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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Report describes apparatus for making optical fibers in microgravity. Includes sting that makes initial contact with softened glass to start drawing fiber. Absence of gravity helps to suppress nucleation of crystallites, which increase scattering of light and thus reduce transmission of light along fiber.
Structural properties of fiberglass filament wound pressure vessels at cryogenic temperatures
The feasibility, and technical and economic desirability was studied of space processing of glass preforms for optical fiber transmission applications. The results indicate that space processing can produce glass preforms of equal quality at lower cost than earth bound production, and can produce diameter modulation in the glass preform which promotes mode coupling and lowers the dispersion. The glass composition can be modified through the evaporative and diffusion processes, and graded refractive index profiles can be produced. A brief summary of the state of the art in optical fiber transmission is included.
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The materials used in the production of glass reinforced plastics are discussed. Specific emphasis is given to matrix polyester materials, the reinforcing glass materials, and aspects of specimen preparation. Various methods of investigation are described, giving attention to optical impregnation and wetting measurements and the gravimetric determination of the angle of contact. Deformation measurements and approaches utilizing a piezoelectric device are also considered.
Computerized infrared analysis is applied to the characterization of a glass-reinforced crosslinked polyester. The method of factor analysis determines the number of independent components which constitute the polymeric matrix. Subsequently, the spectra of those components are fitted by a least-squares criterion to spectra of the multicomponent matrix, or, if the glass spectrum is included as an additional component, to the spectra of composites. The least-squares coefficients yield the matrix composition in terms of the initial reactant composition and the extent of crosslinking.
Computerized infrared analysis is applied to the characterization of a glass-reinforced crosslinked polyester. The method of factor analysis determines the number of independent components which constitute the polymeric matrix. Subsequently, the spectra of those components are fitted by a least-squares criterion to spectra of the multicomponent matrix, or, if the glass spectrum is included as an additional component, to the spectra of composites. The least-squares coefficients yield the matrix composition in terms of the initial reactant composition and the extent of crosslinking.
A single engine two passenger airplane, constructed completely from fiber reinforced plastic materials is introduced. The cockpit, controls, wing profile, and landing gear are discussed. Development of the airframe is also presented.
An acoustic levitation furnace system is described that was developed for testing the feasibility of containerless fiber pulling experiments. It is possible to levitate very dense materials such as platinum at room temperature. Levitation at elevated temperatures is much more difficult. Samples of dense heavy metal fluoride glass were levitated at 300 C. It is therefore possible that containerless fiber pulling experiments could be performed. Fiber pulling from the melt at 650 C is not possible at unit gravity but could be possible at reduced gravities. The Acoustic Levitation Furnace is described, including engineering parameters and processing information. It is illustrated that a shaped reflector greatly increases the levitation force aiding the levitation of more dense materials.
International Space Station Alpha (ISSA) will provide a platform not only for materials research but also a possible means to produce products in space which cannot be easily produced on the ground. Some products may even be superior to those now produced in unit gravity due to the lack of gravity induced convection effects. Our research with ZrF4-BaF2-LaF3-AlF3-NaF (ZBLAN glass) has shown that gravity does indeed play a major role in the crystallization behavior of this material. At the present time ZBLAN is being produced on earth in fiber optic form for use in surgical lasers and fiber optic lasers among other applications. High attenuation coefficients, however, have kept this material from being used in other applications such as long haul data transmission links. The high attenuation coefficients are due to impurities which can be removed through improved processing techniques and crystals which can only be removed or prevented from forming by processing in a reduced gravity environment.
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Expensive tooling often constraints the use of composites in the design and development of automotive parts. While there is significant confidence and knowledge in sheet and bulk metals, composite processes are less understood in mass production environment. The processes used to produce composites and resulting properties are influenced by fiber length attrition, resin to fiber ratio, process waste etc. Tool designs are determined very early in the engineering process. It is cost prohibitive to build additional tools, in the event it becomes obvious a better processing method and material would be beneficial, the original decision is not easily changed. In the present work we recognize the bottleneck of tooling costs and provide an approach of multi-process tooling. The innovation of this work is the design and demonstration of a single tool for different processes namely injection, injection-compression and extrusion-compression. The materials used in this study were long and short fiber thermoplastics (LFTs and SFTs). The resulting structure-property relationships have been reported for the materials and processing methods with a battery tray (BT) tool.
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Thermoforming of short-fiber reinforced thermoplastic sheets offers a viable pathway for producing lightweight composite components; however, inherent anisotropy in fiber-reinforced sheets can limit structural performance under multidirectional loading. In this work, short carbon fiber, glass fiber, and hybrid fiber–reinforced PETG sheets were evaluated as candidate feedstock materials for thermoforming, with flexural and tensile testing performed both along the primary fiber direction and in the off-axis orientation to establish baseline stiffness, strength, and anisotropy. As expected, short carbon fiber PETG exhibited the highest stiffness and strength in the primary fiber direction, while all systems showed reduced performance in the off-axis direction. This off-axis performance reduction provides clear justification for the use of additive reinforcement when such thermoformed sheets are intended for structural applications. The intended manufacturing sequence involves thermoforming the reinforced sheet first, followed by the application of additively manufactured lattice reinforcement; therefore, the reinforcement strategy does not impose limitations on sheet formability during thermoforming. Post-forming lattice reinforcement significantly reduced load-normalized displacement by approximately 95–99% relative to non-reinforced sheets and improved weight-normalized stiffness by ~70%. These findings demonstrate that geometry-driven additive reinforcement can effectively compensate for off-axis property reductions in thermoformed PETG composites, enabling enhanced multidirectional structural performance without compromising manufacturability.
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Fiberglass tooling dies accelerate forming of large metal sheets. The dies, fabricated to fit over and fasten to the die bases, are lightweight, quickly replaced and have nongalling surfaces.
An evaluation of the thermal and mechanical properties was performed on a molded low-density elastomeric ablation material designated as Material B. Both the virgin and charred states were examined to provide meaningful inputs to the design of a thermal protection system. Chars representative of the flight chars formed during ablation were prepared in a laboratory furnace from 600 K to 1700 K and properties of effective thermal conductivity, heat capacity, porosity and permeability were determined on the furnace chars formed at various temperature levels within the range. This provided a boxing of the data which will enable the prediction of the transient response of the material during flight ablation.