Lightweight and high modulus Aluminum - Beryllium composites offer significant performance advantages over traditional aluminum and organic composite materials. Aluminum- Beryllium composites also can be fabricated using conventional aluminum machining, joining, and coating technologies thereby reducing the cost of the final assembly and eliminating any special tooling or non destructive testing(NDT) that is sometimes required when designing and fabricating structures out of fiber reinforced composites.
This paper will present the thermal, physical, and mechanical properties of these composites, as well as providing structural test data for satellite components that have utilized aluminum - Beryllium materials, such as the ORBCOMMsm 1 satellites.
