Pultrusion-Based Production of Next-Generation Composite Missile Canisters

KaZaK Composites and our commercialization partner, EDO Marine and Aircraft Systems, will design a missile canister system of significantly reduced cost compared to a filament wound canister for systems such as Patriot PAC-3. Phase I will initiateconsideration of all aspects of a complete canister system, but primary focus will be on design and demonstration of technology for a pultruded composite shell, the primary component of the canister system. A pultruded shell will significantly reduce costof this critical structural part compared to other manufacturing technologies such as the current baseline, filament winding. After completion of requirements definition, materials selection, analysis and trade study tasks, pultrusion tooling will bedesigned and fabricated, and process development initiated to demonstrate ability of pultrusion to make composite laminates with required mechanical properties. Samples will be tested to ensure ability to support loads associated with normal operations,including overpressure and high temperature effects associated with launch, and loads from day-to-day tactical operations. In Phase II KCI will demonstrate and test a PAC-3 canister that is fully compatible with all current performance requirements. Costreduction 25% or more are expected, a more than $100-million savings over the expected run of these missiles. The proposed, highly automated composite shell production system, when successfully developed, will provide MDA with a significant cost reductionover current missile canister systems. The high performance composite shell manufacturing technology that will be used by KCI to make the canister shell component of the launch system is generically applicable to a wide range of commercial and militaryproducts. For example, KCI has been actively involved with the development of sandwich panel pultrusion technology for production of military shelters, including ISO sheltes. An ISO shelter is simply a militarized version of a common international 8x8x20or 8x8x40-foot shipping container, made in quantities approaching 1-million per year. There have been many attempts in the past to produce a cost-competitive composite ISO container because the weight savings would allow significantly more cargo to beshipped in each one. Shells for missile containers can be accurately viewed as approximately 1/5-scale models of ISO containers. A process that is developed and demonstrated for pultruding single piece canister shells can provide convincing evidence forventure capitalists that the technology can be used to produce ISO containers, and with slight modification tractor-trailer bodies as well, in a cost-effective manner.