Materials & Manufacturing

David Spencer (MIT) developed semi-solid material processing through an accidental observation he made while dealing with the processing of metals in their mushy state. The semi-solid material process basically consists of two stages: pre-processing and processing. During pre-processing, the...

"Modular cryogenic insulation" denotes a chaff for installation in the partially evacuated annular spaces between the inner and outer walls of tanks used to store and transport liquid nitrogen and other cryogenic liquids. The insulating chaff was developed to replace low-density powders (e.g., perlite, silica aerogel,...

A mechanical device has been developed for applying an adhesive patch, from the outside, to the wall of a spacecraft module that has lost pressure because of penetration by a meteoroid or a piece of orbital debris. This device will make it possible to seal and re-pressurize the affected module during space...

A lightweight composite-material tank suitable for the storage and transport of liquid oxygen and other cryogenic liquids has been developed. The tank includes a metallic liner compatible with liquid oxygen, a graphite/ epoxy overwrap, an insulating layer of lightweight polyurethane foam,...

The term "Marshall Convergent Coating-1" ("MCC-1") denotes an improved formulation and a concomitantly improved method of spray deposition of a cork-and-glass-filled epoxy ablative thermal-insulation material. MCC-1 has been used on the space shuttle solid rocket booster and on some Air...

"ACE" (for "advanced ceramic engineered") denotes a type of coating mate-rial that increases the ability of flexible thermal-insulation blankets to resist erosion. Developed for use on the insulating blankets on the space shuttle orbiters, these coating materials could also be used on similar...

A report discusses the development of the GENOA-PFA computer program, which was described in "Software for Simulating Progressive Fracture in Braided PMCs" (LEW-16845), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 24, No. 3 (March 2000), page 52; and "Update on a Progressive-Failure-Analysis Software System...

Carbon-fiber-filled polymers made from ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) have been found to be useful as ablative thermal-insulation materials. Like the silica-filled EPDM polymers described in the preceding article, these polymers have been investigated as candidates to replace some...

A flexible design concept and an associated method of fabrication have been conceived as means to satisfy growing demands for lightweight composite-material pipes for corrosive and cryogenic liquids. The design concept and method can be applied to produce piping systems capable of...

Experiments have shown that a substrate can be patterned with submicron features by the following procedure:

An advanced technique of deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) has been developed for fabricating smooth vertical walls in silicon wafers. These walls are suitable for use as bounding surfaces of optical waveguides in photonic and optoelectronic devices. The roughness of a typical 8-µm-high...

An improved method of plasma chemical-vapor deposition (CVD) of a thin film of boron carbide has been devised. Boron carbide is useful because it is hard, is electrically insulating, withstands high temperature, and resists chemical attack. Plasma CVD of boron carbide involves the thermal...

A report discusses a proposed nesting-hoop solar sail that would be used to propel a spacecraft on a deep-space mission. The nesting-hoop design concept was chosen as one that would afford a desired combination of small mass and compact stowage during launch. The sail would include multiple disks, each comprising a thin...

Outer-space plasmas and arc-jet plasmas are well known to many researchers at NASA. Efforts to understand the structures of these plasmas have consumed years of research at various NASA laboratories. Computational modeling of such plasmas involves analyses of multicomponent,...

Scanning ultraviolet (UV) lasers would be used to expose ultraviolet-sensitive photoresists to form patterns of conductors for electronic circuits, according to a proposal. Heretofore, such patterns have been formed by exposing photoresists to collimated ultraviolet or visible light through...

Scientists have developed a derivative of the lithium-ion cell that could prove useful in spaceflight and commercial applications in which it is planned to use oxygen batteries based on solid polymer electrolytes. This derivative cell, which contains a solid polymer electrolyte and an oxygen gas...

In a proposed technique of maskless gray-scale x-ray lithography, a photoresist to be patterned would be exposed to a parallel beam of hard x-rays. As explained below, the photoresist would be translated across the beam at a varying rate to effect one-dimensional spatial variations in the radiation dose...

NASA scientists, who are very concerned with the increasing hazard of impacts of orbital debris impact on spacecraft, have designed the "stuffed Whipple" shield — a lightweight, relatively inexpensive alternative to simple aluminum meteoroid/orbital-debris (M/OD) shield. The stuffed Whipple...