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1 0 A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8 and become inaccurate. Makeev aims to develop software that combines a high degree of accuracy with a high degree of automation in a one-sided scanning system that will overcome the current size limits of full scanning. The work could prove invaluable as the U.S. Army and helicopter industry anticipate replacing more than 6300 military verti- cal lift aircraft. uta.edu . NANOPATTERNED METALS STAY STRONG In a series of experiments, sci- entists from Brown University, Provi- dence, R.I., showed how metals pat- terned with nanotwins—linear bound- aries in the atomic lattice with iden- tical crystalline structures on either side—slow the accumulation of fati- gue-related damage. The researchers electroplated bulk samples of cop- per with closely spaced twin struc- tures within the plates’ crystalline grains. Then they measured the stress responses as the plates were repeatedly stretched and compressed at a series of different strain amplitudes—chang- ing the amplitude every 1500 cycles— beginning at 0.02%, then 0.04%, 0.06%, and peaking at 0.09% before ratchet- ing back down. At each amplitude, the stress response quickly stabilized, and it was the same on the way up as on the way down, showing that the material did not harden or soften under strain as most metals would. Similar exper- iments on non-nanotwinned controls showed significant hardening or soften- ing, depending on the material. TESTING | CHARACTERIZATION ARMY FUNDS PROJECT TO SUPERSIZE CT SCANNING An aerospace engineering re- searcher at the University of Texas at Arlington received a grant from the Army Research Lab to advance struc- tural diagnostics and life assessment The Southwest Research Institute and the University of Texas at San Antonio received $125,000 in funding from The Connecting through Research Partnerships (Connect) Program to improve the mitigation of cracking and corrosion in oil and gas industry equipment. Using Raman spectroscopy and electrochemical corrosion measurements, the group will investigate how inhibitors or advanced materials could address changes in solution chemistry and oxide film composition. swri.org , utsa.edu . BRIEFS Spirit AeroSystems, Wichita, Kan., and NDT Solutions LLC, New Richmond, Wis., reached a licensing agreement to com- mercialize Spirit’s innovative device for ultrasonic inspection of complex, integrated compos- ite structures. The technology allows composite structures to be inspected from the inside out instead of the usual surface-only investigation. spiritaero.com , ndts.com . for composite aircraft parts. Professor Andrew Makeev was awarded $900,000 to improve reconstruction algorithms and software techniques to enable high-resolution one-sided computa- tional tomography-based nondestruc- tive inspection (NDI). X-ray computa- tional tomography (CT) is the only 3D industrial NDI method for compos- ite aircraft structures that provides micro-resolution reliable enough to detect damage precursors such as porosity, voids, and fiber-waviness, along with automated results interpre- tation. However, current micro-focus CT technology is based on scanning 360° around an object, or full scanning, which limits its use to small cross sec- tions. At the same time, limited-angle reconstructions used in current one- sided inspections can lose definition AndrewMakeev, right, director of the UT Arlington Advanced Materials and Structures Lab, looks over research results with his colleague, Erian Armanios.