Lightweight shipping container for solid rocket motor with Insensitive Munitions

It is desirable to manufacture shipping containers for large solid rocket motors (SRM) insensitive munitions (IM) up to 50-in in diameter. Shipping or packaging containers of SRM should have good thermal insulation, lightweight, ballistic resistant, high temperature, corrosion resistant, and damage resistant properties in addition to several IM requirements. Missiles are usually transported in a container and are fired from a separate device. Currently used shipping containers for MDA SRMs do not have sufficient combined ballistic resistant capability and IM characteristics. Each container weighs several thousand pounds and some of them do not have flame resistant properties. This makes the SRM and missiles very vulnerable in their container during shipping. In this SBIR project Wright Materials Research Co. will team up with Lockheed Martin Missile and Fire Control (LMMFC-D) to manufacture and evaluate lightweight hybrid composites for MDA's applications. The proposed technology will be most beneficial to MDA's systems including shipping containers for very large SRMs, Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) missile containers, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, and missile cases. In particular, we will develop and manufacture IM shipping containers for SRM up to 50-in in diameter. In addition to the desirable properties mentioned above the proposed shipping containers should be able to defeat level III ball and level IV AP threats. Our preliminary studies indicate that our foamed composites can defeat LPS and NIJ level IV rounds at close vicinity. The proposed hybrid composites should also have the ability to defeat high speed fragmentation impact that MDA systems encounter. If successfully developed, the proposed lightweight containers would have an immediate niche market in the shipping and transportation and insulation industries.