Multifunctional Composites with Applications to Energy Performance and Efficiency.

摘要

Multifunctional material systems (MfMS) are material/systems that can perform more than one primary function simultaneously or sequentially in time to enhance system-level performance through the elimination of redundancy between sub-system materials and functions. A system-level performance metric of considerable importance is energy performance and efficiency. Total energy usage in 2009 by US Department of Defense (DoD) has been estimated at approximately 900 trillion BTU's with approximately 75% of that being consumed for mobility related applications (e.g., aircraft, ships, vehicles, etc.). This paper describes the development of a new class of multifunctional laminate composites with controllable surface morphology at NRL. The current focus is on two-phase (solid-fluid), thin, flexible, skin-like laminates with surface 'pore' arrays that are connected to an internal vascular network. These new materials with structural (skin) + surface (morphology control) multifunctionality are being called 'poro-vascular composites' or PV composites for short.