Lightweight garage #19 Engine @ KEVESOL® in the aerospace industry @ ALINA

Published on

28.04.2022

©IWE Greifswald Model of ALINA at the ILA 2016 with KEVESOL^®-panels

The vehicle

This garage houses the autonomous landing and navigation module from PTS, also known as ALINA for short. This is a lunar module for transporting payloads of up to 100 kg. However, the module itself cannot be launched directly from Earth, but requires a launch rocket to reach Earth orbit. The concept is designed to support all common rocket models, such as the Falcon 9. Once in Earth orbit, ALINA can cover the 380,000 km to the moon itself and land on the moon.

The technology

In the aerospace sector, particular attention is paid to lightweight construction. The ALINA also follows a lightweight construction concept. A special composite material is used for the outer components, which serve to protect the internal technology and payload, among other things. The material used is KEVESOL^®a honeycomb sandwich material made from aluminum. Honeycomb describes the structure and composition of the filling material between the outer aluminum sheets as hexagonal honeycombs. A particularly low weight per unit area of approx. four kilograms per square meter, with 0.5 mm thick cover layers, is just one of the advantages that KEVESOL^® entails.

Comparatively very good mechanical properties and, in particular, outstanding peel strength add to the advantages. These properties are due to the design and operating principle of the sandwich structures. When a force is applied, the forces are transferred to the inner structure via the cover layers and distributed over the entire surface. The inner structures often have good energy-absorbing properties and simultaneously increase the area moment of inertia due to the height of the structure, which explains the high bending stiffness of the sandwich structure. With the help of this material, it should be possible to reduce the weight and costs of ALINA. Possible transportation goods for ALINA could be, for example, lunar rovers or other scientific equipment.

The lightweight aspect

The aerospace industry is not the only one to recognize the advantages of lightweight sandwich structures. They are also increasingly being considered in the rail vehicle and automotive industries. Alongside other sandwich structures, KEVESOL^® KEVESOL is particularly notable for its high peel strength, which is widely recognized as a weak point of sandwich structures. Due to the variable moldability and the possibility of various inserts in the KEVESOL^® panels, these show a particularly high potential for future applications.

©IWE Greifswald ALINA with KEVESOL highlighted in color^®-Panels

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