Environmentally Friendly Removal of Fluid Contamination from Composite Aircraft Structure

The US Navy is seeking an improved cleaner that can remove hydraulic fluid from aircraft composite materials. The cleaner must be compatible with these materials, and must not introduce any significant environmental, health or safety hazards into the workplace. Materials compatibility is the toughest criteria for a candidate cleaner to meet, because any degradation to structural integrity or reliability is totally unacceptable. Current cleaners, promoted as safe and environmentally friendly have been found to be deleterious to the performance of the composite materials. METSS proposes to develop and test new, environmentally benign formulations that are compatible with the materials of construction using a proven approach to cost-effective materials development. METSS will draw on existing materials, working directly with industry participants to select the best materials for product formulation. This ensures a non-biased approach to achieving the program objectives and opens up the opportunity of creating customized formulations that can be designed to directly address performance requirements. This effort will include optimizing the performance of the cleaner to meet and exceed the performance of the currently used cleaners while considering environmental impact, safety, and toxicity. A prototype cleaner will be formulated and demonstrated to be compatible with the aircraft composites.