Compositex, Inc. specializes in the design, production, and testing of custom-designed filament-wound composite structures using proprietary design tools that can customize and optimize a filament-wound structural design to satisfy a wide range of customer requirements. Teh firm's computer-controlled 4-axis filament winding machine is capable of fabricating filament-wound structures up to 10 feet long and 7 feet in diameter, with full-range helical & hoop ply angles (0 to 90 degrees to horizontal axis). The fiber delivery system is adaptable to wet-winding, tape or towpreg raw materials. The process of filament winding creates pressure vessels that posess the highest known strength-to-weight ratio, often weighing less than 30% of metal vessel of equivalent volume and pressure rating. Other structures, such as wing spars, nacelles, and fuselages, can also be filament-wound to advantage. Filament-winding uses composite raw materials in their lowest cost form: liquid resins, and spools of continuous fiber yarn. Localised reinforcing features, such as woven cloth, honeycomb/foam cores, and precured rods, can also be incorporated into the winding process. Our filament-winding clients have included Exxon-Mobil, Air Launch, Blue Origin, AFRL, and Utah State University. Compositex, Inc. also works in the area of high-temperature ablative materials for aerospace. The firm's ablative products are a composite of refractory fibers & fillers, such as Silica, Quartz, Carbon, and Silicon Carbide, bound together with phenolic resins and other advanced polymers. We have experience with a wide variety of materials and fabrication processes, and have to achieved signficant reductions in finished part costs for demanding ablative material applications, such as thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric re-entry and internal insulation of rocket engine combustion chambers and nozzles. Re-entry heat shields can be fabricated using Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) methods and unique fiber weaving, shingling, and co-mingling techniques to create ablative components that are tailored to specific customer needs for surface heat flux, heating duration, backwall temperature limits, total heat load, and complex multiple heating profiles. Ablative liners that provide insulation on the interior of rocket engine can be fabricated in multiple segments, each tailored to the required properties in each individual location, such as thick wall for highest gas temperature & pressure in the combustion chamber area, different angle/thickness to control surface erosion in the highest heat flux & shear in converging/throat areas, and lower angles for lowest thermal conductivity and char depth growth in the supersonic flow of the diverging nozzle areas. Such chamber liners can be built as a single piece, then sealed and overwrapped with a rigid structural composite outer shell, producing a simple self-cooled engine with minimal weight. Ablatives clients have included NASA-Ames, Rocketdyne, JHU-Applied Physics Lab., Northrup-Grumman, Scaled Composites, SpaceDev, Air Launch and Lockheed-Martin. Compositex also has expertise in the design, development and fabrication of innovative liquid rocket propulsion systems. The main thrust of development efforts has been in evaporated propellant feed systems, as this offers the highest potential for affordability, performance and reliability improvements. Experiments with LOX/hydrocarbon and H2O2/hydrocarbon propellant combinations have shown great promise in improving boost stage propulsion systems. On the drawing board for the future is an even more ambitious system burning LOX/Hydrogen, intended to upper stage and in-space propulsion applications. These highly simplified liquid rocket systems are greatly dependent upon advanced propellant tank and ablatively cooled engine technologies, which nicely compliments expertise in those areas, as described above. Cients for these liquid rocket system development efforts have included AFRL, NASA-Marshall, and DARPA. Advanced Aircraft Technologies Picture Compositex "Kestrel" UAV being prepared for flight test Compositex has been involved in many aircraft development projects, from simple composite replacement part fabrication, to creating and developing revolutionary new aerodynamic devices, such as powered-lift airfoils, propellers, powerplants, and control systems.
