Novel Moderate Temperature Polymeric Absorbing Material

ABSTRACT: Maintenance on advanced fighter and bomber aircraft is considerable with much of the downtime being devoted to materials with poor performance.One of these materials is an absorbing coating on the aircraft outer-mold line.To achieve this effect with a coating, conducting or magnetic fillers must be dispersed in an organic matrix at high loadings (up to 50% by volume).Coating adhesion and sprayability become a challenge at those loading levels.In addition, the service temperature of the coating, 400-650F, limits the type of organic matrix that can be used.The focus of this effort is to develop a highly loaded, high-use-temperature, sprayable coating.Maverick Corporation, an expert in the synthesis and production of high-temperature materials, and Resonant Sciences, an expert in magnetic radar absorbing materials, represent an integrated team that is capable of achieving all of the requirements outlined in this SBIR topic.; BENEFIT: A successful effort of the proposed research would result in the fabrication of a high temperature polyimide coating which can be highly loaded and applied by spraying to bare composite/Ti substrates.The ability to manufacture a coating of this nature would greatly reduce the high maintenance costs associated with repair of the current specialty materials used on advanced fighter and bomber aircrafts.