NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama will be the development and manufacturing headquarters for the new aerospace-grade hull which will be key to completing the Company’s latest Cyclops-class submersible.

NASA’s advanced composite manufacturing capability is ideally suited for the high precision and high-quality requirements of our latest hull design

OceanGate CEO & Founder, Stockton Rush

The company are hoping that this joint design agreement with NASA will further the development of its five-person submarine capable of reaching 19,700 feet. It’s hoped that the new submersible would be operational by 2021 and take on a series of dives to the wreck of the Titanic which lies at a depth of 12,500 feet in the North Atlantic.

Over the last few years, OceanGate has been developing its Titan submersible, made from a mixture of carbon fibre and titanium. The filament wound cylinder that forms the centre section of the pressure vessel is nearly 13 cm thick and made from over 800 layers of carbon fibre composites. The entire pressure vessel consists of two titanium hemispheres, two matching titanium interface rings, and the 142 cm internal diameter, 2.4 metres long carbon fibre wound cylinder, the largest such device ever built for use in a manned submersible.

In April 2019 OceanGate crew sets a world record with Titan as the first four-person dive to 12,300 feet.

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High-strain composites experience strains much higher than most other uses of composite materials and NASA will use this software to model these high-strain composites and research deployable’s that are lightweight and feature time and temperature-dependent behaviour. 

SwiftComp takes details of the fundamental building block of materials and structures as input, then outputs the structural properties needed for macroscopic analysis. It can be used for composite beams, plates and shells, and 3D structures, for both micromechanical and structural modelling.

 Allan Wood, president and CEO of AnalySwift

In addition to deployable composite booms, NASA could leverage the software for structures such as living vessels, foldable panels, hinges and reflectors, as well as lightweight structures such as satellite buses, landers, rovers, solar arrays and antennas. Other applications include highly flexible wings for future aircraft and highly fatigue- and damage-tolerant structures for revolutionary vertical lift aircraft.

The technology was developed by Wenbin Yu, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics in Purdue’s College of Engineering. The software has been licensed to companies and universities worldwide, including those using it for work on satellites and mobile phone components, including printed circuit boards.

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Plans for the project call for RCBI to conduct a Composites Technology Conference and Demonstration, facilitate Composites Technology webinars, assist in the development of Composites Technology workshops, promote professional development for K-12 STEM educators and initiate a K-12 outreach effort using Composites Technology centred lesson plans, learning materials and hands-on experiments.

It is difficult to find an industry in the 21st Century that is not touched by composites materials, Composites technology is particularly booming in the aviation and aerospace industries, where light-weight, high-strength composites are used to reduce weight and improve the efficiency of aircraft and spacecraft.
Charlotte Weber, RCBI Director & CEO

RCBI’s partners in the campaign in addition to Marshall’s June Harless Center, include Marshall’s College of Education, FMW Composite Systems Inc. and the WV NASA Educator Resource Center.

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CMF is a foam that consists of hollow, metallic spheres – made of materials such as stainless steel or titanium – embedded in a metallic matrix made of steel, aluminium or metallic alloys. For this study, the researchers used steel-steel CMF, meaning that both the spheres and the matrix were made of steel. Previous work has found the metal foam is remarkably tough: it can withstand .50 calibre rounds, resist high temperatures, and block blast pressure from high explosive incendiary rounds.

The infused CMF is made by immersing the steel-steel CMF in a hydrophobic epoxy resin and using vacuum forces to pull the resin into both the hollow spheres and into much smaller pores found in the steel matrix itself. This results in about 88 per cent of the CMF’s pores being filled with epoxy resin.

The researchers then tested both infused CMF and aerospace-grade aluminium to see how they performed in three areas: contact angle, which determines how quickly water streams off of a material; insect adhesion, or how well bug parts stuck to the material; and particle wear, or how well the material stands up to erosion. All of these factors affect the performance of an aircraft wing’s leading edge.

The contact angle is a measure of how well water beads up on a surface. The lower a material’s contact angle, the more the water clings to the surface. This is relevant for aircraft wings because water buildup on a wing can affect aircraft performance. The researchers found that infused CMF had a contact angle of 130% higher than aluminium – a significant improvement.

Insect adhesion is measured in two ways: by the maximum height of insect residue that builds upon the material, and by the amount of area covered by insect residue on a material’s surface. Again, infused CMF outperformed aluminium – by 60% in regard to maximum height, and by 30% in regard to the surface area covered.

The researchers also conducted grit blast experiments to simulate the erosion caused by the wear and tear that occurs over time when aircraft wings are in use. The researchers found that, while grit blast did increase surface roughness for infused CMF, it still fared better than aluminium. For example, at its worst, infused CMF still had a contact angle 50 per cent higher than that of aluminium.

In other words, the infused CMF retained its properties through erosion and wear, which indicates that it would give leading-edge wing components a longer lifetime – and reduce the costs associated with maintenance and replacement.

Aluminium is currently the material of choice for making the leading edge of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft wings. Our results suggest that infused CMF may be a valuable replacement, offering better performance at the same weight.

The paper, “Polymer Infused Composite Metal Foam as a Potential Aircraft Leading Edge Material,” is published in the journal Applied Surface Science. The first author of the paper is Jacob Marx, a Ph.D. student at NC State. The paper was co-authored by Samuel Robbins, Zane Grady, Frank Palmieri and Christopher J. Wohl of NASA Langley Research Center.

The research was done with support from NASA, under grant number NNX17AD67A.

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The 6-month study aboard the International space station will evaluate the ability of Lamborghini’s carbon fibre materials to withstand temperature fluctuations, radiation exposure (including ultraviolet and linear energy transfer), vacuum and atomic oxygen exposure.

Environmental conditions at low-Earth orbit allow us to evaluate the properties and robustness of the carbon fibre materials under extreme conditions. This is a unique environment to learn more about their properties and characteristics, in the hope of one-day developing technologies and devices that could be used on Earth and in space. Alessandro Grattoni, Ph.D., Chair of the department of nano-medicine at Houston Methodist Research Institute

Grattoni heads the Centre for Space Nanomedicine at Houston Methodist Research Institute and began sending select research projects to the International space station in 2015. The centre’s focus is on nanotechnology-based therapeutics, biomedical devices for precision medicine, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. The Lamborghini project is the fourth of 10 experiments from Grattoni’s lab scheduled for the ISS over the next several years.

For the past 12 years, Grattoni’s work has focused on implantable nanochannel platforms to control the delivery of therapies for a variety of chronic medical needs, including HIV-prevention, muscle atrophy, obesity and cancer.

Grattoni is already collaborating with Lamborghini on another project to study the biocompatibility of the automaker’s proprietary carbon fibre composites for implantable devices. Understanding the durability of Lamborghini’s proprietary material in accelerated and extreme environmental conditions in space could help future research efforts for biomedical technologies beyond drug-delivery devices, such as in prostheses and in dental and orthopaedic implants.

Compared to conventional materials, Lamborghini’s carbon fibre composites could prove to be more durable at a fraction of the weight. If this study shows mechanical strength and robustness, I could see the possibility of additional applications within the aerospace industry.

Lamborghini’s Advanced Composite Lightweight Structures Department of Research & Development is the carmaker’s unit focused on the research and production of carbon fibre composite materials in their vehicles.

The ISS National Lab works in a cooperative agreement with NASA to launch research investigations to the orbiting laboratory that has the capacity to benefit life on Earth through space-based inquiry. Future Houston Methodist experiments scheduled for launch to the ISS include an implantable nanochannel drug-delivery device that will be remotely controlled on Earth, as well as a platform for the controlled delivery of therapeutics for osteoporosis prevention and treatment.

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NASA’s CubeSat Launch initiative (CSLI) provides opportunities for small satellite payloads to fly on rockets planned for upcoming launches. These CubeSats are flown as auxiliary payloads on previously planned missions.

Small satellites are playing an increasingly larger role in exploration, technology demonstration, scientific research and educational investigations at NASA. These miniature satellites provide a low-cost platform for NASA missions, including planetary space exploration. They also allow an inexpensive means to engage students in all phases of satellite development, operation and exploitation through real-world, hands-on research and development experience on NASA-funded ride share launch opportunities.

The first ever carbon-nanotube resin mirror could prove central to creating a low-cost space telescope for a range of CubeSat scientific investigations.

Unlike most telescope mirrors made of glass or aluminium, this particular optic is made of carbon nanotubes embedded in an epoxy resin. Sub-micron-size, cylindrically shaped, carbon nanotubes exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat. Owing to these unusual properties, the material is valuable to nanotechnology, electronics, optics, and other fields of materials science, and, as a consequence, are being used as additives in various structural materials.

The use of a carbon-nanotube optic in a CubeSat telescope offers a number of advantages. In addition to being lightweight, highly stable, and easily reproducible, carbon-nanotube mirrors do not require polishing — a time-consuming and often times expensive process typically required to assure a smooth, perfectly shaped mirror.

To make a mirror, technicians simply pour the mixture of epoxy and carbon nanotubes into a mandrel or mould fashioned to meet a particular optical prescription. They then heat the mould to cure and harden the epoxy. Once set, the mirror then is coated with a reflective material of aluminium and silicon dioxide.

Many of the mirror segments in these telescopes are identical and can therefore be produced using a single mandrel. Carbon-nanotube mirrors can also be made into ‘smart optics’. To maintain a single perfect focus in the Keck telescopes, for example, each mirror segment has several externally mounted actuators that deform the mirrors into the specific shapes required at different telescope orientations.

This technology can potentially enable very large-area technically active optics in space, and can address everything from astronomy and Earth observing to deep-space communications.

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Endel Iarve, a research scientist and composite materials expert will lead the three-year NASA backed project called “Development of Fatigue Life Prediction of Rotor Spars by Using Discrete Damage Modelling.”

Larve joined the University of Texas at Arlington and the UTA Research Institute in 2015 as a strategic addition to the newly created Institute for Predictive Performance Methodologies, part of two-pronged strategy to increase research activity and to engage corporations in the process of translating discoveries into practical uses.

The NASA project is funded through the federal agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in alignment with the Advanced Composites Project, which focuses on providing safe and sustainable U.S. and global aviation. Researchers also are working to reduce the timeline for development and certification of state-of-the-art composite materials and structures, which will help make advanced composite components more competitive in commercial aircraft.

Aerospace companies are constantly looking for ways to design and produce next generation aircraft more efficiently, It is very exciting to contribute to this goal by developing computational methods capable of simulating material behaviour and reducing the amount of testing.

Recent research interests are in the area of integrated computational materials science and engineering, bringing together manufacturing and performance aspects of advanced composite materials. Recent developments include discrete damage modelling methodologies for laminated composites under broad range of loading conditions including compression and fatigue.

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The Orion capsule’s heat shied successfully survived its test flight last year reaching temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit and speeds approximately 80 percent of what it will endure when it comes back from missions near the moon, all while keeping the temperature inside the crew module in the mid–70s. Post-flight examinations of the heat shield confirmed it performed well within expected tolerances.

The heat shield was composed of a titanium skeleton and carbon fibre skin that gave the crew module its circular shape on the bottom and provided structural support, on top of which a fibreglass-phenolic honeycomb structure was placed. The honeycomb structure had 320,000 tiny cells that were individually filled by hand with an ablative material called Avcoat designed to wear away as Orion returned to Earth through the atmosphere. During the process, each individual cell was filled by hand as part of a serial process, cured in a large oven, X-rayed and then robotically machined to meet precise thickness requirements.

However, during the manufacture of the heat shield for Orion’s flight test, engineers determined that the strength of the Avcoat/honeycomb structure was below expectations. While analysis showed, and the flight proved that the heat shield would work for the test, the EM–1 Orion will experience colder temperatures in space and hotter temperatures upon reentry, requiring a stronger heat shield.

Through lessons and data obtained from building and flying the heat shield, the team was able to make a design update for the Avcoat block design that will meet the EM–1 strength requirements. It is also expected to provide a cost savings and shorten the current heat shield manufacturing timeline by about two months. Engineers have now folded the update into the design review that will lock down the design for the next version.

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The capsules are being developed by SpaceX for NASA to carry astronauts to and from the international space station. With four windows, passengers can take in views of Earth, the Moon, and the wider Solar System right from their seats, which are made from the highest-grade carbon fibre and Alcantara cloth.

Video displays around the craft will provide real-time information on anything from Dragon’s position in space, to possible destinations, to the environment on board. The craft will be a fully autonomous spacecraft that can also be monitored & controlled either by the astronauts on board or by SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, CA.

The Environmental Control and Life Support System allows astronauts on board can set the spacecraft’s interior temperature to between 65 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit while the craft also features an advanced emergency escape system to swiftly carry astronauts to safety if something were to go wrong, experiencing about the same G-forces as a ride at Disneyland.

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The Marshall space flight centre in Alabama has been investing in composites for a long time and this latest addition to its Composites Technology Centre will provide the required technology to develop low-cost and high-speed manufacturing processes for making large composite rocket structures. The structures that will be built using this machine will determine if they are a good fit for space vehicles that will carry humans on exploration missions to Mars and other places.

It takes a myriad of different materials to build a space vehicle like NASA’s new Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket designed to take explorers on deep space missions. The lighter the rocket, the more payload–crew, science instruments, food, equipment, and habitats–the rocket can carry to space. Lightweight composites have the potential to increase the amount of payload that can be carried by a rocket along with lowering its total production cost. NASA is conducting composites manufacturing technology development and demonstration projects to determine whether composites can be part of the evolved Space Launch System and other exploration spacecraft, such as landers, rovers, and habitats.

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The robot will build structures larger than 8 meters, or 26 feet, in diameter, some of the largest composite structures ever constructed for space vehicles, NASA is using this industrial automated fibre placement tool in new ways to advance space exploration. Marshall’s investment in this robot will help mature composites manufacturing technology that may lead to more affordable space vehicles.

To make large composite structures, the robot travels along a 40-foot long track, and a head at the end of its 21-foot robot arm articulates in multiple directions. The head can hold up to 16 spools of carbon fibres that look like pieces of tape and are as thin as human hairs. The robot places the fibres onto a tooling surface in precise patterns to form different large structures of varying shapes and sizes. In what looks like an elaborate dance, the tooling surface holds the piece on a rotisserie-like system on a parallel track next to the robot. The robot head can be changed for different projects, which makes the system flexible and usable for various types of manufacturing.

The first project that the robot will tackle is making large composite structures for a Technology Demonstration Mission (TDM) program managed by Marshall for the Space Technology Mission Directorate. For the project, engineers will design, build, test and address flight certification of large composite structures similar to those that might be infused into upgrades for an evolved Space Launch System.

The large structures built by the robot will be tested in nearby Marshall structural test stands where spaceflight conditions can be simulated. NASA is a partner in the National/Interagency Advanced Manufacturing Initiative and will share its data with American companies to open up the marketplace for increased use of composites across a number of industries.

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