Description:
OBJECTIVE: Enhance the performance, producibility, and sustainability of missile body structures and components for implementation into Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems primarily through utilization of novel materials and processes. Provide materials solutions to reduce procurement cost, lower life cycle cost, lower operational maintenance, reduce lead time, enhance mission reliability and improve manufacturability for low-rate, non-labor intensive production for BMD systems. DESCRIPTION: MDA is seeking high-performance materials and process technologies for enhancement of current and block upgraded missile defense systems. These endo-atmospheric and exo-atmospheric intercept systems are highly complex missile systems. Incorporating existing and novel materials and process technologies offer a significant potential for enhancing performance properties while improving the producibility and sustainability of these structures. Process technologies should be appropriate for modest production volumes; incorporate modularity, flexibility, simplified and/or low-cost tooling; and be consistent with Lean and Six Sigma methodologies. The focus of this topic is for the missile body, launch canister, and kill vehicle structures or components, excluding propulsion systems which are covered in another topic. Technical areas of interest include, but are not limited to: Material Life Cycle and Sustainability: Missile and light weight palletized containment systems must address issues involving extended lifetimes with cyclic operational and life cycle loads. Addressing issues associated with these environments are key to maintaining robust capabilities in terms of both flight vehicle and containment system readiness. Environments of interest include, but are not limited to, moisture absorption/associated failure modes, material out-gassing, plume effects (temp/erosion), transportation cyclic loads (combined environment), and UV response. The capability to assess health and condition of material systems in these environments will be important. Solutions address such issues as limiting or blocking moisture absorption through barriers/coatings or the material system matrix/fiber system type employed, as well as creating material systems that are less prone to debilitating effects from this (i.e. delaminating). The benefits include improved health of internal electronic systems, propellants, and optics. Other metrics include strength and durability under combined temperature and cyclic mechanical loads. Advanced or improved testing methods for quickly and efficiently characterizing these metrics are also of interest. Aerostructures: Advanced missile defense interceptors require aero-structures designed to survive harsh operational and long term storage environments. In addition, evolving threat dynamics and proliferation underscore the need to increase system performance while reducing cost per kill. As related to aero-structures the following three (3) goals can be used to focus development efforts related to topic and to serve as overarching requirements: (1) Maximize interceptor performance and long term storage. (2) Minimize interceptor cost. (3) Ensure interceptor radiation survivability and structural integrity during flight. Advanced missile defense interceptors require lightweight thermal protection systems (TPS), radomes and aerostructures designed to minimize internal temperature rise and ensure missile airframe structural integrity during flight, including operation in adverse weather. These systems must meet a variety of requirements such as weight, erosion/ablation performance, and cost. Clearly the flow-down of the requirements listed above indicate the desire to have material systems that are lower mass, higher strength/stiffness, and tailorable thermal conductivity to allow advanced thermal management schemes due to longer flight times within the atmosphere. In addition, the long term storage requirement flow-down dictate material systems that minimize out-gassing and water permeability over time. Interceptor cost drivers span many different aspects to include schemes to reduce/streamline composite manufacturing tooling cost and process controls. Preliminary material suitability metrics include: a. Cold wall heating rates of 50-400 Btu/ft2-s b. Shear rates of 10-50 psf c. Operating temperature range of 2500-6000F d. Survive weather encounter e. Lightening Strike protection f. HANES Standard Weather Encounter: Advanced missile interceptors have the potential for encountering adverse weather conditions during flight. As a result, there is a need to enhance the producibility, operability and survivability of various missiles and missile components for operation in adverse environments. Adverse weather conditions may include natural events such as rain, snow, ice, gravel, sand/dust, or catastrophic naturally occurring weather events such as volcanic particulates. Typical velocity regimes are in the range of subsonic through high supersonic. Current needs include: analytic tool development, new or improved ground and flight testing methodologies, facility environment characterizations, and improvements in single impact and sled testing methods for all hydrometeor and solid particulate types. Included in this topic are also novel low-cost testing methods that can use subscale rockets and innovative instrumentation, recession gauges, or material samples to record impact events during flight. PHASE I: Conduct experimental and/or analytical efforts to demonstrate proof-of-principle and to improve producibility, increase performance, lower cost, or increase reliability. Explore the concept and develop novel processes for fabrication and utilization of selected missile components. If applicable, produce test coupons of the materials and measure relevant properties. Assess the fabrication cost and impacts on service methods, safety, reliability, sustainability and efficiency. Perform a preliminary manufacturability and cost benefit analysis showing that the structure can be produced in reasonable quantities and at reasonable cost/yields, based on quantifiable benefits, by employing techniques suitable for scale up. Conduct weather environment characterization, develop/validate physics based numerical models of vehicle flowfield/weather coupling, develop material impact models, and develop/modify test evaluation methodologies for all aspects of weather encounter phenomena. PHASE II: Based on the results and findings of Phase I, demonstrate the technology by fabricating and testing a prototype in a representative environment. Demonstrate feasibility and engineering scale up of proposed technology and identify and address technological hurdles. Demonstrate the system"s viability and superiority under a wide variety of conditions typical of both normal and extreme operating conditions. Demonstrate scalable manufacturing technology during production of the articles. Identify and assess commercial applications of the material or process technology. PHASE III: Demonstrate new open/modular, non-proprietary materials and/or structures technology. Provide a potentially qualifiable design for an innovative structure that will provide for advancement of the state-of-the-art in aerospace and missile structure performance, safety, weather robustness, life extension, preventative and other maintenance. Demonstrate commercial scalability of the manufacturing process and the implementation of the software-based design tools for the commercial development and deployment of advanced structures and radomes. Commercialize the technology for both military and civilian applications. Demonstration should be in a real system or operational in a system level test-bed. DUAL USE/COMMERCIALIZATION POTENTIAL: The proposed technology should benefit commercial and defense manufacturing through cost reduction, improved reliability and sustainment, or enhanced producibility and performance. REFERENCES: 1. Deason, D.M., Missile Defense Materials & Manufacturing Technology Program, ASM Annual Meeting, Columbus, OH, Oct. 2003. 2. Deason, D.M. and Hilmas, G., et al."Silicon Carbide Ceramics for Aerospace Applications - Processing, Microstructure, and Property Assessments,"Proceedings: Materials Science & Technology Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct. 2005. 3. Reynolds, R.A., Nourse, R.N. and Russell, G.W."Aerothermal Ablation Behavior of Selected Candidate External Insulation Materials,"28th AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, Jul 1992. 4. Murray, A., Russell, G.W."Coupled Aeroheating/Ablation Analysis for Missile Configurations,"Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 39, No. 4, Apr. 2002. 5. J.D. Walton, Jr,"Radome Engineering Handbook,"Marcel Dekker, New York, 1970. 6. Russell, G.W."DoD High Speed Aerothermal Analysis and Design - Historical Review and New State of the Art Approaches,"NASA Thermal and Fluids Analysis Workshop, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, Aug. 2003. 7. Lindsay, J. and O"Hanlon, M.E., Defending America: The Case for Limited National Missile Defense, Brookings Institute Press, Apr. 2001. 8. Moylan, B., and Russell, G.,"Updating Mil-Std-810 to Address High-Speed Weather Encounter Testing", 53rd Annual Technical Meeting of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology. April 29-May2, 2007. 9. Moylan, B.,"Enhanced Testing Methods to Assess Weather Environmental Impacts on High-Speed Vehicle Designs", 53rd Annual Technical Meeting of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology. April 29-May 2, 2007. 10. Robust Kill Vehicle Design Using Tailorable Material Systems,"Laddin Montgomery, Aero Thermo Technology, Inc., Huntsville, AL; Proceedings from National Space and Missile Materials Symposium 23 June 2008. 11. Effects of Coatings on Moisture Absorption in Composite Materials,"James R. Newill; Steven H. McKnight; Christopher P. Hoppel; Gene R. Cooper; Army Research Lab, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD; October 1999; Report Number: A305273.
