The Metals Processing Institute at WPI plans to launch the Aerospace Materials Education, Research, and Innovation Center (AMERIC). Once underway, AMERIC will bring together academic, government, and industry leaders to transform materials education at the university level and build a research portfolio for structural materials to meet the changing needs of the aerospace sector. At inception, AMERIC will perform basic metals research relevant to forged and cast high performance aerospace structural components. The center will pursue formulation of a consortium of industrial partners only after having built core research capabilities and having assembled an initial research portfolio.
The aerospace industry is important globally and contributes over 15% of the nation's GNP and provides 15 million domestic high quality jobs. This industry contributes an international trade surplus to the U.S. larger than any other manufacturing sector. The center will perform basic research on high performance nickel, titanium, and aluminum aerospace alloys in collaboration with materials research teams from universities and government laboratories across the country. The research will include materials modeling and the development of integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) methods. AMERIC also will serve as an educational center by developing courses, offering distance-learning opportunities, and presenting symposia that will address the evolving skill set needed by the 21st century structural materials engineer.
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