Thermoplastic Composite Construction for Tactical Shelters

The U.S. Department of Defense spends millions of dollars every year to repair and refurbish numerous metal shelters located around the world. These transportable shelters are usually made with thin aluminum sandwich panels in a steel/aluminum frame and are prone to corrosion, surface degradation, and loss of skin-to-core bond. The Air Force seeks to explore thermoplastic-based materials for shelters because of the potential benefits in the areas of toughness, reduced weight, reduced VOC emissions during fabrication compared to thermoset composites, recyclability, and reduced fabrication costs. WebCore has a broad knowledge of shelter design and requirement issues through work in progress on the development of an 8' by 8' by 20' Composite Tactical Shelter (CTS). The current CTS design features WebCore-proprietary thermoset-composite sandwich panels in a hybrid thermoplastic/steel frame. Using similar design and fabrication concepts, WebCore has demonstrated the basic processability and structural performance of thermoplastic-composite sandwich panels for the CTS application. Under the proposed SBIR project, WebCore will further advance the thermoplastic panel technology through: investigations of material, design, and processing options; preliminary assessment of panel designs against the full range of CTS requirements; preliminary manufacturing planning; and cost modeling.