Light-weight, Low-Cost Fire Barrier

Skyward will develop a low-cost, light-weight, and extremely effective fire barrier to protect Navy ships. Skyward’s unique design solution utilizes a lightweight honeycomb structure to support a lightweight intumescent coating. Intumescent materials form a char with excellent insulating properties when exposed to fire’s heat, however the char is fragile and will not adhere well to flat surfaces by itself. Honeycomb structure is required to support and protect the fragile insulating char produced as it is exposed to a fire. This design has shown great promise in testing for Air Force applications. For Navy applications, the design is further enhanced by adding a front and back face to encapsulate the intumescent and the char it produces. The encapsulation minimizes smoke generation and provides additional protection to the coating both due to normal shipboard activities and from potential fire-fighting actions. The weight savings over current designs will permit the use of labor saving installation systems that will further reduce the total cost of ownership for this system. Skyward is well positioned to execute this design effort based on its large body of experience in evaluating and reducing the vulnerability of DoD weapons systems, and specifically with honeycomb/intumescent designs for USAF systems