MODIFICATION
A -- Carbon-Phenolic for NASA Re-Entry Heatshields
- Notice Date
- 5/8/2018
- Notice Type
- Modification/Amendment
- NAICS
- 541715
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- NASA/Ames Research Center, JA:M/S 241-1, Moffett Field, California, 94035-1000
- ZIP Code
- 94035-1000
- Solicitation Number
- 80ARC018-RFI-CP
- Point of Contact
- Marianne Shelley, Phone: 6506044179
- E-Mail Address
-
marianne.shelley@nasa.gov
(marianne.shelley@nasa.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- AMENDMENT ONE: The requested due date for submittal of capabilities for this RFI is extended to the date and time indicated in the synopsis. GENERAL INFORMATION: To date NASA has utilized carbon phenolic (CP) heatshields for its most demanding reentry missions, Pioneer Venus (PV) and Galileo (mission to Jupiter). These heat shields consisted of a Tape Wrapped Carbon Phenolic (TWCP) frustum and a Chop Molded Carbon Phenolic (CMCP) spherical nose. TWCP has uses beyond NASA thermal protection system (TPS) requirements, such as in rocket nozzles; however, CMCP is essentially a NASA-unique CP material that has very few other applications. It has been more than 30 years since NASA has flown a mission requiring CMCP TPS materials and therefore industry's capability to support CMCP fabrication now and in the future is unclear. The NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) seeks to mature Thermal Protection System (TPS) technologies for highly reliable robotic probe missions for solar system sample returns to Earth. Multiple TPS concepts are being investigated for approximately 1.5-meter diameter sphere-cone geometries. The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to gather information on CARBON PHENOLIC TPS material technologies, including material properties, current manufacturing base, current flight applications, spacecraft integration techniques, and efforts required to fabricate large, single-piece heat shields. Because of the high reliability requirements of this mission class, information is also sought on manufacturing process control maturity and techniques, as-built heat shield inspection techniques, and historical qualification test history. In a series of white papers ("White Paper to the NRC Decadal Survey Outer Planets Sub-Panel", "White Paper to the NRC Decadal Survey Sub-Panels Mars and Outer Planet Satellites", and "White Paper to the NRC Decadal Survey Inner Planets Sub-Panel") the TPS community has proposed that a prime candidate for these missions is the heritage FM 5055 carbon (heritage carbon phenolic or HCP) that was used for the Galileo (Jupiter) entry probe. FM 5055 uses carbon cloth derived from Avtex rayon. Pioneer Venus (PV) utilized similar TWCP and CMCP materials however a different rayon precursor was utilized in the manufacturing of the carbon cloth. NASA presently has a very limited supply of the Avtex-based carbon cloth. There is material for a single mission depending upon its size and reliability requirements but not for multiple missions. However, it has been nearly 30 years since NASA has involved itself with planetary missions requiring the use of CP heat shield materials. In order to find a cost effective, sustainable and robust TPS solution that supports candidate future missions, NASA seeks to assess existing industrial capabilities. NASA also seeks to understand improvements to CP manufacturing approaches that may have been developed since the Galileo heat shield was fabricated, and if these approaches can meet NASA's requirements. Such information will allow NASA to plan a cost-effective development program. The intent of this RFI is to obtain data from industry in order for NASA to assess and prepare a CP manufacturing and maturation plan to mature CP technology to technology readiness level (TRL) 6 in time to support the proposed missions. For high-reliability missions, NASA seeks to manufacture heat shields made of "heritage carbon phenolic," trying to match the heritage materials as well as the heritage manufacturing processes to the greatest extent practical. Due to the limited supply of the heritage carbon fabric (Avtex- rayon based carbonized fabric referred to as CCA-3 1641B) that NASA has in its inventory, most, if not all, will likely be utilized to support a single mission. Given the heritage material supply issues and that CP, and CMCP in particular, have not been manufactured for a flight mission since Galileo, NASA has two immediate objectives for CP development. One is to re-establish the heritage CP manufacturing capability (or as close to it as possible, utilizing a minimum amount of the CCA-3 1641B fabric). The second is to establish an alternate to the heritage CP manufacturing capability (alternate rayon precursor and possibly alternate processes). The goal is to mature both of these objectives to TRL 6 in the next 4 years, depending on funding opportunities and mission needs. Results from the development effort may feed into near term missions, if they are selected, but it is primarily intended to support the longer-term missions with heritage (baseline) or alternate CP. Given that missions requiring CP heat shields may have many years between flights a key aspect to consider for alternate CP development is long-term sustainability of the materials availability and manufacturing capability. This RFI describes the requirements in support of the initial planning phase of CP heat shield development for future NASA missions. What NASA needs is data to understand risks involved in current manufacturing capabilities that include tools, machinery, processes and expertise, sustainability, and, if capabilities have atrophied, what would it take to revive the capabilities. To this end, information is requested from vendors that can help NASA understand their current capability to provide all elements of entry grade (suitable for entry environments as opposed to nozzle environments) carbon phenolic including raw materials, manufacture of test articles, material testing capabilities, full-scale manufacturing demonstration units (MDUs), and eventually flight hardware. This exercise is critical in the development of processes and vendors qualified to provide flight hardware. As this is an RFI, it should be understood that NASA makes no explicit or implied commitment for future procurements in this area. This RFI describes the requirements in support of the initial planning phase of heat shield development for NASA's most challenging future reentry missions. NASA's long-term goal is to have a well-established industrial capability ready and available to manufacture heat shields for its multiple exploration missions across the next several decades. SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES: Responses to this RFI should address the specific questions outlined below, as applicable to your proposed concept: 1. What is your past experience in providing entry grade carbon phenolic heat shields including those made from FM 5055G HCP tape wrapped or chop molded (and/or materials manufactured within the FM5055 family)? 2. What is your current capability in heat shield relevant TPS manufacturing? A. Personnel experienced in making Tape Wrap CP (TWCP) and/or Chop Molded CP (CMCP) - number of personnel and number of years of experience? B. Associated product assurance certifications and processing equipment necessary to do so? C. Do you have thermal / structural / physical material property test data (or a database including coefficients of variance) available that NASA could review? i. Of interest for thermal modeling are the following properties: 1. Carbon fiber source (ENKA, NARC, etc.) 2. Density of processed material (g/cm3) 3. Heat of Formation (kJ/kg) 4. Virgin elemental composition 5. Thermal conductivity of virgin and char - as a function of temperature in the through-the-thickness direction (W/m*K) 6. Specific Heat of virgin and char - as a function of temperature (J/g*K) 7. Char emissivity ii. Of interest for structural modeling are the following properties: 1. Temperature-dependent shear, tensile, and compressive strength and modulus in appropriate ply- or fiber-directions 2. High-strain rate mechanical properties if available 3. Knock-down factors for damaged material, e.g. "open-hole" allowables D. If you do not have the above properties, can you direct NASA to other sources where they may be available? 3. What process and adhesives would you utilize to join a CMCP and TWCP frustum together? Please provide details as relevant. Please provide details as relevant. Please provide any thermal test data (arcjet testing) and/or structural test data for the different joint concepts and/or a potential source for that data if not in your possession. 4. What methods have you used to attach CP to various substructures? To which substructure materials have you attached them? i.e., composite or metallic (what metal?) 5. Have you any experience with alternative configurations for covering the spherical section of a heatshield. i.e., "Dixie Cup" instead of CMCP? Please provide any data related to material properties, structural testing, and aerothermal performance of the alternate configuration, including any use in a flight application. 6. NASA is considering blunt-cone heat shields with base diameters between 1 and 2 meters and cone angles between 45° and 60°, with the conical flank tape wrapped at a 20° ply angle and a chop molded nose Within this size range of 1.0 to 2.0-meter diameter, what capabilities do you currently have for CP manufacturing (e.g., Do you have the mandrill, tape wrapping equipment, etc., in place or do you need to design and acquire it? How long and how much funding will it take)? 7. Up to what scale and cone angle could you manufacture with existing infrastructure? 8. Do you see any difficulty in manufacturing a TW heat shield for a 60 deg. conical section with a 20 deg. ply angle? What experience do you have in tape wrapping NARC, ENKA, C2 or Lyocell? Can you make flat 20 deg. ply angle test coupons of ~ 6 cm thickness? 9. Can you make chop molded test coupons of ~20 cm thickness and 35 cm diameter? (Fabrication requires pressure of at least 1000psi). If you do not have the facilities to make CM billets of this size now, describe the capability you currently have and the cost and schedule required to upgrade your facilities. 10. What are the sources of your raw materials? A. What is the probability of providing sustained supplies of the raw materials? B. NASA recognizes that the heritage Avtex rayon is no longer available to fabricate FM5055. Given your experience what alternate rayon would you propose to utilize and why? i.e., what alternate carbon fiber is most mature for heatshield applications? C. How would you ensure traceability of an alternate fiber to that of heritage FM5055? D. Do you have data that verifies that the CP manufacture from the proposed alternate raw materials will provide the same performance as CP manufactured from the heritage raw materials? 11. Can you make full scale MDUs (between 1 and 2-meter diameter and 60-degree cone angle)? Describe the specific equipment that would be utilized for this task. The full scale MDU will be made of Chop Molded and Tape Wrapped parts. If you are unable to make one of the two CP parts, would you look for a subcontractor and who would be your sub? 12. If your carbon phenolic Tape Wrap or Chop Molding equipment is not currently running, what would be required to restore operational capability? 13. If you do not have operators currently trained, what would it take to get them trained? 14. To meet the sizes for TW and CMCP parts NASA is interested in, do you need to scale up any of your equipment? If so, what would the new scaled equipment mean in terms of cost and schedule? 15. Describe your experience making flight hardware. If you have only provided elements of flight components, please specify. 16. What is a "standard" material sample size of Tape Wrap CP and/or Chop Molded CP that you can currently produce? What is the lead time for samples of that nature? 17. If awarded a contract, how long would it roughly take to build a 1-2m Manufacturing Demonstration Unit (MDU) from raw material procurement to final OML machining and integration to a carrier structure? A. Are there any specific cost/schedule drivers between 1-m and 2-m? i.e., perhaps you can currently fabricate parts 1-m in diameter but would require an infrastructure upgrade if parts were bigger than 1.5-m, etc. The following drawings are available via email from the Contracting Officer noted below, upon email request: Figure 1 - which shows the design of typical blunt nose sphere-cone entry probe for NASA missions. The frustum is fabricated from tape wrapped carbon phenolic (TWCP) and the nose cap from chop molded carbon phenolic (CMCP). A key feature as shown in Fig. 2 is the preferred orientation of the ply angle on the frustum (45° conical flank tape wrapped at a 20° ply angle) and of the chopped squares for the nose section. The asembled heatshield features an adhesively bonded butt joint between the nose and frustum. The adhesive used by the Galileo Mission was a carbon filled (35%) Dow Corning silicone. Figure 2 - Notional 60-deg cone Sample Return probe design. Blunt-cone heat shields required by NASA with base diameters between 1 and 2 meters might also require a 60° conical flank tape wrapped at a 20° ply angle and a chop molded nose. Interested firms are requested to submit their capability statements and responses to the questions above, as well as any comments on the acquisition approach via email to the Contracting Officer, Marianne.Shelley@nasa.gov no later than the date and time indicated in the synopsis at the Federal Business Opportunities (www.fbo.gov) procurement website. Please submit your information via email in Microsoft® Word or Adobe PDF formats. All notices pertaining to this RFI will be posted at this Federal Business Opportunities website. This preliminary information is being made available for planning purposes only, subject to FAR Clause 52.215-3, entitled "Request for Information or Solicitation for Planning Purposes." This is a request for information only and does not constitute a commitment, implied or otherwise, that NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) will take procurement action in this matter. Further, neither NASA ARC nor the Government will be responsible for any cost incurred in furnishing this information. NASA ARC is issuing this RFI to gain a better understanding of industry capabilities and to assess the current state of the technology. Detailed requirements for a future acquisition have not been finalized, nor have the specifics for the acquisition strategy been determined. NASA intends to use the results of this market research to aid in the making of these final decisions. Any future procurement resulting from this RFI is contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds. Although all comments received will be carefully reviewed and considered for inclusion in a later action, the initiators of this request make no commitment to include any particular recommendations. Following this initial feedback, NASA may conduct one-on-one meetings with potential contractors. These meetings will allow for exchange of information and will provide an opportunity for potential offerors to provide feedback on the Government's requirements and its acquisition approach. All information received in response to this RFI that is marked "Proprietary" will be handled and protected accordingly. As applicable, NASA may provide Proprietary information to its support service contractors who are under an obligation to keep third-party Proprietary information in confidence. By submitting a response to this RFI, the responder is deemed to have consented to release of Proprietary information to such NASA support service contractors.
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