Avery Banks

Avery Banks

Biography

Avery Banks is a rising Junior at Washington University in St. Louis majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Aerospace Engineering. His research interests lie in the areas of guidance, navigation, and controls engineering as well as the application of materials science in aerospace. At the CHROME Aerospace Lab, part of St. Louis University, Avery developed an autonomous robotic lab tour guide using a telerobot programmed for obstacle avoidance, voice recognition, and interactive engagement. This summer, he is working in Professor Brian Wardle’s lab in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department at MIT, manufacturing nano composites for thermal protective systems, specifically, an ablative heat shield for spacecraft. Avery works well in team environments and knows when to step up and lead, and he brings curiosity, initiative, and humility to every research environment. He is eager to explore every facet of his field and welcomes both constructive and critical feedback.

Abstract

Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Polysiloxane for Ablative Thermal Protection Systems

Ultra-high-temperature resin (UHTR) is an ablative aerospace polymer with potential application in thermal protection systems (TPS), specifically as the outermost layer of heat shields for space re-entry. For UHTR to be viable in TPS applications, it must exhibit low thermal conductivity, high temperature resistance, low density, and a stable ablation behavior. Currently, the aerospace industry utilizes composites because of their
excellent strength-weight-ratio and high corrosion and fatigue resistance. Carbon nanotubes possess exceptional properties including thermal stability, high strength, relative homogeneity and tunable thermal characteristics, making them a promising fiber candidate for reinforcing UHTRs compared to traditional carbon fiber reinforced ablators. The challenge with current methods for fabricating CNT reinforced composites is that they often produce nanocomposites with voids and randomly oriented CNTs, resulting in low packing density and limited enhancement of material properties. To address this issue, this study employed the bulk nanocomposite laminating (BNL) process, an innovative technique developed by members of necstlab. The BNL technique integrates an efficient method for the densification of CNTs by horizontally aligning them, followed by resin infiltration and applying heat and pressure to manufacture a high CNT loading nanocomposite. Through this approach, multi-ply CNT-polysiloxane laminates with aligned CNTs, uniform distribution, and a substantial packing fraction are manufactured. Various property characterization techniques, including micro-computed tomography (μCT), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), were employed to investigate the properties of the CNT-polysiloxane laminates. In future work, the CNT-polysiloxane nanocomposite will be tested in an oxyacetylene test bed (OTB) to evaluate its ablation properties.