3.0 Identification and Significance of the Innovation

As previously stated HyPerComp Engineering's intent in this SBIR has been to evaluate a number of typical filament wound fibers in a number of typical as well as experimental resin matrix systems in order to evaluate their capabilities with respect to filament wound pressure vessels used at cryogenic temperatures. HEI believes that efforts put forth in this SBIR have been very successful in that stated goal.

HEI started this project with an innovative test methodology. HEI was and remains of the opinion that only true pressure vessel test data is directly applicable to the design, development, and analysis of pressure vessels. This holds true for any environment but is especially true for extreme environments. By combining relatively low cost commercial composite pressure vessel designs utilizing aluminum liners with aerospace materials HEI was able to create a low cost test specimen that allowed the accumulation of a great deal of data on a relatively tight budget. As mentioned before, the results demonstrated conclusively that the cryogenic environment affected the pressure vessel performance of the various materials evaluated.

Should HEI be granted an SBIR Phase II follow-on, it is intended to take the test data obtained from this SBIR, expand upon it, and develop an "off the shelf" technology for the design and analysis of filament wound composite pressure vessels for all types of cryogenic and very cold applications. These vessels will contain materials well characterized for these extreme environments and will be designed and proven to have the type of reliability required for critical space and aerospace applications. HEI believes this to be innovative because research has shown that these types of vessels, for these types of applications, with proven and reliable capabilities just do not exist.

As mentioned previously, perhaps the most innovative part of the effort performed to date was the discovery of at least one fiber/resin system that data showed to actually improve in performance following the cryogenic "treatment" it was subjected to. HEI's test process was to first build seven identical cylinders from each material combination. Three were selected at random and hydroburst at ambient to set a baseline capability (median performance and coefficient of variation). The other four were cryogenically cycle tested and three (again at random) were hydroburst post-cryogenic environment. The Toray T-1000 UF-3325 material system showed a slight improvement in median burst and what HEI considers to be a significant decrease in the variability of burst (as measured by coefficient of variation) following the cryogenic treatment. The end result was a pressure vessel population with a usable performance increase in excess of 10%. To be able to achieve 10% more performance out of arguably the highest performing material available is with out question innovative and significant.

The potential of this project has been discussed with numerous industry leaders involved in the fabrication and use filament wound composite cylinders. All have unanimously agreed that any improvement in filament wound cryogenic composite pressure vessel is of interest and great worth.

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HyPerComp Engineering, Inc.; SBIR NAS8-03027 Final Report