ATP FOCUSED PROGRAM:

                       Manufacturing Composite Structures

                       FY 1994 NIST Funding: $25 million
                  Total FY 1994-98 NIST Funding: $160 million

Potential for U.S. Economic Benefit

     Doing more with less is a formula for good business. It also
     expresses the promise of composite materials whose engineering
     performance can exceed that of traditional materials while reducing
     the weight, maintenance expenses, and operating costs of cars,
     planes, missiles, spacecraft, bridges, offshore oil rigs, and other
     structures. So far, however, the driving force to develop advanced
     composites which typically combine the lightness of a polymer with
     the stiffness and strength of glass or ceramic reinforcing fibers
     has been the additional performance that the materials allow and
     not their cost of manufacture.

     A new five-year program in Manufacturing Composite Structures aims
     to help U.S. companies develop the technical capability for
     producing vast amounts of affordable high-performance composites
     for large-scale commercial applications. With that capability in
     place after five years, new annual markets in the range of tens of
     billions of dollars could begin opening to U.S. companies,
     according to industry projections. For example, a team of companies
     projects that 184 million pounds (83 million kilograms) of
     composites could be introduced in deep-sea drilling platforms
     totaling $2.9 billion over the next 10 years. If composites
     captured even 5 percent of the $130 billion needed to bring 230,000
     of the nation's bridges up to structural and functional snuff, the
     market would total over $6 billion. Auto manufacturers estimate
     that composites orders in the $20 billion range are possible, in
     this case for building lighter weight vehicles that consume less
     fuel. The program's budget will begin with $25 million in FY 1994
     with a total of $160 million during the program's five years.

Technology Challenge

     Methods of manufacturing composites now are too labor intensive or
     too product specific to work smoothly in larger volume commercial
     settings such as auto manufacturing and bridge building. The new
     five-year ATP program proposes to turn the table on that situation.
     By the end of the program, participants should be able to
     demonstrate cost-effective manufacturing processes for making large
     composite structures for several classes of applications and be in
     a position to develop and adapt those processes for
     commercial-scale production.

     Among the major technical goals is the automation of processes for
     creating complicated three-dimensional arrangements and weaves of
     the reinforcing fibers. Another goal is to integrate design and
     simulation tools for predicting the properties and reliability of
     the composites during their service lifetimes. Also, the program
     agenda emphasizes development of sensor systems, some built
     directly into the composite structures where they will monitor the
     health of the composites throughout their manufacturing phases and
     lifetimes. These can help certify the materials  reliability for
     engineers and builders who are more familiar and comfortable with
     traditional materials. These and other advances also should lower
     the cost of designing with composites since fewer prototypes will
     have to be built and tested.

Industry Commitment

     A broad cross section of materials suppliers, component
     manufacturers, and end users who would design lighter and more
     efficient cars and buses, more capable and durable bridges, and
     cheaper oil-drilling platforms that could open less accessible oil
     sources under deeper waters have helped articulate the new ATP
     program and have expressed willingness to share its cost. All of
     the goals and benchmarks for this program were derived from
     industry-produced  white papers  and meetings with representatives
     from the composites R&D community.

Significance of ATP Funds

     The ATP focused program is the means to trigger expansion of
     advanced composites beyond military applications and small
     commercial niches, such as sports equipment, into much larger
     commercial markets. In FY 1994, $207 million of composites research
     will be funded from nine different federal sources, but only a
     small portion is for technology development aimed at commercial
     markets. Most federal support, which accounts for more than half of
     all R&D in advanced polymer matrix composites, focuses on aerospace
     and military structures. That, together with the inherent risk of
     developing new materials in markets where traditional materials
     have been used for decades, has kept private investment in
     non-military applications to a trickle. Moreover, efforts to build
     new markets for composites have been checked by industrial
     downsizing and rollbacks in research that would yield important
     information about the composites  performance encouraging them to
     select traditional materials over new ones. The ATP effort will
     enable U.S. industry to develop advanced composites whose
     technological advantages have been demonstrated well in military
     and aerospace applications, into a sound and expansive business for
     known commercial markets where the cost of these materials has kept
     them out of reach.

April 1994