TETHERS UNLIMITED, INC. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration STTR Phase I: T12

Description

Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI) and Western Washington University (WWU) propose to develop the ldquo;Resin Additive Manufacturing Processed Thermal Protection Systemrdquo; (RAMP TPS), an in-situ cured, additively manufactured, spacecraft heat shield material and process.nbsp;nbsp;RAMP TPS uses Direct Ink Writing (DIW) of an optimized benzoxazine resin-based compound, filled with carbon fibers, silica micro-balloons, cure accelerators, and viscosity modifiers.nbsp;nbsp;Current TPS systems are expensive to produce, and they make various compromises in their heat shield performance properties.nbsp;nbsp;The RAMP TPS effort will leverage automation techniques borrowed from 3D printing, along with state of the art heat shield materials, while adding the ability to cure in-situ during robotic deposition.nbsp;nbsp;RAMP TPS will offer superior mass-effectiveness through optimized material composition as well as graded low density printed core structures.nbsp;nbsp;While conventional TPS resins can require hours for an oven cure process, WWUrsquo;s Benzoxazine formulation will use accelerator additives to chemically set within minutes of deposition using the heat supplied by TUIrsquo;s feedhead assembly.nbsp;Initial heat shield performance characterization will be performed using density, strain at break, thermal conductivity, TGA measurements, and thermo-oxidative ablation testing with an oxy-acetylene torch.nbsp;nbsp;This novelnbsp;nbsp;heat shield technology will have near term applications in lowering the cost of high-performance spacecraft production, as well as future applications within TUIrsquo;s in-space processes for automated production and servicing of re-entry vehicles.nbsp;nbsp;