Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Thermally-Stable High Strain Deployable Structures, Phase I
Project Description
The proposed innovation is for the development of a thermally-stable composite made of carbon fibers and elastomeric resin. This combination of materials will allow a composite with higher stiffness and strain compared with materials currently in use for space. The significance of this innovation is that the proposed material will enable more capable deployable structures, minimize complexity, mass, and cost. Specifically the work done in Phase I and Phase II will enable cost effective components and subsystem technologies for flight systems, such as large sunshields and external occulters in Phase III. The objective of this project will be to develop technologies and methods that improve the design, fabrication, modeling, inspection, and testing of composite materials for space deployable structures. This includes methods of testing and modeling/characterization of the material in order to guide its formulation. The characterization of the new elastomeric composite will be accomplished through a series of standardized tests, supported by non-standard tests as required.
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Anticipated Benefits
The proposed material can be used as the flexure hinges in deployable structures, ranging from small size systems like lightweight nanosatellites, to large apertures such as the support structures for X-Band phased arrays. For example, the new material can be used to enable extremely large, mass efficient and high compaction ratio deployable structures that will have a significant impact to DoD missions. With the continuing emphasis on large space apertures for a wide range of information gathering missions, the idea of kilometer scale trusses that package into existing launch vehicles is of increasing importance. Therefore, deployable trusses with high performance metrics greater than current deployable booms need to be developed. The proposed material can be used also to build trusses of trusses that not only package better than previous structures, but also achieve greater stiffness and dimensional stability than current deployable structures. The potential applications of the proposed elastomeric composite are aligned and supportive of the NASA main needs for the advancement of deployable space components. For example, this new material can be used for the fabrication of de-orbiter devices for small satellites. The new component technologies will meet the imposed requirements such as low stowed volume, low weight and low cost, without sacrificing the required structural performance. In general deployable components can be made of the flexure material to improve the high packaging efficiency and increase the reliability and feasibility of flight hardware systems such as small spacecrafts, expandable exploration space modules, and surface based habitats. The designs of these innovative components are envisioned to scale-up into very large structures, and still achieve high metrics in material, structural and weight performance.
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Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| L'Garde, Inc. | Lead Organization |
Industry
Minority-Owned Business
|
Tustin, California |
| Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) | Supporting Organization | FFRDC/UARC | Pasadena, California |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
California
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This is a historic project that was completed before the creation of TechPort on October 1, 2012. Available data has been included. This record may contain less data than currently active projects.