Vehicle Analysis Branch, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, United States of America.
Nanotechnology. 2017 Sep 15;28(37):372001. doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/aa7c5a. Epub 2017 Jun 28.
Recent availability of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in quantities and formats amenable to producing macroscale components invites consideration of these materials in space applications where their attractive properties can enable the realization of bold concepts for affordable space exploration. The challenge is to identify relevant systems and quantify the benefits at the systems level. Before significant investment or adoption of CNTs for large aerospace systems can be justified, there must be a plausible path to attain the perceived systems level benefits. This challenging step requires a close collaboration among experts on CNTs and aerospace system communities. This paper provides an overview of a few relevant potential CNTs applications for space systems and the gap that must be overcome for deployment of CNTs. It also provides a simple engineering-level systems analysis approach to quantify the benefits of using CNTs over state of the art material solutions.
最近，大量的碳纳米管（CNTs）以适合生产宏观组件的数量和形式出现，这使得它们在空间应用中受到了关注，在这些应用中，它们吸引人的特性可以实现具有成本效益的太空探索的大胆概念。挑战在于确定相关系统，并在系统层面量化其效益。在为大型航空航天系统进行大量投资或采用 CNTs 之前，必须有一条合理的途径来实现预期的系统效益。这一具有挑战性的步骤需要 CNTs 专家和航空航天系统界之间的密切合作。本文概述了一些与空间系统相关的潜在 CNTs 应用，以及为了部署 CNTs 必须克服的差距。它还提供了一种简单的工程系统分析方法，用于量化使用 CNTs 相对于现有材料解决方案的优势。
