With EWI, you can reduce timelines and costs to meet required readiness levels.
EWI helps defense manufacturers deploy the most innovative technologies for higher, faster, and safer product performance while fostering cost efficiency and sustainment measures.
EWI’s cross-disciplinary capabilities enable our engineers to provide options for solving complex, unpredictable military needs.
Our engineers continue to push the envelope on applied innovation to help manufacturers meet rising demands for stronger and lighter platforms, increased mission flexibility, lower fuel usage, extended component life cycles, and reduced costs. Decades of experience working with the DoD and defense-related OEMs gives EWI a unique ability to meet the technology needs of the defense industry.
Areas of specialization include the following:
- Dissimilar materials joining
- Laser welding and processing
- Integrated computational materials engineering (ICME)
- Probabilistic modeling
Identify.
Develop.
Implement.
WE MANUFACTURE INNOVATION.
EWI provides value directly to the DoD and to the defense industrial complex by developing and deploying innovative manufacturing and sustainment technologies that improve performance, availability, safety, and quality—all while reducing costs.
Innovation that Drives Industry
EWI helps the DoD and defense-related OEMs reduce the cost of maintenance and repair through nondestructive evaluation and testing, additive manufacturing, integrated computational materials engineering (ICME), dissimilar materials joining, and probabilistic modeling. By leveraging our cross-discipline capabilities, our partners effectively extend the service life of components, reduce operating costs, and improve overall performance.
Developing Robotic Welding Procedures Onboard Ships
EWI worked with two shipyards to explore the benefits of modern, digitally controlled GMAW-P power sources and develop procedures that met NAVSEA qualification requirements for these joints. The 5G robotic butt-joint weld procedures developed during this project required a transfer to orbital welding equipment to allow their implementation onboard the ship, a technique that has not been widespread in the US shipbuilding industry as a whole.
Read more about Pulsed Gas Metal Arc Welding of Copper-nickel Pipe Joints.
Developing Friction Stir Welding for Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle Hull Component
The use of friction stir welding (FSW) as a joining method to fabricate the hull assembly of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) provided improved mechanical and ballistic performance while reducing production costs compared to the legacy process, conventional robotic gas metal arc welding (GMAW). See how EWI helped the Navy Joining Center improve the FSW process to realize a 2× improvement in welding cycle time over conventional GMAW, which represented a savings of $1.05M on the production order of 1,013 Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles.
A Mechanized Welding Solution Speeds Production and Saves Money
Two major US shipbuilders were faced with the need to reduce time of completion for several important vessels—by more than 20%. The shipyards, together with the navy, turned to EWI to evaluate, select, develop procedures for, and help with implementation of mechanized welding systems. The result was increased productivity by nearly 300% in several critical areas. Savings per vessel were estimated at $750K, which paid off the navy investment in the technology development in less than two hulls. Many additional vessels of this class are to be built, extending the savings even further.
Center for Naval Metalworking
As a technical partner in the Center for Naval Metalworking (CNM), EWI provides robust capabilities to address needs of the DoD manufacturing industrial base, including state-of-the-art metalworking labs and deep expertise in key technology areas.