NASA Seeks Partner for Non-Destructive Evaluation of Composite Materials

The above image shows composite testing on a mirror at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

The Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is looking for a partner that can provide information and expertise to support a study of how defects are created in composite materials during their fabrication, testing, and use. In addition, the NDE team seeks data about how the defects affect composite performance and which defects are mission-critical.

The NDE team seeks organizations that can provide access to “effects of defects” data on composite materials used by NASA or that can produce this data at no cost to NASA via a joint partnership. Specifically, NASA is interested in the following information:

• Types of common and critical defects in composites, including those formed during manufacture of composites and those formed from use in the field
• Methods of detecting and evaluating the size, depth, and other measurements of the defects
• Methods of creating specific defects with consistent volume, cluster, depth, and other qualities
• Tests and methods to determine the critical performance effects on test materials
• Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) applications and software that provide methodologies for characterizing and analyzing composites defect data
  

If you would like more information about this partnering opportunity, please contact:

Procurement Contact
Shaun Canter
Contract Specialist
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Phone: 256-544-1632
Email: shaun.w.canter@nasa.gov

Technical Contact
Mike Suits
Materials Engineer
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Phone: 256-544-8336
Email: mike.suits@nasa.gov

Innovative Partnerships Program Contact
Danny Garcia
Technology Infusion Manager
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Phone: 256-544-4138
Email: danny.garcia-1@nasa.gov

The Fuentek website contains more information about other collaborative research and development opportunities, and this information also can be found in the collaborative research and development section of this blog.

–By Karen Hiser