A major rocket engine manufacturer was looking for a turbopump rotor that could operate at 1500°C and have a specific gravity of less than four to meet the needs of engine concepts for a reusable rocket launch system. This meant increasing the temperature capability of metallic parts by approximately 500°C and reducing their weight by a factor of two.
Foster-Miller is meeting this challenge with carbon fiber preforms fabricated with triaxial braided blades integrally attached to a polar woven hub. The assembly is then infiltrated with pre-ceramic polymer to make reinforced silicon carbide parts. The first step was demonstrating the braiding and weaving of simple preforms with a commercial carbon fiber and infiltrating with epoxy resin. Next, a complex shaped C/SiC demonstration bladed disk (blisk) was fabricated. This blisk component used a custom developed 3D tailored carbon fiber reinforcement perform densified with SiC matrix via the preceramic polymer route.
The benefits of the process include net shape fabrication with conventional machining needed only at one intermediate step, rapid densification of the part, and low processing costs due to the use of conventional equipment. The new rotors made through this preforming and manufacturing technique exceed the structural requirements of current designs at greatly reduced fabrication costs. This technology is ideally suited to rocket engine components such as blisks, stators, nozzles, as well as hot structural components.
Foster-Miller is currently developing applications of this technology to demonstrate its use in aerospace parts.
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