High-Rate, Reduced Life Cycle Cost Airframe

Polymer matrix materials used in the preparation of current aerospace composites require extensive hand layups and slow cure cycles which lead to very high manufacturing cost for aircraft structures.  Furthermore, current high-performance resins are significantly more expensive than the low-cost resins used in the automotive, wind and infrastructure industries.  Trimer Technologies has developed a resin which provides the cost and low cycle time of industrial resins but with the mechanical and thermal performance of state-of-the-art aerospace resins.  The objective of this Phase I SBIR is to demonstrate the manufacture of low-cost airframes using a combination of the high-rate manufacturing approaches applied to the automotive industry with the techniques used to manufacture large structures by the wind industry.  Current autoclave cured aerospace structures require slow ramp and cool times as well as long dwells that lead to slow manufacturing cycles times often exceeding 8 hours.  The most common resins compatible with high-rate manufacturing are polyesters, vinyl esters, snap cure epoxies and polyurethanes.  While each of these materials are low-cost commodity resins that enable rapid manufacturing, the resulting polymers exhibit low glass transition temperature (Tg) and inferior mechanical properties compared to 350° F autoclave cured epoxy resins typically found in the aerospace industry.  Due to the poor properties of current rapid cure resins, they have not found use in aerospace structural applications.  The limitations of currently available materials restrict the use of low-cost manufacturing methods for the fabrication of aircraft structures. Trimer’s low-cost resin can cure in as little as 30 seconds at 250° F while achieving a glass transition temperature greater than 700° F and mechanical properties that rival the highest performance aerospace resins.  Furthermore, the resin has a low viscosity making it ideally suited for infusion of aerostructures.  This resin provides Trimer with the unique opportunity to developed high-rate production techniques for the development of airframes with reduced manufacturing and lifecycle costs.  In the Phase I research effort, Trimer will work with Boeing to develop the processing technology required for the manufacture of large airframe structures.  Trimer proposed to implement a latent resin system which can be infused into hot tooling with sufficiently long gel time at temperature followed by a snap cure such that very large structures can be infused yet rapidly cured.  The Phase I effort will focus on the analysis of strength, durability and the reduction of microcracking that can accompany low cycle time composites.  This SBIR will provide a new set of materials that provide manufacturing approaches which can reduce cycle time and lifecycle cost of composite airframes.