SBIR-STTR Award

The advancement of flight vehicles, including hypersonic vehicles, requires increased performance from RF shielding material capable of withstanding the dynamic and thermal loads of the vehicle while maintaining RF performance.Efforts conducted as a response to this program will develop and characterize material for use as radomes and conformal apertures of flight vehicles and other extreme environment RF applications.Successful completion of the program will identify a material via mechanical and RF characterization at temperatures up to 2000F capable of meeting the structural, dynamic, and electronic requirements of a hypersonic vehicle as defined in the announcement.Such a material is required to protect the sensitive communications and sensing equipment on board airborne vehicles with increasingly demanding performance envelopes.Commercialization of this material may expand to other ballistic and hypersonic flight vehicles, and extend to space-based and airborne antenna and RF windows, as well as harsh-environment industrial sensing.

Successful completion of this Phase II proposal will fully characterize and evaluate a material for use in RF windows on hypersonic flight vehicles.Phase II will specifically examine the materials suitability through RF testing in X, Ku, and Ka bands and at elevated temperatures to 2000F.The desired outcome will be a material with predictable, repeatable dielectric properties over frequency and temperature ideally with a dielectric constant of 5 or lower.If the material meets program requirements it may find use as a radome, conformal antenna, or RF window on board expendable hypersonic flight vehicles.Other commercial applications for extreme environment RF materials may include space-based phased arrays, sensors aboard commercial launch vehicles, aircraft, or missiles, and other communication devices with elevated temperature requirements.