-scale urban air mobility sooner than we ever imagined." ULI was created by NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. This $32.8M ULI has five team leads, including South Carolina, North Carolina A&T, Oklahoma State University, Stanford University and the University of Delaware. (Source: MB magazine 09/03/20)