Contact: Bob Ratliff
In a Mississippi shipbuilding yard, the future of Navy destroyers may be taking shape.
Funded by Congress, a joint industry-university consortium recently began construction at Pascagoula's Ingalls Shipbuilding of the first all-composite helicopter hangar for a ship. The composite structure is designed to house helicopters on an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.
Headed by Mississippi State, a multi-state university team is helping test composites--plastics and other non-metals--as a lightweight construction material capable of avoiding radar detection. The universities of Mississippi, Southern Mississippi, New Orleans, and Clemson University also are involved in the effort.
"The composite helicopter hangar is an advanced technology development project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research," said principal investigator Michael S. Mazzola of MSU. "The objective is to demonstrate an affordable helicopter hanger with enhanced war-fighting capability by integrating advanced materials and other features."
If approved for installation, the hangar would be "the largest and most complex composite deckhouse structure on a Navy combat ship," said Mazzola, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said the project indicates that Mississippi is well positioned to become a national leader in composite manufacturing.
MSU's Engineering Research Center and Raspet Flight Research Laboratory, USM's Polymer Science Institute and the School of Engineering at Ole Miss "have nationally recognized research programs that span the entire spectrum of the composite industry," Lott said.
National companies "have seen our university composite research programs and started new business opportunities in Mississippi to take advantage of those research investments," he added.
In addition to sponsorship by the Office of Naval Research, the composite hangar project also is receiving technical support from the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Carderock Division in Maryland and Dahlgren Division in Virginia. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, Calif., also is participating.
Industry partners working with Ingalls on the construction of the composite structure include the Bath Iron Works in Maine and Gulfport's Seemann Composites Inc.