A -- ACCELERATED INSERTION OF MATERIALS ACCELERATED INSERTION OF MATERIALS Pre-proposal Conference, SN00-01. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is sponsoring a pre-proposal conference to provide potential offerors with background information that will be useful in proposing to an anticipated BAA on the accelerated insertion of materials. This workshop will be held at GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, ARLINGTON CAMPUS PROFESSIONAL CENTER, 3410 North Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA, 22201 on NOVEMBER 16, 1999. ATTENDANCE AT THE PRE-PROPOSAL CONFERENCE IS OPTIONAL BUT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. OVERVIEW OF PLANNED PROGRAM: Currently, the development of a designer knowledge base (which incorporates design allowables, reliability, manufacturing, reproducibility, and other essential information) is a time consuming and costly endeavor. Consequently, new material insertion into production hardware is extremely difficult typically taking 15-20 years, if it is successful at all. Emerging efforts in materials modeling are leading to incremental improvements in specific areas, e.g., materials processing and mechanical behavior. It is DARPA's belief that the time scale between development of a new material and its implementation into production can be significantly shortened only through a revolutionary change in materials development methodologies. The planned program will develop and validate new approaches for materials development that will accelerate the insertion of materials into production hardware. This is to be accomplished by establishing approaches to use the required technical content and fidelity of the "designer knowledge base" to drive the optimized development/use of models and experiments. Critical to this effort will be understanding how to effectively use materials models, how to link them across various length and time scales and how to couple them with experiments to yield the appropriate information for the designer. Validation of the developed approaches will be on material systems of interest to DoD. It is expected that the winningteams in the planned program will contain all of the following expertise: system designers, materials manufacturers, computational/modeling and experimental capability, and the ability to address mathematical (versus modeling) issues. Potential bidders with any of those capabilities are encouraged to attend. TEAMING OPPORTUNITIES WILL BE PROVIDED THROUGH THIS CONFERENCE AND DURING THE PROPOSAL PHASE OF THE PROGRAM. Registration fee for this conference is $25 including continental breakfast, lunch, breaks and handout materials. To ensure adequate space, attendees are requested to register prior to November 9, 1999. Registration and additional information (directions, hotels, agenda, etc.) on this conference may be found at http://www.sainc.com/darpa/aim. The administrative point of contact for this effort is Ms. Heather Heigele at hheigele@snap.org. Funding for this multi-year program is expected to be substantial. However, this is NOT a request for proposals. No solicitation document is available at this time and DARPA, this conference not withstanding, reserves the right to have no solicitations on this subject. Posted 10/04/99 (W-SN387979).

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