Advanced Materials Group

Company Background

Advanced Materials Group (AdMaG) are the industry leaders in the supply of specialist plastics, composites, and aerogels. They operate from locations throughout the solar system, namely Liberty, Arial and Aresam, where they utilise the microgravity environment to provide high quality products with fewer imperfections that those made in gravitational environments due to the absence of  density and convection based imperfections.

Company Product Overview

AdMaG produces and distributes a number of standard unformed bulk (10 mm sheets) materials outlined below:
  •  PMMA Equivalent - σmax = 70 MPa. Maximum working temperature = 675K. Density = 1.19 g/cm3. Transmittance = 92%.
  • Carbon-Nanotube Reinforced Polycarbonate - σmax = 130 MPa. Maximum working temperature = 500K. Density = 1.24 g/cm3. Transmittance = 30%.
  • Silica Aerogels - Density = 0.1 g/cm3. Thermal Conductivity = 0.013 W/mK.
  • Carbon Aerogels - Density = 0.22 g/cm3. Thermal Conductivity = 0.024 W/mK. Electrical Conductance = 50 S/cm.
  • Alumina Aerogels - Density = 0.35 g/cm3. Thermal Conductivity = 0.015 W/mK. This Aerogel is increasinly being used as filler material in Whipple shields.
  • Flusshalt-X - this is a polymer-based radiation shielding developed by Kepler Automation. This polymer has five time the linear attenuation coefficinet of 304 Stainless Steel across the full electromagnetic spectrum. Density = 1.2 g/cm3.

AdMaG is also able to provide specialist orders of formed materials to customer specifications across the full range of plastic, composite and aerogel materials, not just the materials outlined above. This comes at an additional cost for the material sourcing and the manufacturing costs, but can achieve all manufacturable geometries. Customers should propose their prefered manufacturing method. 

Product Pricing

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Product Price per unit Additional Information
PMMA Equivalent $0.85 per kg
Carbon-Nanotube Reinforced Polycarbonate $1.60 per kg
Silica Aerogels $2000 per kg
Carbon Aerogels $2000 per kg
Alumina Aerogels $2000 per kg
Flusshalt X $70 per kg

Relevant Physics for Product

The maximum stress within the window pane can be calculated using the following equation for square windows: σmax = (Δp L2) / (2 t2) where Δp is the pressure difference in Pa, L is the span in m, t is the thickness in m, and σmax is the maximum allowable tensile stress in the material, 290.1 MPa. For circular windows, the equation is σmax = (3Δp D2) / (4 t2) where D is the diameter in m. Windows may be ordered in other shapes and when justifying the thickness for these, you can approximate the window as square and replace L2 by multiplying the longest dimension of the window by its longest perpendicular component.

The equations outlined above have been obtained using Kirchhoff Plate Bending Theory for plates with clamped edges under uniform pressure loads (typically a second or third year topic at university). If you want to read up about this theory and see the derivation for circular plates, please look at this Wikipedia page.

Corporate Links

In return for licensing their Flusshalt-X radiation shielding material to AdMaG, Kepler Automation are able to claim significant discounts on it and other products manufactured by AdMaG. For Foundation Society contracts, this discount is limited to 20%.

This webpage refers to a fictional company which is part of the UK Space Design Competition. No information presented here or implied herefrom should be regarded as factual. Any similarities with real events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.