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Why Fatigue Still Decides Whether AM Flies — Insights from Dr. Onome Scott-Emuakpor Ahead of RAPID + TCT 2026
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…
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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.
Dr. Scott-Emuakpor will present this topic at RAPID + TCT 2026 in Boston this April, where his presentation, A Post-Process Treatment for Improving Fatigue Performance of Additive Manufactured Parts, focuses on accelerating qualification for aerospace components. Ahead of the event, we spoke with him about how industry attitudes toward additive manufacturing have evolved, why fatigue remains the central barrier to adoption and what engineers should understand before attempting flight-critical applications.
3DN: Could you briefly introduce yourself and explain how your background in aerospace engineering led you to focus on additive manufacturing and eventually found Hyphen Innovations?
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