Lightweight Structural Metamaterials for Second and Third Stage Rocket Motors

With the development and demonstration of near peer hypervelocity missiles the need to provide the warfighter with a viable defense against these threats is vital. There are many issues that interceptors used to negate hypervelocity weapons must overcome. These include weight reduction, operation at high temperatures, the ability to withstand high axial and lateral accelerations, maintaining structure in the presence of variable thrust, and the ability to self-heal. The introduction of a one-off type solution severely limits the flexibility required in the face of a rapidly evolving threat. A solution that allows for rapid prototyping, quick design turns, and offers lower cost and more schedule flexibility than conventional design wisdom must be used. Additive manufacturing provides such an opportunity by not restricting the design team to traditional manufacturing techniques where parts are machined from solid billets or are welded/bolted structures made up of multiple parts. With additive manufacturing complex shapes with complex internal passages produced from exotic materials are everyday occurrences. The ability to rapidly build scale and full-size test articles with minimal budget and schedule expended allows for more testing to occur more often which in turn provides more data with which to validate the models used in the simulation. This in turn reduces risk and instills confidence in the pre-flight predictions made using these tools. Our research will collect additional data from other composite resin solutions and use that data to train a more robust AI network that better understands composite resin properties. The solution will improve and adapt existing AI code to verify the network properly predicts desired characteristics and test and evaluate material performance to produce a prototype for assessment based on the design proposed in Phase I. Approved for Public Release | 22-MDA-11102 (22 Mar 22)