Land Warfare: DMTC, Thales, researchers working on armour enhancements | ADM Nov 2010
Defence’s plans to acquire some 1,300 Protected Mobility Vehicles – Light (PMV-L) and then to replace around 1,300 M113s, ASLAVs and Bushmasters in project Land 400 provide a unique opportunity for a specialist sector of Australia’s defence industry.
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
Two ADF armoured vehicle programs provide a unique opportunity for Australian industry and Defence to exploit critical mass in the market place and try to capture economies of scale.
Under Project Land 121 Ph.4, Defence plans to acquire up to 1,300 PMV-L worth between $1 and $1.5 billion.
Outside the US, this is the biggest vehicle program of its kind in the western world.
If either of the three Manufactured & Supported in Australia (MSA) option contenders are selected, Defence seeks a minimum of 50 per cent (by value) Australian industry involvement.
Given that key components like engines, transmissions and axles will almost certainly be imported, this means significant potential to build the hulls in-country.
Similarly, Land 400 will see the replacement of some 1,300 M113s, ASLAVs and Bushmasters.
While no acquisition strategy has been developed as yet for this project, a proven, indigenous hull design and fabrication capability which has demonstrated it can deliver the right levels of protection, quality and price would have a strong case for a major role in this project as well.
With all that in mind, the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) is working through a number of closely related vehicle armoured vehicle research programs designed to deliver improved protection, more consistent quality and reduced fabrication cycle times, and cost.
Thanks to Thales Australia’s Bushmaster PMV, Australian industry doesn’t have to prove it’s capable of delivering capability and quality: what the industry needs to prove now is the business case for further work.
That case is strengthened slightly by the fact that the repair, maintenance and upgrading of armoured vehicles was identified in this year’s Defence Industry Policy Statement as a Strategic Industry Capability (SIC) – that is, something which confers enhanced defence self-reliance and has the potential to become a PIC.
So in one DMTC research program Thales Australia, Bisalloy Steels and BlueScope Steel are working with ANSTO, DSTO and a team of university researchers to develop improved steel for armoured vehicles and better design and fabrication processes to reduce weight and cost.
The DMTC, which is funded by the DMO and some 27 industry, state government and research partners, was set up in 2008 by Defence and the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research to help the ADF and Australian industry benefit from some of the ground-breaking research into high-technology materials that is carried out in Australia.
One of the most important goals of this particular research program is to develop virtual models of the behaviour of high-hardness steel armour when it’s hit by a projectile or a blast.
Few material models exist for the armoured steels manufactured in Australia, so vehicles are designed here using a traditional and somewhat conservative design process which delivers the required protection, but is difficult to optimise for weight and payload.
Future armoured vehicle projects would benefit from such a modelling capability because they would enable designers to optimise the design before building prototypes and testing them to destruction – an expensive process, as Thales points out.
As improved steels are developed the model can be extended to incorporate these as well, and this is also part of DMTC’s ongoing research.
The modelling could also incorporate new welding and fabrication processes being developed by Thales and Bisalloy with the University of Wollongong (UoW).
The UoW’s Lean Automation Demonstration Facility (LADF), established by the DMTC with NSW government funding support, is working on single-pass welding processes to reduce temperatures and heat effects which can distort armour steels and weaken joints – currently high-hardness armour steels are welded using a very carefully controlled (and therefore slow and deliberate) multi-pass process which demands close attention to temperatures.
Single-pass welding delivers more consistent quality as well as a much faster process, according to research leader Professor Huijun Li.
His colleague, Dr Steve Pan, is working on lean automation techniques: integrating the robot welders which companies like Thales already use to manufacture armoured vehicles with the CAD systems used to design them.
This could deliver a really significant pay-off, he told ADM: at present, programming a robot welder to follow a precise and sometimes complex tool path can take up to six months, with the robot unavailable for production work at that time.
This makes it difficult and expensive to introduce design changes or to accommodate minor variations for different customers on the same production line.
Simply integrating the robot with the CAD system means it can be programmed offline to follow the approximate tool path.
Adding refinements such as online tracking/monitoring and calibration technology to guide the welding electrode very precisely in real time means a robot can be programmed to cope with design changes, all-new vehicles and different customer variants on the same production line with the minimum of disruption and factory downtime.
This is unglamorous work, but its potential benefits are massive, according to DMTC’s CEO Dr Mark Hodge.
The ability to reduce hull fabrication time significantly would strengthen the business case for manufacturing armoured vehicles in Australia.
The potential for an improved balance between protection and vehicle mass would benefit the ADF warfighter: protection is essential, but the vehicle must still have a useful level of performance and functionality.
The DMTC’s R&D investment makes it possible to build a SIC that is self-sustaining and requires little or no intervention by Defence, says Hodge.
Much of the DMTC’s money comes from the DMO: some $30 million over seven years, an investment which has leveraged over $50 million in additional funding from industry, academic and research organisations, including DSTO.
The DMO’s contribution amounts to $4.3 million a year, or about one third of the $13 million or so a year which it invests in the CTD program, but is designed to take the fruits of Australian research right into operational service.
To the extent that DMTC’s research is able to deliver capability benefits as well as supporting the goals of the defence industry policy statement, industry sources have told ADM privately that’s remarkably cheap at the price.
Disclosure: Gregor Ferguson is a former DMTC Research Fellow.
Steeling the shipbuilding industry
The DMTC’s research into vehicle armour and fabrication is mirrored closely in a second research program which focuses on ship and submarine construction and hull materials and uses similar methodologies and research tools.
The context for this research is the submarine and ship construction program outlined in the 2009 DCP: over the next 25 years the RAN will acquire around 136,000 tonnes of new surface ships and submarines worth up to $50 billion at current estimates.
Anything which helps enhance the seaworthiness and survivability of these platforms supports the warfighters, while reducing the time and cost of building them has the potential to save the DMO serious money.
The DMTC’s Maritime Platforms research program is helping develop faster, more efficient welding and fabrication techniques for the construction of surface ships and submarines.
Work so far shows shipyards can double their materials joining productivity and enhance the quality of their welding work, and so build modules or entire ship and submarine hulls much faster and to higher quality standards.
The research also makes it possible for the first time to employ higher-strength steels economically in warship construction, which increases their strength and safety without increasing their weight.
The price of a ship or submarine hull is driven in large part by manpower costs, especially in areas like welding.
These are driven in turn by the distortion and residual post-welding stresses which are a routine by product of welding large steel plates.
The post treatment of structural distortion alone accounts for 30 per cent of the cost of this welding work.
A DMTC, DSTO and UoW team, led by Dr Steve Van Duin are researching lean automation techniques, using robotics to manoeuvre welding attachments and online inspection tools to improve the speed, consistency and quality of the welding process.
This team is also researching advanced welding technologies to minimise distortion and stress.
Between them these will reduce significantly the cost of producing even one-off items or small batches of platform modules and sub-assemblies.
This research uses the UoW’s Lean Automation and Fabrication Facility.
This consists of an articulated robotic arm mounted on a 6m x 2m linear rail in a reconfigurable flexible work cell, along with a UoW-designed ‘intelligent’ Gripper to secure and manipulate work pieces and ensure accurate alignment and a Tool Changer for the robotic arm to enable rapid switching between different types of arc welding electrode, laser attachments, and inspection and calibration tools.
These are all integrated using proprietary ship design and construction software – RinasWeld and Demia – to enabling efficient path programming and accurate positioning of the work-pieces and the electrode.
The researchers have integrated these elements and developed the techniques to the point where they have already demonstrated a 113 per cent increase in weld deposition rate, a 63 per cent reduction in angular distortion, and an increase in welding speed of 18 per cent.
In short, fabrication productivity is more than doubled, while distortion effects are reduced dramatically.
Meanwhile the DMTC, DSTO, ANSTO, BlueScope Steel and the UoW are exploring High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) steels manufactured using a thermo-mechanical process rather than the more common continuous casting process.
Some types cost almost the same as the D36 steels currently used in warships, are as easy to shape and weld and exceed typical naval toughness requirements by over 100 per cent.
Therefore they can help make ships significantly stronger without increasing platform weight and cost.
The researchers, led again by UoW’s Professor Huijun Li, are testing the performance of this material as well as the optimum techniques for welding it.
These include Hybrid Laser Gas Metal-Arc Welding (HL-GMAW), Double Electrode GMAW and thermo-tensioning through Low Stress No Distortion (LSND) welding employing targeted heating and cooling sources close to the weld pool.