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Novel reparation method for polymethyl methacrylate optical windows of aircrafts damaged by service environment

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Abstract

The optical properties of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) with varying degrees of artificial scratches have been studied with the aim of reproducing the change of visibility of an aircraft’s PMMA optical windows after being damaged in their service environment. A novel maintenance method that can perfectly restore the optical property of PMMA has been identified and employed in the repair of the scratches that are formed on the surface of PMMA. This convenient and low-cost method entails polishing PMMA with different types of sandpaper to remove the scratches, and then spin-coating the repair solution in order to restore the optical properties of PMMA. The effect of this repair mechanism and parameters of the repair process were studied. The results indicated that the optical performance of PMMA is closely related to the mesh size of sandpaper, and improper parameter selection destroys the general effect of the repair. When the number of sandpaper mesh is low, the size of the abrasive particle is relatively larger, which can cause deeper friction marks on the surface of PMMA optical windows. Surface treatment using 5000 mesh sandpaper lowers surface roughness (Ra=0.566 nm), and optical transmittance in visible range can be restored to more than 88%.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Composite Materials and Structures, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Fei Xia, Bing Dai, Gang Gao, ZhenHuai Yang, WenXin Cao, LiangGe Xu, FangJuan Geng, ZiCheng Song, Victor Ralchenko & JiaQi Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Micro-systems and Micro-structures Manufacturing, Ministry of Education, Harbin, 150001, China

    JiaQi Zhu

  3. Center of Analysis Measurement, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Lei Yang

  4. General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119991, Russia

    Victor Ralchenko

Authors
  1. Fei Xia
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  2. Lei Yang
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  3. Bing Dai
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  4. Gang Gao
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  5. ZhenHuai Yang
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  6. WenXin Cao
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  7. LiangGe Xu
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  8. FangJuan Geng
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  9. ZiCheng Song
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  10. Victor Ralchenko
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  11. JiaQi Zhu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to JiaQi Zhu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Grant No. 51625201), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFE0201600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51702066), the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Micro-systems and Micro-structures Manufacturing, Ministry of Education (Grant No. 2016KM001), and the Major State Basic Search Program (Grant No. 2014CB46505)

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Xia, F., Yang, L., Dai, B. et al. Novel reparation method for polymethyl methacrylate optical windows of aircrafts damaged by service environment. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 63, 1585–1590 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-020-1646-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-020-1646-9

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