ENGINEERING AND SOFTWARE SYSTEM SOLUTIONS, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF221-DCSO1

Description

Surface pretreatments are commonly used on aircraft to promote coating adhesion, prevent corrosion, or both.  Pantheon Chemical’s Prekote Surface Preparation (SP) or 3M’s AC-131 (also known as Boe Gel) are two surface pretreatments that work well for adhesion promotion; however, they do not contain a corrosion inhibitor.  Henkel’s Bonderite, more commonly and formerly known as Alodine, is another approved pretreatment qualified to MIL-DTL-81706; however, Bonderite faces consistent pressure from environmental and occupational health regulatory agencies because it contains hexavalent chromium.  Thus, there is a need to demonstrate a corrosion inhibited pretreatment on USAF aircraft that does not contain chromium compounds. For this effort, ES3 will conduct validation testing of corrosion inhibiting pretreatment AC-131 to satisfy airworthiness requirements.  The intent of this program is to leverage previous work funded internally by our subcontractor, Boeing to show equivalence to MIL-DTL-81706 qualified products to provide a corrosion inhibited pretreatment that will qualify to MIL-PRF-32239 and become part of a complete, non-chrome system stack-up.  After demonstration of effectiveness through testing, results will be communicated with aircraft System Program Offices (SPOs) for on aircraft demonstration on non-critical aerospace parts.  Follow on efforts will address additional testing to further use the technology on flight critical components.