Shipboard structures employing composites typically use glass/vinyl ester manufactured with vacuum assisted RTM. This composite system offers reduced weight, no corrosion and improved signature performance but lacks the fire performance characteristics required for shipboard use. Phenolic resins provide outstanding fire performance but are difficult to process and offer fewer structural properties. No existing single resin system can meet all the requirements in a given application for Navel shipboard structures. The co-injection resin transfer molding (CIRTM) process allows two discrete resins to be injected simultaneously into a preform. Using CIRTM a phenolic surface layer may be incorporated with a vinyl ester resin in a single composite part improving fire performance while maintaining the cost, processing and structural advantages of vinyl ester. This program demonstrated the benefits of the CIRTM process and that it can be scaled up for realistic Naval structural applications.

Instrumentation for measuring the X-ray diffraction pattern of optically excited crystals is described. The experiment uses a high-power (~1 W) laser and a single-crystal diffractometer equipped with a helium cryostat ( T < 70 K). The laser beam is modulated by a mechanical chopper and the diffraction signal gated in synchronization with the chopper phase. The modulation method is capable of observing small changes (down to about 0.01%) in the structure factors upon excitation of a fraction of the molecules in the crystal, given adequate counting statistics. The technique can be used for relatively long lived electronic excited states ( τ ≃ 0.1–10 ms). The optical system is also suitable for time-resolved measurements using the time structure of synchrotron radiation.

A set of cylindrical vacuum chambers made of a carbonaceous composite material coated with a thin layer of aluminium is described. Its performance with a Displex cryostat and Mo Kα radiation has been tested.