Up Close: Materials Division of NASA-Lewis Research Center
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^ search effort at NASA-Lewis. The Materials Division structure reflects the strengths as well as the diversity of research areas / being investigated. Each of the eight branches making up the Materials Division is briefly sketched below.
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Microgravity Materials Science Laboratory
directional solidification in a convection damping magnetic field, study of subtle density difference effects on convection, dendritic growth, and polymerization. The laboratory is also used as a classroom to introduce the concepts of materials research and commercial production in space. By providing functional duplicates of equipment developed to fly on the Space Shuttle as well as access to a Cray supercomputer, NASA-Lewis can help potential microgravity experimenters define their hardware needs, process models, and research directions prior to Shuttle flight. The Microgravity Materials Science Laboratory welcomes and in some cases will support cooperative research programs with industry and academia, and encourages informal discussion of microgravity research ideas.
Ceramics Branch
Ceramics and ceramic matrix composites are potential candidate materials for advanced engine applications requiring high temperature hot sections or high thrust-toweight ratios. The silicon based ceramics, such as silicon carbide and silicon nitride, are currently being investigated for their high temperature strength, thermal stability, and resistance to thermal shock and to oxidative environments. Structural ceramic parts have been limited in use by their lack of reliability and their tendency to fail in a brittle, catastrophic manner. An approach to combating the catastrophic failure problem is the inclusion of continuous fibers within the ceramic in order to control crack propagation. Using high modulus, continuous fibers aligned with the principal load Continued
MICROGRAVITY
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