Enhanced Abrasion Resistant Coating For USAF Composite Surfaces

Wear resistant, high lubricity coatings on USAF composite surfaces are exhibiting premature wear, resulting in structural damage that requires expensive part repair or replacement, adding to aircraft downtime and increasing maintenance costs. Enhancing the wear performance of these coatings will provide USAF maintainers with a long survivability window in order to reapply the coating before composite part damage occurs. NanoSperse proposes to build on the advancements in wear lifetime of these coatings already established under the UDRI PRESS subcontract which funded NanoSperse to explore enhanced abrasion resistant coatings. Under this effort, NanoSperse formulated a system demonstrating 1.5x - 2x lifetime improvements in wear resistance over the baseline (current) system while retaining the same application, film build, cure, and color characteristics as the currently used coating system. In this Direct to Phase II effort, NanoSperse will optimize the filler system in the developed coating to push the wear life to 2x+ over the baseline system. Once an optimized formulation is down-selected, NanoSperse will setup and perform the necessary quality control tests to establish data for follow-on qualification, demonstrate production capability by manufacturing a 100-150 lb batch of the developed coating, and perform quality control testing to prove equivalency to bench-scale prototype batches. By the end of the program 5-10 gallons of enhanced abrasion resistant coating will be ready to hand off to USAF directed labs or OEMs for coating application and testing.