Extremely High Temperature RF Aperture Materials Maturation and Manufacturing Development for High Speed Systems

The Air Force (AF) is seeking to identify innovative Advanced Manufacturing and Sustainment technologies and processes to rapidly develop, produce, and sustain weapon systems while significantly reducing overall costs.  The AF is leading several efforts to sustain and grow the domestic industrial base for producing ultra high temperature composites (UHTC) used in thermal protection systems for tactical missiles, reentry vehicles, and hypersonic vehicles.  However, one of the biggest hypersonic challenges the Air Force faces is ensuring the defense industrial base has the resources to ramp up production when the military is ready.  Similar challenges may be faced by the Ground-based Strategic Deterrence program as it begins replacement of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.  As the AF addresses those challenges, there is an opportunity to leverage advances in computational tools to improve the understanding of UHTC material properties critical to operational performance.  To address the need for improved understanding of UTHC performance, ReLogic proposes to adapt a mature, open-source computational method to incorporate the physics necessary to model weather impact.