ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-11042
Open Date: 07/02/2022 10:09 CEST
Closing Date: 21/03/2022 13:00 CEST

The main objective of this activity is to identify, down-select, further develop and demonstrate promising combinations of relatively mature, state of art smart AM printing processes and novel verification methodologies to produce cost-effective fatigue and mission critical structural items, with reduced cost/development time and increased design freedom. The verification methodology shall be tailorable to various aspects, including: very small to medium series size, smart definition of product families that can be expanded rapidly and cost effectively, recurring vs non-recurring testing, final product inspection vs continuous process monitoring, etc.Two simplified demonstration cases shall be defined to further develop and demonstrate different aspects of the verification methodology. These demonstration cases will include both elementary samples and full-scale breadboard articles. This activity requires as prerequisite an AM process already developed/used to produce space components (or equivalent if duly justified) and does not intend to optimize within this activity the design of classical parts or AM. It shall start with parts already produced with AM and optimise the fatigue performance only if necessary and possible with low risk of invalidating the original AM procedure. Therefore, the majority of the budget shall be allocated to testing methodology development and demonstration, and not to AM process development.The TRL of the selected end-to-end process shall increase from TRL2 to at least TRL4 by the end of this activity. In order to achieve TRL4, a component and/or breadboard shall be functionally verified in a laboratory environment. In this project, the breadboards are specified as part of the demonstration cases.

Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. Quality
Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Authorised Contact Person: Anna Reinsoo
Initiating Service: TEC-MSS
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EE+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE
Technology Keywords: 15-A-V-Guiding Technologies / 20-F-III-Fracture Control Tools and Methodologies / 21-B-II-Cryo-Coolers / 24-E-III-Characterisation, Modelling and Testing of Fracture Mechanics
Products Keywords: 2-C-1-Metallic