Replacement Nose Fairing Material

A new structural material is required for the Trident II D5 nose fairing to replace the Sitka Spruce veneer used for the nose fairing of the existing launch vehicle. The wood is difficult to procure to the Navy's specification and a longer-life nose fairing is required. Fiber-reinforced structural foam materials are proposed to be investigated and developed to establish a replacement material that will meet all the requirements for the existing nose fairing: including tension strength, shear strength, bending strength, density and equivalent or lower dielectric constant. Specimens that are easy to fabricate and also easy to test in a representative form factor will be used for initial screening tests to determine which materials have the highest probability of meeting the requirements. After selecting the most promising material candidate(s), the process that yield the best material properties will be developed. Once the material and processing have been established, all the required material properties will be characterized.