High-Rate, Low-Cost, Structural, Formable Dry Fiber Preforms for Complex Geometry Composites

Attritable Aircraft are vehicles that can be made quickly and inexpensively while having a low maintenance cost throughout their short service lives. These vehicles are growing in importance as our adversaries invest heavily in autonomy and mass that will enable swarming and overwhelming of allied defenses. Spintech is proposing to couple the low-cost composite part manufacturing technique of dry fiber liquid infusion with fabrics that can be quickly and easily formed to complex geometries enabling increased vehicle manufacturing rates and lowering unit cost. Formable composite fabrics exist In the market place today, but often do not have alignment or columniation of fibers resulting in inconsistent and lower than required mechanical properties. Spintech has identified a carbon based candidate fiber that is both highly aligned and allows for tensile elongation that when manufactured into a broad good fabric allows for high degrees of conformity as well as consistent retention of mechanical properties. DiscoTex™ fibers are chopped strands of carbon that are aligned into tows and wrapped with a dissolvable binder. These fibers can be woven into a standard plain weave material or braided into a Quasi Isotropic fabric which would have uniform mechanical properties in all directions. Use of the DiscoTex fiber in a quasi-isotropic broad good  would eliminate issues with fiber distortion during lay-up and preforming and would enable preforms to be laminated flat, then quickly vacuum or stamp formed into complex composite geometries. This concept has broad applicability to both the DoD and commercial markets including unmanned commercial delivery drones, commercial passenger aircraft, and even the automotive industry.