Characterization of New TPS Resins

Ablative thermal protection systems are commonly used as protection from the intense heat during re-entry of a space vehicle and have been used successfully on many missions including Stardust and Mars Science Laboratory both of which used PICA a phenolic based ablator. Historically, phenolic resin has served as the ablative polymer for many TPS systems. However, it has limitations in both processing and properties such as char yield, glass transition temperature and char stability. Therefore alternative high performance polymers are being considered such as: cyanate ester resin, polyimide, polybenzoxazine (PBZ), and polyimidazole (PBI).Thermal and mechanical properties of these four resin systems were characterized and compared with phenolic resin.