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2001 was the most important year for TRL; as a consequence the whole flight

industry with sub-suppliers had adopted TRL a couple of years later.

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Example – simple assessment

Conductors for solar cell wafers need to conduct electricity efficiently,

withstand the thermal cycles associated with 25 years in service and they

need to be as mechanically soft as possible. The later because of coefficient

of thermal expansion mismatch between the conductor (Cu) and the wafer

(Si) causes brakeage during soldering and limits the thicknes s that can be

used. The standard way is to use annealed copper and the material is ranked

based on the yield strength, i.e. the lower the better.

Swerea KIMAB has developed a an exceptionally soft copper conductor by

making use the well known facts i) copper is on the single crystal level very

anisotropic, see table. ii) copper can under the right circumstances form

extremely sharp cube texture where all the grains are aligned in more or less

the same orientation. By utilising texture the elastic modulus can be reduced

by at least 30% compared to a standard copper.

It has been demonstrated that the mechanical properties of the proposed

conductor is substantially better than any other conductors on the market.

Furthermore, the material has been fatigue tested with conditions (amplitude,

no of cycles) relevant to 25 years in service.

What is the TRL?

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Example – simple assessment

Analogous to the TRL assessment of the super soft wire an MRL assessment

can be made with the copper plant in mind. I.e. how close are we of being

able to mass-produce the wire. In order to produce the material some steps in

the process must be significantly altered compared to the standard way of

doing copper conductor.s As today all the steps have been identified and

verified in a lab environment.

What is the MRL?

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Rule of thumb:

If changing application you always have to start over to verify at TRL4 or

TRL5 even if the technology is verified at TRL9 for the original application.

Sometimes, by comparing specification, an by making an ”Engineering

judgment” you can argue that you need to start over from TRL6-7.

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This section aims to show that TRL assessment in an organization is not

made by a single individual.

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The reviewer is important to act as a second opinion to the project manager.

The reviewer may be an indivdual or a whole (external) team.

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Introducing premature technologies in new product development projects will

ultimately generate cost overruns and schedule delays. Consequently, all

affected organizations need to carefully assess a technology’s maturity and

the potential consequences on product projects during the development. In

order to assess the technology’s maturity, Technology Readiness Levels is

used.

Sometimes it’s not our own process; we are in some cases part of our

customers process.

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Research is in many aspect development of technologies = increase the TRL

of technologies with large potential. The decision to make here is whether the

potential of the super-soft wire is good enough to motivate research to

increase the TRL level.

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In case of NASA they state that at least 10% is spend on TRL 1-2.

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TRL is a simple scale, which is also why it is useful. For the same reason it

does not cover everything. The two most obvious examples are the potential

and the cost to increase the TRL.

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No “correct” answers are given in this section. Only examples highlighting the

possible problems.

SIO FROST project: Improve the database in a mature technology Thermo-

calc. In view of the application the TRL level is believed to be high, exact TRL

is difficult since the research is incremental.

Sigma phase project within HERO-m: The technology is immature but the

potential is high which motivates further research and spin-off effects.

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