Marshall Space Flight Center
June 1 – August 6, 2021
Goals of your project/s:
The primary goal of my project was to explore methods of simulating nondestructive evaluation results in order to find a viable way to determine if a part is even inspectable before it is manufactured. By doing this, NDE teams would be able to get involved with designing parts much earlier in the process, increasing their resistance to failure.
Describe what you did during the internship:
From a literature search, I learned that the most comprehensive available software for computational nondestructive evaluation was CIVA, and spent a lot of my time exploring it. Due to its complicated nature it took some time to begin properly simulating results on sample parts. Once this initial phase was completed, I began to get 3D models of components that were onsite at MSFC and began to compare the results I got from the simulations to those that were obtained by the technicians in the lab. Once we were able to confirm that the results matched, I received models of components in the design process to simulate and began to determine if they were possible to inspect once they were made. For all the components I tested, I used either Ultrasonic or Radiographic testing as those are two of the more common ones as well as the ones that were most developed on CIVA. Throughout the duration of my internship I regularly met with technicians and engineers so that I could confirm that the simulations were properly configured and was properly interpreting the results that were generated. Once the process of familiarizing myself with CIVA was completed, I began to meet with engineers in the nondestructive evaluation organization to run through the process of setting up and running simulations using CIVA in order to prevent any loss of knowledge.
Did you achieve your goals? What were the results and conclusions?
Overall, yes, the project goals were to explore the simulation side of nondestructive evaluation and to find/familiarize myself with a suitable option that can be used by the NDE organization which I managed to do with CIVA. Once I completed this, I worked with others in the organization to give them a head start on using the software as well and hopefully gave them a good base to do more computational nondestructive evaluation.
Describe positive lessons learned from this experience:
Despite having to be virtual for the duration of the summer, I still had a great experience and got a lot better at managing my time and keeping myself focused on tasks at hand. I certainly got a lot better at asking for help when I got stuck on my work which is something that was actually made easier with being virtual with me being able to schedule teams meetings over an email instead of tracking someone down.
Describe negative lessons learned from this experience:
I definitely had to learn the hard way how important good documentation is, there were several occasions where I would not remember my own reasoning for setting up something the way that I did and having to lose time figuring it out. Definitely something that I am going to try and prevent for myself in the future.