Mechanically interlocked porous teflon sandwich structures in glass and kevlar fiber reinforced composites for aircraft radome applications
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In aerospace industry application, particularly during the design of the aircraft nose radomes, it is very important to use a material which allows efficiently transmitting the radar signals alongside maintaining the mechanical and environmental stress. This study explores the fabrication and characterization of the novel PI-Teflon based sandwich composite material designed to exhibit the low DK without any compromising the mechanical integrity of the radome. Here the composite is prepared using the wet layup process, mixing the PI with epoxy resin.In this thesis my primary objective was to see is to identify an optimal composition that could meet the electrical requirement for radome applications. This research focused on analyzing the electrical and mechanical performance of different types of composite fabricated. Here the primary goal was to achieve the DK below 3. Test results revealed that the dielectric constant decreased with adding polyimide in resin and alongside using Teflon also reduced the DK. Among all the tested compositions, the composites with only Teflon combination showed the most promising performance (1.99 and 1.96 for Kevlar and GFRP at 200,000 Hz), achieving a low dielectric constant while retaining good mechanical strength. Also here, the impact test results were analyzed, in this also Teflon based composite showed more resistance (4160.45 N) against the load. The SEM helped to find out there was no debonding between the fibers and Teflon after fracture. FTIR confirmed the presence of different functional groups of PI. Water contact angle test results show all the composites fabricated are hydrophilic in nature. In addition, 3-point bending tests were performed to measure the flexural strength and stiffness of the composite samples, here also the Teflon based GFRP composites showed up withstanding maximum load capacity of 381.433 N.I fabricated in this research all 6 samples got DK value below 3 and in that only Teflon based composite of both Kevlar and GFRP got DK below 2.

