Engineers at NASA’s Langley Researcher Center in Virginia are working to reduce the time it takes space-age composite materials to go from laboratory to market and they are getting strong support from private industry and government leaders, including Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who visited Langley today to get a first-hand look at the great work being done there.
NASA has been actively involved in the research and development of composite materials and structures for the past 30 years – and Langley has been at the forefront of that research. Composite materials are found in all sorts of products, such as buildings, bridges, countertops, racecars, bicycles and airplanes because they are strong and lightweight.
Most of the materials used in aerospace vehicles are carbon fiber, which was discovered about sixty years ago. That is a long time from development to widespread use. Finding ways to reduce that time is the role of a new Advanced Composites Project.
NASA’s Aeronautics mission directorate is funding the Advanced Composites Project, which received $25 million in the Fiscal Year 2014 Omnibus Appropriations, to try to make sure the U.S. aerospace industry has the tools and skills to design, develop, and certify lighter weight aircraft and spacecraft faster and cheaper.
The public-private partnership, which is being led out of Langley, is geared toward reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring new, advanced composites from test tube to vehicles.
The project is a collaboration between government and six industry teams, including some of the biggest names in aerospace, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, GE Aviation, Bell Helicopter, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman.
The teams were chosen based on their technical expertise, willingness and ability to share in costs, certification experience with government agencies, focused technology areas and partnership histories.
Some recent examples of advances Langley researchers are making in materials science include: a 30-foot wide full-sized fuselage center cross-section that is being built for a test that is expected to happen in 2014. It will be made using an advanced composite materials technique where instead of using bolts or rivets, the structure is stitched together.
Langley researchers are also developing the next generation of materials beyond lightweight carbon fiber composites – looking at carbon nanotubes, boron nitride nanotubes and other nanostructured materials.
All of this work demonstrates NASA’s commitment to advances in technologies in air and space that bring benefits back home for people around the world.