Affordable Composite Front Frame for Turbine Engines

Composites offer significant weight saving potential in engines, which is of great interest to the F-35 JSF aircraft and its F136 engine. A composite F136 Front Frame offers the potential to save 20 pounds on the F136. Complex high temperature compositeparts made conventionally have been costly, and cost reductions are needed to use such parts on engines. Automated fiber placement such as Braiding provide significant cost savings. Braiding is a proven and cost-effective method that is inherently wellsuited to many engine part configurations. To date RTM processing for engine parts has been limited by process characteristics of high temperature resins like PMR15. Recently resins with excellent high temperature performance and process characteristicssuitable for RTM have been developed. The combination of Braiding and RTM has been demonstrated in Phase I to offer a lighter frame than the present titanium frame at cost parity (i.e. no cost penalty). Fiber Innovations, in close cooperation with GEAE(the F136 prime), shall design, develop and test a full scale Frame component to validate weight and cost benefits on the F136 JSF engine using a low-cost braided Front Frame. The program has direct benefit to a major DoD program and significant commercialpotential.