Anna Adamska
Senior Materials Engineer · Materials & Process Engineering
Warsaw, Poland
Senior Materials Engineer with a decade of experience in aerospace material characterization, allowables database development, and supplier qualification. Leads material selection and qualification activities for new propulsion programs — covering nickel superalloys, titanium alloys, and advanced coatings. Deep knowledge of statistical methods for design allowables and MMPDS/CMH-17 data reduction procedures.
Expertise
- nickel superalloy and titanium alloy characterization
- material allowables database development
- supplier material qualification
- design allowables for hot section components
- material specification authoring (AMS, MMPDS)
Technologies
Work History
2025-01
AI-assisted material screening tool — collaborated with AI team to build a property prediction model for new alloy compositions. Provided 800 historical alloy characterization data points as training data and validated model predictions.
Challenge: Historical alloy data had significant batch-to-batch variability that the AI model treated as feature variability rather than measurement noise. Clustering by alloy heat number and averaging within heats before training reduced prediction error by 35%.
Learned: Material property ML models must account for the hierarchical data structure — batch-level vs. specimen-level variability. Feeding raw specimen data without heat-level grouping mixes process variation with material property variation, degrading model accuracy.
2024-04
Thermodynamic equilibrium calculations for new γ' strengthened superalloy — used Thermo-Calc with TCNI9 database to predict phase stability, γ' solvus temperature, and TCP phase formation risk as a function of composition.
Challenge: TCNI9 database predictions for Re content above 5% showed significant uncertainty in TCP phase formation temperature. Required experimental validation — commissioned 6 alloy buttons at compositions spanning the design space for DSC measurement of actual solvus temperatures.
Learned: Thermo-Calc predictions for high-Re superalloy compositions must be validated experimentally. The database accuracy for complex multi-element superalloys decreases significantly above 3-4 alloying element interactions — computational predictions are a useful starting point, not a design basis.
2023-09
New forging supplier qualification — defined the qualification test plan, reviewed supplier qualification specimens, and approved the material certification against AMS 5596 for IN718 HPT disk forgings.
Challenge: Supplier's initial qualification specimens had grain size non-conformances in the bore region — ASTM 5 required but supplier achieved ASTM 4 in 30% of specimens. Negotiated a corrective action plan with additional forging process optimization and re-qualification testing before approval.
Learned: Supplier material qualification must include microstructural acceptance criteria alongside mechanical property tests. Mechanical properties can meet specification even with suboptimal microstructure — but the microstructure controls scatter and long-term durability in ways that short-term testing cannot detect.
2023-02
Design allowables database development for IN718 forged HPT disk — coordinated test campaign with mechanical test lab (120 tensile, LCF, creep specimens). Performed statistical data reduction per MMPDS-10 for A- and B-basis allowables.
Challenge: LCF data at 650°C showed bimodal scatter — two distinct failure populations with different crack initiation mechanisms (surface vs. subsurface). MMPDS standard assumes a single Weibull distribution. Required a mixture model approach and DER justification for the non-standard data reduction method.
Learned: Bimodal fatigue scatter is a common challenge for nickel superalloys with surface and subsurface crack initiation competition. Document the failure mode population separately — a single-distribution allowable calculated over mixed populations will be unconservative for one failure mode.