Novel Hypersonic Thermal Protection Composite Produced by Additive Manufacturing
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Hypersonic materials development has become one of the most important research areas in the 21st century due to rising geopolitical tensions. Development of existing hypersonic materials, such as carbon-carbon composites and ceramic tiles, are hampered by their manufacturing difficulties and high maintenance costs. This study uses an additive manufacturing, or 3D-printing, technique called liquid deposition modeling to address these limitations by printing carbon fiber lattice structures that can be infiltrated with thermally stable, phthalonitrile, at high temperatures. In the liquid deposition modeling process, ram extrusion is used to force a liquid filament onto a print bed to form a 3D shape. The liquid filament used is a carbon fiber ink which is created by mixing Zoltek PX35 milled carbon fiber, EPON 826 liquid epoxy resin, EPIKURE 3140 liquid curing agent, and Garamite-7305 rheological modifiers. The carbon fiber ink was printed into parallel and perpendicular lattice structures at carbon fiber loadings of 5%, 12%, 18%, and 22% of the inks total weight. After the structures were printed, scanning electron microscopy, laser flash analysis, and compression testing was used to evaluate the lattice structures’ fiber alignment, thermal properties, and mechanical properties, respectively. Prints containing 12 wt% of carbon fiber had a peak stress of 63 MPa and a thermal conductivity of 0.13 W/mK. Finally, the carbon fiber lattice structures were infiltrated with phthalonitrile to form the final composite. Eliminating the porosity that arises during infiltration, increasing fiber length, and fiber concentration in the lattice structures are essential to improving the composite’s performance.
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