Advanced Durability Coatings for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Propulsion

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) engine propulsion reliability is often dominated by failures associated with load bearing, sliding, or rotating components. These durability issues result in frequent overhauls, reducing system availability and increasing operating cost. Overcoming these is dramatically more difficult due to the operating conditions for military applications as well as the major emphasis on power to weight ratio (specific power) necessary for flight endurance and aircraft payload maximization. An approach that has application to both legacy engine designs as well as emergent designs is the use of carbon based nanocomposite coatings (NCCs) on the bearing and wear interfaces in these systems. Application of NCCs to bearings, races, and other engine components has proven to offer significant improvements in component durability resulting in increased component life and reduced time between failures. United Protective Technologies LLC (UPT) has developed a novel family of NCC coating and built hybrid reactors to apply these coatings to a range of high performance bearing and sliding surfaces. Applied in layers as thin as 10 nanometers and built up to meet the system requirements (and match interfaces), each UPT developed NCC coating can be tailored to the application.