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Narrator: The interstage of the Ares V Launch vehicle is composed of Large Cylindrical structures
known as sandwich panels. Sandwich panels consist of:
Stan Smeltzer: An outer face sheet and an inner face sheet, and then you’ve got some
type of a honeycomb material that looks similar to this that is bonded with an adhesive layer.
Narrator: Large Cylindrical structures are difficult to manufacture as one continuous
piece, so instead they are manufactured as separate sandwich panels called “arc segments”.
Stan Smeltzer: Along the length of this, what we refer to as Longitudinal joints, along
the length of the cylinder we want to join the sections of the shell together.This gives
an overall image how we would join together two sandwich structures.
Narrator: Scientists at NASA’s Langley Research Center have developed a new way to bond these
two segments together. Stan Smeltzer: You have an additional, you
could think of it as an additional splice plate on the inside of each one of those face
sheets that gives you one additional, per face sheet, gives you one additional load
path or adhesive layer in order to carry the load.
Narrator: The Durable Redundant Joint for Composite Sandwich Structures- providing more
reliable joints for the future of launch vehicles.