Natural Densified Wood Structural Aerospace Composites

NanoSonic is a small advanced materials company with expertise in filament wound composites and the production of new filament materials for use within filament winding and fused filament fabrication.  We have recently developed new inorganic-organic ceramic hybrid materials that are compounded through reactive extrusion and extruded in the form of strands for additive manufacturing processes.  Here, we propose to extend this methodology to natural densified wood-based filaments.  The underlying wood densification process shall be the basis of developing super strong, ultra-lightweight reusable space and missile defense structures such as radomes, nose cones, and fairings.  The innovation that NanoSonic offers is the extrusion of new natural densified wood filaments to generate structural composites with double curvature.  In this program, new Fila-wood filaments shall be filament wound, and further processed to yield radio frequency (RF) transparent flat and complex curvature test coupons for respective waveguide and free space analysis in our anechoic chamber.  We have teamed with Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company to assist with platform identification, design metrics, and Phase II representative environmental testing to achieve TRL7.  This program shall result in a scalable production process for natural wood structural composites with enhanced performance and reliable consistency.