Instead of waiting up to 18 months for traditionally manufactured components, U.S. Army personnel could fabricate critical replacement parts in the field thanks to advanced materials and additive-manufacturing research led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. To propel this innovation, UT’s Defense Development and Applied Research Center (DARC) will receive up to $27 million from the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) between 2026 and 2030. The work, conducted with Leidos, will address supply chain issues and strengthen the U.S. military’s advanced materials and manufacturing capabilities.
The U.S. Armed Forces, like many American industries, have long relied on equipment made by casting and forging. In the 21st century, getting cast and forged parts or components can be a long process — especially for service members in the field. The wait for parts can not only prevent military personnel from doing their jobs but can also affect their safety during active duty.
UT researchers have been collaborating with ARL engineers to investigate new technologies and materials for additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, that can be deployed closer to the end user. Now, under the new project scope, they will help translate laboratory-based innovations into solutions ready for deployment.
“Humans have used casting and forging for thousands of years, developing precise recipes that combine chemistry, temperature and mechanical processing to produce materials with specific structures and properties,” said Katharine Page, professor of materials science and engineering in the Tickle College of Engineering and primary investigator for the ARL collaboration. “Additive manufacturing requires new recipes. The materials experience very different thermal and mechanical processing conditions, and we need to understand how those differences affect their structure and performance.”
Additive manufacturing is particularly relevant for the Army’s ground vehicle program. UT’s ongoing work with ARL will inform strategies for replacing parts and components that cause vehicles or vehicle armor to fail.
According to Page, the UT team excels in the advanced process monitoring and post-process characterization techniques required to understand the chemistry and structure of new materials and how they must improve to meet military needs.
“Our process, structure, property and performance studies help us determine new ways to make materials cheaper, faster and with the same or better performance compared to traditional casting and forging,” Page said. “And ultimately, we want to know whether the Army can use these technologies out in the field.”
Working on a small scale, UT researchers have successfully demonstrated the answer is yes.
They first demonstrated how an additive system installed at the Tennessee National Guard’s Knoxville Armory can produce replacement parts that would otherwise take months to procure from a manufacturer. This capability could enable rapid repair of Army vehicles closer to battlefields.
Additive manufacturing innovations from the UT-ARL collaboration were later demonstrated aboard a U.S. Navy ship during the world’s largest international maritime military exercise.
Now, UT is investing in larger-scale capabilities. The Tennessee Manufacturing and Design Enterprise , for instance, is sizing up from manufacturing systems that can produce microcomponents to systems that produce parts the size of a large office desk.
“We can now run more types of studies,” Page said. “The frontier is understanding and controlling processing-dependent material behavior, ensuring reliability under demanding service conditions and developing the scientific and qualification frameworks to expand usage.”
UT is also studying “super materials” designed to perform under extreme temperatures, pressures, mechanical loading and aggressive chemicals.
Leidos, which provides advanced, mission-critical services and solutions to the U.S. government, is particularly interested in composite super materials. Composites combine two or more distinct materials to achieve properties neither provide alone. Their complexity, however, poses unique challenges under extreme conditions.
UT will collaborate with ARL and Leidos to investigate how manufacturing processes influence these composites’ structural features (such as the interface between the constituent materials), defects and degradation under challenging conditions.
“There are so many potential applications for these super materials within the Army, Air Force, space industry and nuclear industry,” Page said. “UT has a very strong program in carbon and ceramic composites, and it will only continue to grow with this project.”
Researchers use an extensive collection of specialized tools and technologies housed at UT’s Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Core Facilities , the Fibers and Composites Manufacturing Facility and the UTK-MRSEC Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing , which is supported by the National Science Foundation. Capabilities include cryogenics, high-temperature furnaces, X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy capabilities, to name a few.
Moving forward, UT Chattanooga will also provide computational modeling capabilities that complement UT Knoxville’s experimental work with super materials.
UTC’s Murat Barisik, associate professor of mechanical engineering, will lead his colleagues at the UTC Center for Nanoengineering in performing multiscale modeling to predict and better understand how specific materials change and degrade.
“Experimenting at extremes is difficult and expensive,” Page said. “This modeling will help us inform each step of the process with theory. Theory will help us extend our exploration and run a model hundreds of different ways to find explanations, and then we can validate the theory with several highly focused experiments.”
The integrated UT, ARL and Leidos project team is preparing now for new challenges that will emerge while scaling up technologies.
“Many UT experts are involved in leading specific aspects of this huge project,” Page said. “We all regularly exchange information with our sponsors — people who will eventually use our solutions. This direct engagement enables us to create a scientific and research foundation to accelerate technology development and enable end users to deploy new solutions with confidence, much sooner.”
UT students, many of whom have friends and family serving in the military, will also interface directly with Army end users. ARL is encouraging students to turn any unexpected problems that arise into thesis topics that will make a real-world impact.
“As a land-grant university, UT connects students and the workforce with ways to solve grand challenges,” Page said. “It’s fitting that we contribute to national defense by creating new knowledge and developing the people who will carry that knowledge forward to benefit Tennessee and the U.S.”