Technical Paper
Optical Black Coating on Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Sandwich Structure with Aluminum Honeycomb Core for Satellites Applications
2022-05-26
2022-26-0029
The composite sandwich structure has been in use in space applications particularly for the satellite body because of its high strength to weight ratio coupled with excellent compressibility strength. In particular, there has been tremendous demand for honeycomb sandwich structures for satellite application in recent years. Currently, a major problem needs to be addressed concerning reflections from satellite structures which leads to capturing in-accurate data of celestial bodies by ground-based astronomy. In the light of the above, this paper focuses on the development of novel optical black coating on Carbon fiber reinforced composite sandwich structures with aluminum honeycomb core. A thin layer of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes black coating was developed on the surfaces of Carbon fiber reinforced composite laminate of the sandwich structure using the Chemical Vapour Deposition technique, to provide a low reflective surface.