The University of Dayton Research Institute is teaming with prominent aerospace manufacturers and suppliers to commercialize hybrid, lightweight composite materials that could better withstand high temperatures and resist damage from lightning strikes.
A recent $1 million grant from Ohio’s Third Frontier program will build on a separate $3 million Third Frontier grant to UDRI in May 2010. The money will enable the institute to build a plant that can make enough of the materials for commercial partners to work with in their processes, says Brian Rice, a UDRI official overseeing the program. He hopes to have the plant operating in about a year.
“The material has almost an infinite number of variations,” Rice says. “We really focused on making materials that complement new manufacturing processes, that make the state of Ohio more competitive.”
UDRI researcher Khalid Lafdi developed the nanomaterial over seven years with funding from the Air Force, Army, aerospace industry and Third Frontier.
UDRI’s “nano adaptive hybrid fabric” material is created by controlled growth of nanotubes, far too small to be seen, on carbon fibers used in composite materials.
The so-called “fuzzy fibers” are used to produce sheets of fabric. When incorporated into resins, the fibers give composite materials additional properties, including the capabilities to conduct electricity and heat energy or store energy.
Those capabilities can lead to the fibers’ use in aircraft and auto parts, and eventually consumer electronics such as cell phones, Rice said.
The state’s Third Frontier program is intended to encourage development of technologies that can be commercialized and support job creation in Ohio.
After its 2010 grant, UDRI said it would create 70 high-tech jobs in Ohio within three years and 165 jobs in the following five years.
One of UDRI’s commercial partners, aircraft parts maker Goodrich Corp., has said it will use the new material in nacelles, housings for aircraft engines. Goodrich said it will also examine it for use in aircraft wheels and brakes and de-icing.
Another partner, Renegade Materials Corp. of Springboro, uses similar fabrics to make materials sold to manufacturers of aerospace parts.
By John Nolan; Dayton Daily News