Production Reliability In Solid rocket motor nozzle Manufacturing
Background
Arceon is a Dutch company specializing in Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs). Arceon develops and manufactures nozzles using its C/C-SiC CMC material called Carbeon, made using liquid silicon infiltration (LSI). Carbeon SRM nozzles are lightweight, high-temperature resistant, and cost-effective and thus have the ability to fill the technology capability gap for missile applications. The LSI process is cost-effective and scalable and thus has the ability to fill the identified supply chain gap. The project strengthens the Dutch innovation system by connecting an innovative SME (Arceon) with a Dutch knowledge institution (University of Twente) in a focused public-private R&D effort with direct defence relevance.
Technical Goals
The research question to be answered by this project is ‘how to scale up the production of SRM nozzles using the Liquid Silicon Infiltration process?’. The following technical goals will be achieved by answering this research question: 1. Identification of process steps that require optimization 2. Identification of quality assurance parameters to be controlled in these process steps 3. Identification of required steps and procedures to control said parameters 4. Implementation of quality assurance steps and procedures 5. Validation of quality assurance steps and processes
Future Outlook
The scaled production of SRM nozzles plays a direct role in mobilizing the Dutch defence industry. A streamlined and scaled-up SRM nozzle manufacturing facility through Arceon directly contributes to outlined goals for the Dutch defence sector. The results are also more broadly applicable to other short-fibre CMC components that require high-temperature capability, low mass and repeatable manufacturing quality. In the long term, this could also be further applied to friction systems, hot structures, and aerospace or defence parts, such as heat-shields and spacecraft thrusters, exposed to extreme loading. The project therefore generates platform knowledge on scalable CMC production rather than knowledge limited to a single component only.