The Carbon Crunch Proposers Day will be held at Amentum in Arlington, VA.

DARPA Form 104s are required for all meeting attendees in order to attend.

 Program Solicitation

Welcome

Overview

Carbon Crunch’s objective is to enhance the scalability of hypersonic aeroshell production by developing disruptive manufacturing technologies. Scalability in Carbon Crunch is defined as achieving high, reliable production throughput for relevant aeroshell geometries while maintaining quality, minimizing set-up time, and controlling cost.

For hypersonic flight above Mach 7, carbon-carbon (C-C) composites are the preeminent material capable of withstanding the required extreme thermal and mechanical loads. This makes C-C the material-of-choice for encasing and shielding hypersonic glide vehicles. Manufacturing of this material is a slow, arduous process that is not readily scalable. Carbon Crunch will overcome these limitations by developing and applying innovative C-C manufacturing methods that are inherently faster and more scalable.

The process for C-C production can be broken down into preform layup, carbonization /densification, machining, post-processing, and assembly. The Carbon Crunch program is predicated on the hypothesis that the primary step limiting scalability of C-C today is the carbonization/densification step.

The program plan for Carbon Crunch includes a proof-of-concept Phase 1, where performers will conduct small-scale manufacturing runs which demonstrate that their processes have the potential to accelerate hypersonic production. Subsequently, in Phase 2, the successful process(es) will be scaled up to a hypersonic aeroshell design with pre-qualification steps performed to provide confidence that the process can be used on a program of record.

Any individuals that attend DARPA events must present compliant identification based on the REAL ID standard.

Important Dates

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