NONREIMBURSABLE SPACE ACT AGREEMENT SAA1-31475 BETWEENSpace Act Agreement • April 1st, 2020
Contract Type FiledApril 1st, 2020This Space Act Agreement (SAA) supports NASA 2018 Strategic Goal 3 - Address National Challenges and Catalyze Economic Growth - to advance U.S. leadership for the next century of flight, help development the return of overland supersonic flight and new airliners that consume half the fuel of today's models. Composite materials have long been recognized as promising candidates to help achieve these goals. This Space Act Agreement addresses this problem and facilitates development of the latest technologies in composites manufacturing using the proven automated fiber placement (AFP) method. During AFP, robotic machines dispense uncured, highly viscous and deformable carbon fiber reinforced composite tape on to a rigid tool. AFP, suffers from many processing challenges, but in particular the fidelity of fiber positioning, including the issue of out-of- plane defects such as tape wrinkling during tow steering on complex-contour tooling.