Functionally-Graded Thermoplastic Tubes Fabricated via Pulsed Spray Forming

The Air Force seeks a processing technology capable of producing functionally-graded thermoplastic tubes with advantageous cross-sectional property distributions. UTRON proposes to develop a new puled spray forming technique to fabricate such tubes. This technique is versatile and can be applied to fabricate a wide variety of multi-layered and functionally-graded polymer components. Pulsed Spray forming will 1)provide fine control of the thickness of layers to optimize performance, and 2) reduce heating and remelting of inner polymer layers due to its pulsed nature. This technology can be extended as a rapid prototyping technology by integration with a computer aided design (CAD) system. This technique can produce the desired two-layer thermoplastic tube, and can be adapted to produce multiple layer tubes. During PhaseI, we propose to:1. Experimentally fabricate a two layer functionally-graded thermoplastic tube using the pulsed spray forming technique.2. Perform a conceptual design of an engineering prototype capable of fabricating large scale liquid rocket ducts. Anticipated Phase II objectives will be to: 1.) build an engineering prototype and fabricate large scale liquid rocket ducts, and 2) Integrate a CAD system with the pulsed spray forming system to establish rapid prototyping capability.