M4 ENGINEERING, INC. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: H5

Description

The innovation proposed here is a novel carbon-carbon composite (CCC) manufacturing method that allows rapid manufacturing of relatively thick carbon-carbon structures and robust through-thickness reinforcement that significantly simplifies the attachment of a hot structure to a cold structure, as encountered in the interface of an aeroshell and the underlying structure in a hypersonic vehicle.nbsp; This results in the ability to make a highly integrated, load‑bearing, unitized skin‑stringer‑frame carbon‑carbon aeroshell that includes a mechanically and thermally advantageous joint to an internal cold structure such as a composite tank. The manufacturing innovations include a precursor resin improvement, a through-thickness reinforcement improvement, and an overall aeroshell design improvement that, when taken together, enable a revolutionary approach to hot structure design and manufacturing that has the potential to greatly improve performance, robustness, and reliability of such systems while precluding the need for a separate thermal protection system (TPS).