NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

A four-day classroom experience exploring materials durability was offered by the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Academy July 30-August 2, 2007 in Houston, Texas. Thirty-eight students from NASA locations and NASA contract affiliations participated in “Materials Durability - Understanding Damage Modes: Learning from the Past and Looking to the Future.”

The lack of materials durability understanding has led to numerous failures and accidents that resulted in safety concerns, mission failure and high costs. The focus of this course was to share lessons learned that may help mitigate these missteps in the future.

Dr. Robert S. Piascik, Technical Fellow for materials, and colleagues from NASA, industry and the U.S. Department of Defense drew on lessons of the past to emphasize the importance of materials durability. The course focused on understanding material damage modes as they relate to materials-environment interactions. Dr. Piascik and his team of 19 Technical Discipline Technicians shared “lessons learned” related to degradation mechanisms and described how analysis methods are used for assessing materials durability.

Dr. William Prosser, Technical Fellow for nondestructive evaluation (NDE), and his expert colleagues (part of the 19 mentioned above) also provided some lessons learned relative to the use of NDE for ensuring durability. As a field of study that uses noninvasive technologies to evaluate materials damage, the students were provided data that demonstrated why NDE is a critical methodology that is required to ensure air and space vehicle worthiness.

“Materials Durability - Understanding Damage Modes” is the seventh in a series of discipline courses offered by the NESC Academy since 2005. Earlier courses included Active Thermal Control and Life Support Systems, Propulsion, Power and Avionics, Satellite Attitude Control Systems, Human Factors and, most recently, Software. These courses can be taken online at the NESC Academy website, + Return to Researcher News Homepage

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