Metallic Coatings for Structural Enhancement of Polymers and Composites for Reduced Weight Missile Structure

This program presents an opportunity to develop lightweight, high performance (stiffness, strength, durability), geometrically complex components to serve as brackets, housings, or other multifunctional hardware. The approach combines three major technologies: (1) advanced material systems for balanced properties and cost, (2) state-of-the art material fabrication techniques to create highly detailed, low-cost components, and (3) specialized plating techniques to promote durability and multifunctionality (grounding, EMI, thermal, etc). The overall goals of this technology are to reduce weight, lower costs, and improve part delivery times in structural components. More specifically, a primary focus of this program is to combine state-of-the-art plating technologies and additive manufacturing (or 3D printing). The integration of 3D printing allows an added design freedom over traditional manufacturing techniques, to provide more sophisticated designs for space efficiency and optimized attachment schemes for modularization and miniaturization. 3D printed structures, when properly designed, have the ability to eliminate traditional inverse material property relationships to produce a lightweight, high strength/stiffness, and multifunctional part at relatively low-cost and high turn-around rates for rapid insertion to the field.