Compression Molding of Cerramic Green Tape

The operational envelope of hypersonic projectiles and missiles is expanding to higher speeds and more sophisticated RF guidance systems.With this additional operational regime the need for low cost, high temperature materials, such as ceramics is becoming more important.Engineered ceramics manufacturing is a difficult process with frequent instances of flaws which are fatal for ceramic components.These manufacturing difficulties result in large quantities of waste and additional cost.To avoid these flaws, particularly in thin walled components such as an interceptor radome, ceramic green-bodies are manufactured (by casting methods) significantly oversized, sintered and then ground to the final dimensions. Mentis Sciences Inc. (Mentis) with assistance from Exothermics Inc. (Exothermics) and Ragan Technologies Inc. (RTI), proposes to develop a compression molding process using ceramic green tape to create net shape, low shrinkage ceramic green bodies for the manufacturing of high temperature aerospace components such as interceptor nosecones/radomes.