SUPERCOOL METALS LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF211-CSO1

Description

Satellites play a vital role in the modern technology, supporting a wide range of applications, such as network, communication, surveillance, navigation and remote sensing for defense and commercial sectors. One of the Air Force top priorities is to obtain rapid, precise, decision-quality intelligence that relies on a strong satellite network system. The Air Force views the technological opportunity of this strategic area through the improvement of small satellites, in which the current assets are expensive and sometimes lack persistence and reliability. Small satellites are being equipped with additional capabilities that often involve deployable structures, such as solar arrays, antennas, and other equipment. Failures to deploy these systems in space are some of the most common types of satellite failures. We propose to use advanced structural materials, bulk metallic glasses (BMG), and novel thermoplastic forming processes (TPF) to fabricate superior hinges for satellite applications. The planned R&D work in this project includes development of TPF fabrication process for BMG hinges and benchmarking properties against high-strain composites currently used in this application. BMGs received a lot of attention, but challenges with producing consistent, defect-free products hampered their use. Supercool Metals has developed processing methods that allow fabrication of BMG components for a variety of applications, including satellite components. TPF of BMGs is a unique metal forming technology that allows to produce components using BMG materials with high precision, complexity, consistency, uniform properties and a wide range of geometries. Incumbent solutions use composite-based hinges that suffer from delamination issues and have poor fatigue properties. BMG hinges are expected to have higher reliability, light weight and superior performance compared to incumbent solutions due to higher strength, elasticity and improved fatigue behavior, among other properties. In addition, current designs of hinges are limited by the nature of the materials and their manufacturing techniques. As an additional benefit, the BMG technology can produce hinges with more efficient engineering designs. The BMG hinges can be easily integrated into deployable components of satellites, similar to current hinges, and deployed through the same methods of heat activation or mechanical release. A combination of BMG properties and unique TPF processing methods enables high-performance products, as already demonstrated by Supercool Metals in other areas, such as robotics components. Use of BMG hinges is expected to eliminate many deployable issues and significantly improve satellite reliability for the Air Force customers and commercial satellite users.