3D printed ceramics make supersonic aircraft covers

With heat resistance up to 1,700 degrees Celsius, 3D printing ceramics are the perfect material for making new generation supersonic planes, missiles and spacecraft.

According to Discovery News, US scientists apply 3D printers to create arbitrary ceramic parts with super-light characteristics, high durability, good insulation and less cracks. This result helped usher in a new generation of body-jet or ceramic-based jets that could fly at supersonic speeds from New York to Tokyo in a few hours.

3D printing ceramic withstands temperature of 1,700 degrees C. (Photo: yibana).

"If you go about 10 times faster than the speed of air in the air, any medium will heat up due to friction," Tobias Schaedler, senior researcher at HRL Laboratory in Malibu, California, USA , said. "If we want to build a vehicle that moves at supersonic speeds, its shell must be made entirely of insulating ceramic ."

Making details from ceramic materials is more difficult than plastic and metal because they cannot be molded or machined easily. According to research results published in Science magazine on January 1, Schaedler and colleagues invented a plastic formula that can print 3D into details with any shape and size.

"We create a kind of ceramic precursor that can be printed as a polymer, after sintering, this polymer material will turn into ceramic," Schaedler explained. "There are some shrinkages that occur when sintering, but it is uniform, so it's easy to predict the design shape."

The shuttle uses old generation ceramic materials underneath the crust to insulate when returning to the atmosphere but the ceramic layer is fragile and often replaced.(Photo: NASA).

Plastic details after printing will be sintered, turning into solid ceramic with high durability. This ceramic material is able to withstand temperatures up to 1,700 degrees Celsius and 10 times more durable than other similar materials.

In more important applications, the new method allows the production of many special small parts of satellites and missiles, which are resistant to heat generated during air friction at high speeds, as well as High temperature generated by exhaust gas during takeoff.

"This approach brings us closer to the goal of successfully making lighter, more durable materials, in more complex shapes , " said Stefanie Tompkins, representative of the Agency for Advanced Defense Projects. US Department of Defense (DARPA), commented.