AI searched 100 million possibilities and found a cheaper way to 3D-print a NASA rocket alloy
Washington State University researchers used AI to optimize the 3D printing process for GRCop-42, a high-performance NASA alloy. By testing millions of configurations digitally, the team enabled the use of common commercial printers for aerospace-grade materials.
Why it matters
This breakthrough democratizes access to advanced aerospace manufacturing, significantly reducing costs and energy requirements for printing critical rocket components.
Washington State University researchers have used artificial intelligence to identify a faster and less costly way to 3D print a high-performance metal alloy, avoiding the need to manually test more than 100 million possible printing configurations.
The advance could eventually make the alloy, which is widely used in aerospace applications and may have uses in other industries, printable on more common commercial equipment. The AI strategy developed by the team could also be useful for other scientific problems involving enormous numbers of possible experiments, including drug discovery.
Researchers from WSU's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering published the work in the Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence . The project also received the Innovative Deployed Application Award at the organization's annual conference.
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