Improved Strength Materials and Manufacturing Through Nanomaterial Integration for High-Energy Capacity Filament Wound Composite Flywheels

The key issue facing the mass use of weaponized railguns and lasers is the ability to provide sufficient sustained power to the weapons. Multiple megawatts of power are required to fire a railgun at full force, which can put a heavy strain on a given ship's onboard power generation systems. One of the most promising enabling technologies for power storage is high-energy storage flywheel systems. San Diego Composites, Inc. (SDC) proposes to improve the interlaminar z-strength of a filament wound composite flywheel (FWCF) through SDCs technology for Carbon Nanotubes (CNT) alignment, and to improve the hoop strength of a FWCF by winding with high strength nano-based materials. The improvements to the material strengths will enable higher flywheel rotary speeds and thus higher energy capacity.