Engineering & Technology
Hampton University
Hampton, Virginia 23668
 
757-728-6970

The VPERC Program (Virtual Parts Engineering Research Center) is a collaborative effort between Hampton University , Arizona State University, and the University of Utah funded by the Army Research Office--Virtual Parts Engineering Research Initiative (VPERI). The focus is on building frameworks, tools, and technologies for making engineered systems sustainable and maintainable in the 21st century. This virtual engineering environment is intended to transform the engineering process, thus supporting extremely fast turnaround times for urgent part supply needs. VPERC is in its sixth year of operation. Our team's combined vision is to support the National Science Foundation goals of increasing access to scientific and engineering equipment at our nation's institutions of higher education. In facilitating advances in equipment and technologies this team will lead to improved capabilities to sustain/maintain legacy engineering systems and their component parts.

VPERC successfully utilizes reverse engineering, reengineering or redesign of legacy or general parts to reproduce quality parts that are otherwise unavailable. The process is critical for several reasons:

• When the original manufacturer is no longer in business or no longer manufactures the part drawings are unavailable, carry multiple errors, or OEM is unavailable
• When materials, heat-treatment, manufacturing processes, or quality assurances are not properly documented
• When the part fails too frequently in service due to environmental factors such as temperature, corrosion, dust, erosion or other factors
• When added functionality is desired

Hampton University utilizes professors and faculty from its School of Engineering to perform comprehensive research and development. This severely minimizes the expense associated with the manufacturing process charged by other manufacturers.

The objectives of VPERC are:

• To manufacture parts utilizing a cost- effective method thereby minimizing the cost and maximizing the value to the customer.
• To manufacture quality parts that meet and exceed mechanical testing, failure analyses and structural analyses
• To identify recurring problems with parts and make necessary evaluations and recommendations to increase the reliability and functionality.

VPERC is committed to facilitating advances in technology that will lead to improved capabilities to sustain and maintain parts by utilizing ISO 10303 and STEP methods. Parts on demand will be manufactured utilizing CAD data maintained in a web-based repository for rapid manufacture. Globalization in manufacturing is also made easier by this process.

VPERC captures mechanical product designs in two specific STEP AP's:

• AP203: Configuration-Controlled 3D Designs of Mechanical Parts and Assemblies
• AP224: Mechanical Product Definition for Process Planning using machining features

Once captured in STEP format, this "intelligent" data is validated to verify its accuracy and completeness.

It is then provided to our certified manufacturer via the web, to produce the required parts.