Why Fatigue Still Decides Whether AM Flies — Insights from Dr. Onome Scott-Emuakpor

The Fatigue Barrier in Aerospace Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing promises lighter parts, complex geometries and faster production for aerospace. But in aviation, printing a component is the easy part. Proving it will survive in operation is what determines whether it is ever approved for service.

A component can be produced in hours, yet qualifying it can take months of fatigue testing and analysis. At 30,000 feet, reliability is not theoretical and uncertainty is unacceptable.

For Dr. Onome Scott-Emuakpor, founder of Hyphen Innovations and former researcher at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Turbine Engine Structural Integrity Lab, closing that gap between speed and confidence has become central to bringing additive manufacturing into critical flight hardware.

From Absolute Rejection to Cautious Optimism

Dr. Scott-Emuakpor will present at RAPID + TCT 2026 in Boston this April. His presentation, A Post-Process Treatment for Improving Fatigue Performance of Additive Manufactured Parts, focuses on accelerating qualification for aerospace components.

The biggest change is the disappearance of absolutes. A decade ago, people would say additive would never be used for certain aerospace applications. Today that has shifted to cautious optimism based on data.

After years of investigation, the industry now understands AM materials behave differently than traditional ones, but they can still meet flight-critical requirements.

The Central Problem: Fatigue

Fatigue is the most critical material property in aerospace. The majority of metal components eventually fail or require maintenance because of it. There is no roadside assistance at 30,000 feet, so we need fast and reliable ways to predict fatigue behavior.

Without reliable fatigue prediction, additive manufacturing cannot scale into wider adoption for critical applications.

A New Approach: Post-Process Treatment

The title of Dr. Scott-Emuakpor's presentation challenges a common assumption: that fatigue must be solved by changing the printing process itself.

We are challenging the assumption that performance must be solved at the printing stage. Instead, a targeted post-process treatment can significantly extend fatigue life and reduce the need for lengthy iteration cycles.

Using Hyphen Innovations' i-DAMP software, engineers can design parts with up to 96% vibration suppression. Lower vibration means lower stress, bringing the part below the fatigue limit and reducing the need for extensive optimization.

70-300x Faster Qualification

The key takeaway for aerospace manufacturers: reliable fatigue performance can be achieved cost-effectively, and qualification can be completed 70 to 300 times faster than traditional testing.

The rapid disappears when qualification takes months and optimization takes years. Our approach shortens the path from innovation to deployment.

RAPID + TCT 2026 takes place in Boston this April, bringing together engineers, executives and researchers working on qualification-critical applications in aerospace and beyond.