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Completed TRL 4 (started at 2, targeting 5)
The proposed effort will advance MERINO-LD from TRL 2 to TRL 5 and prepare to make use of flight test opportunities. MERINO-LD is a next generation low-cost rapidly producible TPS material currently under development at NASA ARC. The MERINO-LD process starts by blending and opening carbon and phenolic fibers before running them through a carding process to produce either flat billets of material, or batting material that can be needle punched into a near net shape. A depiction of the carding process to produce the felt is shown.
The end product is a flexible carbon phenolic ablative TPS blanket that is capable of operating in environments up to 500 W/cm2 (TBC) and 0.5 atm (TBC). An ablative TPS blanket, like MERINO-LD, simplifies the design, analysis, and integration processes required which dramatically reduce anticipated manufacturing cost and schedule by more than 65% when compared to traditional rigid PICA ablator systems. The technology is enhanced further using automated needle-punching operations to produce single piece Near Net Shaped (NNS) heatshields. These NNS heatshields improve reliability and eliminate the need for six-sided tile machining, complex tile placement, and gap filling operations used in heritage Mars tiled TPS heatshields, further reducing production cost and schedule. While the initial focus of the proposed effort will be on forebody TPS fabrication, the automated needle punching operation is applicable to aftbody TPS for MEP missions and a broad range of other TPS materials.
MERINO-LD is a low-cost, rapidly producible, easily integratable flexible ablative TPS blanket that satisfies functional performance requirements of future Mars missions. While automated needling processes are not new, the novelty of the proposed effort is the automation of NNS needling processes to produce a single piece MERINO-LD heatshield using carbon and phenolic fibers that are blended at the batting stage prior to needling. Introducing the carbon and phenolic fibers together early in the manufacturing process eliminates the need for lengthy and costly carbonization and infusion steps, and the blanket nature of the TPS simplifies integration processes, which all will lead to dramatically reduce manufacturing costs when compared to traditional rigid PICA ablator systems. Another advantage is the automated near net shape will eliminate seams at all scales resulting in reduced cost/schedule as well as increased robustness.
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