Post-Doctoral Scholar

This research was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under the project titled "Focused Manufacturing of Hypersonic Materials". This occurred in collaboration with Kansas State University, Purdue University, and Heetshield, an industrial partner.

My role in this work at SUNY-ESF involved the production, characterization, and analysis of opacified (OFI) hypersonic materials. The purpose of this research was to manufacture hypersonic materials using three main components (an opacifier, a binder, and a thermal fiber) on a paper machine. The use of the wet-laid manufacturing process on a paper machine with optimized operating conditions and furnish mixtures would ideally provide hypersonic materials that are competitive with ceramic counterparts regarding radiative transfer but for a lower cost.

The creation of OFI materials occurred at the laboratory handsheet level in which various furnishes were manufactured. These sheets were examined for physical properties such as tensile strength. The OFI samples were also analyzed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to determine the spatial distribution of components within the various furnishes. The elemental composition of the samples was also examined with SEM using energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The physical, microscopic, and elemental characteristics were utilized by collaborators in the project to model the behavior of the material (Kansas State University) and perform uncertainty analysis (Purdue University). A base furnish was also produced on the pilot-scale paper machine.