Composite materials have become ubiquitous over the past two decades with greater use in naval structures due to the high specific strength, stiffness, and toughness offered with respect to other engineering materials. While fiber reinforced polymers have found wide use in commercial applications, currently used materials are costly and require extended cure times which greatly increases manufacturing cost and consequently part cost. Furthermore, polymer composites are susceptible to combustion which poses challenges for marine and transportation structures. The File, Smoke and Toxicity (FST) performance of a polymer is of critical importance in naval applications where sailors are often in confined spaces with restricted ventilation. While polymers such as phenolics and polyimides have been widely utilized for fire-resistant materials, phenolics offer poor mechanical properties and polyimides are costly and challenging to process. Current approaches to the development of fire-resistant fiber reinforced polymer matrix composite materials have typically required a high-volume fraction of additives leading to degradation of the mechanical properties or unacceptably high density. Trimer Technologies has developed a novel low-cost resin system that exhibits inherent non-flammability with excellent mechanical properties that match or exceed the highest performance aerospace resins. In addition to the strength, stiffness, durability and FST performance of Trimers resin, it has a low viscosity and long gel time enabling the rapid infusion of large structures while providing a rapid out of autoclave cure that only requires minutes vs the hours long cure time of current resin systems. With no additives, Trimers resin can greatly exceed the requirements of FAR 25.853 for aviation structures and the requirements for smoke density, smoke toxicity and vertical flame spread of MIL-STD-2031. The objective of this SBIR Phase I program is to develop a composite material system that can meet the Navys FST requirements without compromising strength, durability or density. Trimer will perform extensive resin development to further improve the FST properties as well as mechanical testing to validate the strength, stiffness and fatigue resistance of the materials developed. The ultimate outcome of this program will be a new resin system which exceeds the FST and strength requirements while being low-cost and enabling the infusion of large naval structures.
Benefit: With the growth of composite materials in commercial products, the manufacturing processes required to rapidly produce fiber reinforced polymer parts have matured, enabling composites to find use in high volume applications, such as the automotive industry, where part to part times can be as low as 90 seconds. High volume manufacturing processes typically utilize sheet molding compounds (SMC), high pressure reaction injection molding (HPRTM) and pultrusion processes. However, the resins compatible with these high rate manufacturing methods, which include polyesters, vinyl esters, snap cure epoxies and polyurethanes, all exhibit low glass transition temperature (Tg) and inferior mechanical properties compared to the 350 ?F autoclave cured epoxy resins typically found in the aerospace industry. Furthermore, these resins provide poor FST performance and require high loadings of fillers to achieve fire resistance. In order to implement low cost processing methods for aerospace structural applications, there exists a critical need to implement new resin technologies which are compatible with high rate industrial manufacturing approaches yet provide the high Tg and mechanical properties of current 350?F cured aerospace resins. Trimer has developed a novel thermosetting resin which is low cost and cures in as little as 30 seconds yet achieves aerospace grade mechanical and thermal properties. These traits combined with the low cost, low room temperature viscosity, high strength and durability and inherent FST performance make our resin system a game changer and provides numerous commercialization pathways across a diverse range of industries. The proposed SBIR program will provide the opportunity for drastic cost savings to the DoD and yield a technology with immense commercialization potential due to the rare combination of material properties that do not exist in other resin systems.
Keywords: Structure, Structure, FST, Smoke Toxicity, Composites, fire, Polymer
