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BRINGING IN THE REINFORCEMENTS
TRANSPORTATION
ORIGINATING TECHNOLOGY/NASA CONTRIBUTION
What do NASA and ballistics have in common? More than the average person may
know. Everyday, millions of Americans drive in vehicles, cross over bridges,
and fly in airplanes without knowing just how important NASA’s role in studying
ballistics is in making these actions viable and safe for them.
At Glenn Research
Center’s Ballistic Impact Facility, NASA scientists and engineers study the
dynamics of high-speed projectiles and their impact on targets to create materials
and structures that are smarter, lighter, and stronger. By applying the science
of ballistics to new developments,
these researchers are taking major steps in preventing
catastrophic events. The Ballistic Impact Facility’s main features are a 40-foot-long
gas gun that can launch projectiles at speeds over 1,000 miles per hour and
high-speed cameras that can capture up to 250 million images per second.
“The
whole idea is to watch the impact and see how the structures impacted by the
projectiles behave,” says Dale Hopkins, a structures engineer and team leader for the facility. “It’s not just whether they survive, but how
they deform and fail.
”One of the facility’s main responsibilities is testing
new concepts for aircraft engine housings to ensure they are capable of withstanding
severe forces caused by fragments of rotating components that unexpectedly
fail, for example, due to ingestion of foreign object debris such as hail or
birds. Adequate engine housings are critical to reducing the risks of airplane
damage and passenger injury.
On the ground, Glenn’s ballistic testing is benefiting
transportation and industry, thanks to a company named WebCore Technologies,
Inc.
PARTNERSHIP
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High-speed photography from the Ballistic Impact Facility at NASA’s Glenn Research
Center reveals that a simulated fan case constructed
with the TYCOR® material exhibits high stiffness
and excellent damage localization during an
impact event.
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Based in Dayton, Ohio, WebCore Technologies utilized
the Ballistic Impact Facility as well as other NASA resources to develop and commercialize
its fiber- reinforced foam technology. Through prior
experience with NASA personnel who participated in
the “Consortium for the Design and Analysis of Composite
Materials,” the Great Lakes Industrial Technology Center
(GLITeC)—Glenn’s Regional Technology Transfer Center
committed to providing commercialization assistance
to Northeast Ohio companies—identified the expertise
WebCore Technologies would need to invent a commercial
product. In 2001, GLITeC facilitated a meeting between
the company and Glenn, followed by a tour of the Ballistic
Impact Facility. The two parties agreed to work together,
using the ballistic facility to test samples of the
product-to-be. GLITeC defined the scope of work in
a simplified technology transfer agreement that required
the commitment of less than $25,000 in Glenn resources,
without special liability or intellectual property
considerations. This agreement immediately helped to open the doors for WebCore Technologies
to obtain $1.2 million in additional funding through
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts
with Glenn and the U.S.
Air Force.
Additionally, WebCore Technologies received a NASA Glenn Garrett Morgan Assistance
Award to establish a comprehensive sales and marketing force for the fiber-reinforced
product. The award, intended for small, minority- or women-owned companies in
the “Great Lakes” states as well as in New York, North Carolina, and Georgia,
also entitled WebCore Technologies to seek help from the Garrett Morgan staff
in solving a particular technical problem that arose during product development.
PRODUCT OUTCOME
The TYCOR® fiber-reinforced foam composite is WebCore
Technologies’ answer for a lightweight, low-cost sandwich
panel that offers superior structural performance to
aerospace, defense, construction, transportation,
marine, and industrial markets. TYCOR consists of a foam core that is covered
with fabric skins and then stitched with reinforcing
fibers. When the skins and fibers are impregnated with
resin, the result is a very strong, damage-resistant
composite system.
The core manufacturing process integrates
porous fiberglass or carbon fiber reinforcements in
a three- dimensional architecture, in the form of structural
“webs.” The porous reinforcements act as resin flow
channels that
are easily controllable during resin infusion. The core
process delivers a high degree of design flexibility using different types of
foam and fiber, which are tailored to meet the functional
requirements and cost targets for specific applications.
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Shown above is an example of the WebCore Infusion Process (5 minutes after the
start of infusion) that was used to fabricate
a 20-foot-long, 8-foot-wide, 3-inch-thick bridge
deck panel. The panel, comprised of TYCOR®
core preforms, fiberglass skins, and epoxy
vinyl ester resin, was fully infused in less
than 10 minutes and had a final panel weight
of 1,200 pounds.
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The
key features of TYCOR include high-shear strength and
stiffness, and high-tensile pullout strength coupled with excellent damage tolerance. To demonstrate TYCOR’s
shear strength and stiffness characteristics, WebCore
Technologies subjected the fiber-reinforced foam to
head-to-head testing against a balsa-cored panel of
identical density, in a demanding U.S. Navy ship structural
application. The panels were 5 inches thick, constructed
with 4.5-inch cores, quarter-inch-thick glass fabric
facings, and vinyl ester resin. The test results showed
that the TYCOR panel was almost twice as strong as
the balsa panel. The balsa panel also experienced abrupt
failure under shear stress, whereas the TYCOR panel
experienced only gradual failure. Follow-on work with
the Navy led to a watertight composite door for Navy
ships that offers a 50-percent weight reduction over
existing watertight doors.
TYCOR panels were used in
the first composite bridge deck installed on a Federal
property: the Hebble Creek bridge site located at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base. WebCore Technologies designed, fabricated,
tested, and installed four 8-feet by 32-feet composite panels to form the bridge
deck. The deck was tested for over 250,000 load cycles
to simulate over 50 years of traffic, successfully
showing TYCOR’s long-term durability.
The technology
is now a part of a lightweight airfield matting system
being developed to replace the aluminum matting currently
used in temporary runways, taxiways, aircraft parking
areas, and other surfacing applications. WebCore Technologies
is even exploring the possibility of replacing traditional
manhole covers with fiber-reinforced covers that could
better handle load-bearing vehicles.
Further, TYCOR
cores and sandwich panels can be used for various interior
and exterior components of commercial aircraft. Potential
interior applications include floors, doors, bulkheads,
seats, and luggage bins. Potential exterior applications
include control surfaces, landing gear doors, access
doors, fairings, radomes, and fuselage panels. NASA,
too, can benefit from TYCOR, with potential applications for rocket fairings, payload adapters, cryogenic tanks, and structural members.
WebCore Technologies is in the midst of completing
Phase II of its SBIR contract with Glenn to bring these
applications—and others—closer to reality.
TYCOR® is
a registered trademark of WebCore Technologies, Inc.
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