MATERIALS SCIENCES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A15-106

Description

To meet the objective of developing a design and fabrication strategy for producing low-cost, high-performance thermoplastic structures that contain highly detailed features for missile and aviation applications, Materials Sciences Corporation (MSC) will develop the technical data and analysis tools to implement hybrid material systems. In order to achieve this objective, MSC will leverage prior experience from SBIR programs that have focused on fabrication, analysis, and design of compression and injection molding of fiber reinforced material systems. This experience has enabled MSC to identify two material systems of interest that offer the potential to span the spectrum of performance requirements necessary to develop hybrid missile and aviation components. The first system is a thermoplastic hybrid system that maintains all of the benefits of fiber reinforced thermoplastic matrix composites (TPMCs), e.g., improved damage tolerance, virtually unlimited shelf life with minimal storage requirements, recycling options, etc. The second system consists of a two stage cured, hybrid thermoset/thermoplastic prepreg that is compatible with thermoplastic overmolding; the system overcomes limitations associated with TPMC prepregs, e.g., tape width, drapability, etc. Since the selected hybrid systems are viable commercial products, the program can focus on applied research rather than costly and often unproductive basic research on material development.