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Engineering Expansion Adds New Capabilities at V System Composites

V System Composites continues to expand its Composite Engineering Team, bringing new capability and experience for VSC’s customers. VSC Engineering growth supports ongoing development and production programs, and increases responsiveness to customer schedule constraints by controlling part and tool design in-house, thereby improving control of the entire composite product life-cycle. This Pennsylvania capability growth supports the broader based plan to develop an Integrated Composite Design Center of Excellence for the VSC companies. The President, Michael Louderback, is quoted “This capability allows VSC to provide integrated engineering and production solutions to our customers in both a timely and cost effective manner.” The key recent changes to support this growth include:

• Scott Holmes’ promotion to Vice President, Engineering Operations, reporting directly to the President Michael Louderback
• Hieu Pham’s addition to the Team as Senior Program Manager / Design Engineer
• Sharan Kamath’s addition to the Team as a Senior Engineering Analyst
• Frank Vineis’ addition to the Team as Engineering Analyst

Scott Holmes has been with VSC since March 2005, serving as Director of East Coast Operations, and prior to that was with the Boeing Company (Philadelphia, PA). Scott has more than 18 years working with composite structures in aerospace applications, from design through fabrication, assembly and testing. As VP Engineering, Scott is focused on expanding VSC’s engineering capability to handle conventional composites design and analysis, as well as grow new capabilities for microstructural modeling of textile materials, static and dynamic structures applications, metallic and composite tooling, and ballistic protection solutions.

VSC currently maintains design capability in CATIA V5 and SolidWorks and analysis capability in ABAQUS. Other engineering design and analysis tools are available within the DR Technologies’ corporate umbrella to work with customer needs as required. VSC has also expanded analysis capabilities to include resin flow process modeling. In order to realize this capability, Dr. Jeffrey M. Lawrence, Senior Process Engineer, joined VSC last year and has been instrumental in setting up this capability. He joined VSC from the University of Delaware’s Center for Composite Materials (CCM) professional staff, where he also earned his PhD. He brings a unique capability to VSC in RTM & VARTM resin flow modeling (see HPC Article, Jan 2008). This enables VSC to predict resin progression through a fiber-filled mold through the use of specialized FEA software, which enables selection of ideal gate and vent locations, allowing for proper mold design prior to tool fabrication. Dr. Lawrence is furthering the science in this field with further collaboration with CCM in developing analytical techniques to determine the full permeability tensor for three-dimensional perform materials.

Hieu Pham joins VSC from Nothrop Grumman (Azusa, CA) with extensive experience in mechanical design and program management involving composite structures and flight hardware, most recently supporting the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program. Hieu reports directly to Scott Holmes, VP Engineering, supporting critical part and tool design efforts, and will have engineering oversight capacity for the Anaheim CA facility as well as program management responsibility reporting locally to Anaheim Sr. management.

Frank Vineis joins VSC from Widener University (Chester, PA), where he completed his Masters and Bachelors degrees in Chemical Engineering. Frank was an intern at VSC in 2007, and pursued his Master’s work focused on developing multi-scale modeling techniques for advanced composite performs by leveraging principles developed within the biomaterials research community. This program was co-sponsored by VSC as an industrial participant, and was facilitated by the Keystone Innovation Zone with support from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Sharan Kamath came to VSC from Sikorsky Aircraft (Stratford, CT) with broad structural analysis experience dealing with static and dynamic loading, most recently supporting sizing of rotor components for the Sikorsky CH-53K Heavy Lift rotorcraft. He also has extensive experience in dynamic analysis, including crash events. Sharan will support the analysis of structures for the AATD Drive System Structural Component program, as well as other key VSC programs with a structural analysis component. He will also support tool design with analysis of metallic and composite tooling for internal programs and external customers.

If you would like to learn more about VSC’s new capabilities, please contact Scott Holmes at 610-619-8560 or sholmes@vsc-inc.com or Michael Louderback at 714-678-2740 or mlouderb@vsc-inc.com. If you are attending SAMPE May 19-22, please visit us at booth 1021.

Background on V System Composites, Inc. – www.vsc-inc.com

V System Composites (VSC) is a rapidly growing company with operations in Anaheim, CA, Dayton, OH, and Philadelphia, PA, specializing in the design and fabrication of engineered composite structures for the aerospace industry. V System Composites is a wholly owned subsidiary of DR Technologies of San Diego CA. VSC’s state-of-the art fabrication facility includes the latest fabrication equipment and technologies advanced layup and large autoclave capabilities, as well as extensive RTM and VARTM capabilities. VSC is an industry leader in the application of Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) and Vacuum Assisted RTM (VARTM) technologies to prototype and production requirements. VSC‘s ability to offer vertically integrated design and fabrication solutions to industry customers has placed us in a unique and coveted position. Customers come to VSC for this unique capability and for our dynamic and innovative environment that fosters success.