Aerospace manufacturers are emphasizing the need to incorporate high performance, lightweight materials into their manufacturing processes in an effort to improve efficiency, prolong product life through durability and decrease costs. In today’s post we will look at one of the innovations entering the market that has the potential to change the way aerospace manufacturers integrate composites and use aerogels. Blueshift International Materials is a new player in the aerospace arena that has recently brought to market a unique product, AeroZero®, a 100 percent-polymer aerogel that is both lightweight and easily incorporated into composites. The high performance material combines the physical and toughness properties of plastic films with the insulation properties of aerogels to create a strong yet lightweight, thin, clean and flexible insulator. “The emphasis on the lightweighting of products has sparked a growing need for composite materials such as AeroZero due to their low density nature and high thermal insulating properties.” Explains Garrett Poe, Executive Vice President, Blueshift.
As the 2015 winner of the JEC Innovation Awards in the Raw Materials category, AeroZero has already garnered attention and demonstrated its ability to be easily incorporate into composites. “Existing aerogels are made from particulate silica, which inhibits their adoption in composite structures,” explains Garrett, “Blueshift AeroZero was designed to be a highly capable core material that is extremely easy to incorporate into composites, meeting the needs of a variety of industries while seamlessly overcoming this significant obstacle organizations face with other aerogel solutions.” AeroZero’s value derives from its all-polymer construction combined with its porous aerogel internal structure. Unlike other core materials, AeroZero exhibits high strength, compression resistance, toughness, low dielectric constant, tolerances to a wide range of temperature, easy-bonding surfaces, and is a very clean material to handle.
The superior thermal and acoustic insulation coupled with high thermal stability make this product ideal for use in the extreme environments typical to aerospace operations, while the low dielectric constant also lends itself to use in radio frequencies.
Given the range of uses and inherent value in this new entrant, I am sure we will be hearing a lot more from Blueshift International in the coming years. For those of you attending the upcoming American Aerospace & Defense Summit 2015 in Arizona this December, be sure to swing by Blueshift’s booth to take a closer look at AeroZero and find out if it may be the solution you have been looking for.