Composite Support & Solutions (CSSI) (San Pedro, California) recently won a Tibbetts Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration (Washington, DC) for a 118-ft (36-m) communications tower recently installed by the U.S. Air Force (Washington, DC) at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
The tower was fabricated using Ashland’s (Covington, Kentucky) Derakane† vinyl ester resin, designed for pultrusion. Dr. Clement Hiel, CSSI’s founder and president, received the award at a ceremony at the White House on January 10, 2017.
The prototype tower created by CSSI was made completely of composite materials. It uses fastener-less joining technology where individual components, such as the lattice cross members, “snap” together during the assembly process without the need for metallic bolts.
CSSI says it selected the resin because of its mechanical properties and strong corrosion resistance.
“CSSI’s snap-join approach is an enabling technology for the fabrication of modular composites,” says Joe Fox, director of emerging and external technologies at Ashland. “There is great interest these days in lightweight, easy-to-assemble, easy-to-disassemble materials, and as such, this award-winning technology should spur widespread interest in the automotive, aerospace, and building and construction industries.”
Corrosion is currently the major cost driver in the maintenance of communication towers throughout the Air Force inventory, the company explains. As such, this is fueling the Air Force’s drive to discover more corrosion-resistant materials.
The tower is touted as the first of a new generation of tall, composite towers that are free from corrosion, thus offering a significant reduction in long-term maintenance costs. Additionally, the companies say these towers require much shorter construction times.
The annual Tibbetts Award program is designed to recognize small companies, projects, organizations, and individuals judged to have created a significant economic or social impact through funding from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs of the U.S. National Science Foundation (Arlington, Virginia).
Thousands of companies currently participate in the programs and are eligible for the awards.
For more information on the tower, an Air Force video regarding the project can be watched here.
†Trade name