Similar requirements for high-temperature materials exist for commercial/industrial applications as well. Although less aggressive than the aerospace/defense and nuclear energy-related initiatives, programs are in place for evaluating fiber reinforced ceramics for land-based turbine components, catathermal combustion devices, heat exchangers and radiant burners, which represent opportunities in energy generation and pollution abatement technologies that may mature over the next 10 or so years. Hot structures fabricated from ceramic composite materials are an attractive design option for specialized components of future aerospace vehicles and propulsion systems to increase performance, reduce weight and increase durability. Current fabric-laminated ceramic composite materials and components suffer from insufficient interlaminar strength and are thus vulnerable to delamination when subjected to high velocity impact damage and exacerbated by severe thru-thickness thermal gradients. The ability to improve the interlaminar properties over current materials without having to resort to the use of costly, exotic multidirectional fiber preforms will better enable the utilization of these materials for certain thermal-structural applications critical to the US military and aerospace industrial complex. Fiber-reinforced ceramic-matrix composites are recognized as an enabling class of materials for a variety of high-temperature applications in chemical rocket engine throat inserts, combustion chambers and nozzles; airbreathing scramjet hot flow path components; aero-engine combustors, turbine blades, vanes, and exhaust nozzles; hypersonic airframe hot structure and thermal protection systems; spacecraft re-entry heatshields; and a variety of industrial power generation radiant burner and heat exchanger tubes.
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