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HRL Awarded Air Force Contract for Materials for Optimally Responsive Fabricated Structures (MORFS)

LOS ANGELES, March 16, 2007— A team led by HRL Laboratories, LLC has been awarded a $280,000 Phase I contract by the Air Force’s Materials Directorate at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to develop a morphing wing concept for next generation aircraft based on the use of new variable stiffness materials. The team, which includes Next Gen Aeronautics, LLC and The Boeing Company's Phantom Works advanced R&D unit, will design, fabricate, and test specialized materials suitable for adaptive wing concepts under the Materials for Optically Responsive Fabricated Structures (MORFS) program. The two-phase program will culminate in the creation of prototype morphing-wing components.

HRL has pioneered the development of variable stiffness composite materials for adaptive applications. Variable, that is, in that these materials can be switched between structurally stiff and readily moldable states. Structures enabled by these materials can in turn adapt their shape to different conditions—leading to, for example, multi-mission capability for air, space, and land assets.

HRL’s variable stiffness composites create such switchable-property materials, using a laminate design of stiff platelets and reversibly shearing shape memory polymers that can be tailored for a change in stiffness over two orders of magnitude (differing by a factor of about 100). This innovation should allow structural materials to be morphed with minimal energy while continuing to support modest structural loads. The focus of the HRL MORFS contract is the development of specialized variable stiffness materials for large deformations, especially shear, which will enable stretchable yet stiff wing skins and also support development of future morphing aero components such as leading edges, fuselage, and jet turbine inlets and exhaust nozzles.

HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California, is a corporate R&D laboratory owned by Boeing and General Motors. HRL provides custom R&D and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC Members, for the U.S. government, and for other commercial entities.

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