Adhesive bond behaviour in cryogenic environment (ESA)

This programme is an ESA research programme with KRP-M to establish a better characterisation of adhesives in cryogenic environment.

Background:
Adhesives are widely used in space industry to bond wide range of materials. These adhesives need to maintain a certain level of reliability regarding the environmental factors that have an influence on their properties and thus functionality.
The behaviour of such adhesives under cryogenic conditions needs to be clearly understood and adhesive bonding needs to be verified to increase design reliability and to optimize use of adhesives.
In the view of long-term operation under cryogenic conditions, like for deep space missions (JUICE, [RD01]), L2 missions or other specific missions with cryogenic instruments (similar to past JWST or future missions EUCLID, ATHENA+ [RD02-04]), a model of the adhesive bond properties is needed.

Objectives of the Activity:
The main objective of this work is to gain and to document the original quantitative data from the performed tests. Also characterisation for better prediction of the adhesive behaviour during the long-term exposure to space environment at cryogenic temperatures is part of this objective.
The first step is to perform a literature survey in the field of adhesive materials and adhesive bonds and their performance under the relevant space environment in the temperature range from -269°C (4K) to +80°C (353K), typical for cryogenic instruments.
The second step is to perform a trade-off analysis and to select the most relevant adhesives/substrates combination with the focus on thermal stability and functional performance of the adhesives in space environments at cryogenic temperatures. Materials of interest from adherent’s perspective are: Si, SiC, SiO2, lithium-aluminosilicate glass ceramics, CFRP, GFRP, PEEK, Polyimide, steel, nickel, titanium and aluminium alloys.
The third step is to manufacture samples of the adhesive bonds, to test the representative panels of adhesive bonds under cryogenic conditions and to perform characterisation of the tested materials [RD05-08].
Finally, all obtained data shall be reported in a synoptic format to allow further use in design & material selection phases of future ESA missions as JUICE, EUCLID, ATHENA.