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The Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA) University Research Program is a sponsored research program created to drive the next generation of technology for the material handling industry. The industry's end-to-end approach to provide complete solutions to customers that are smarter, more efficient and more effective has fueled this program. The mission is to encourage professors and researchers to apply their knowledge of engineering and technical fields, drawing synergies and collaboration between collegiate research and Toyota Material Handling North America.

NASA is investigating the development of woven carbon fabrics for implementation in deployable aeroshells used in entry, descent and landing. The carbon fabric and the joints between fabric panels need to withstand the harsh aero-thermodynamic and aerodynamic loading environments imparted by high speed entries into planetary atmospheres. One of the key challenges facing the development of deployable aeroshells constructed from carbon cloth is the joining of gore sections to close-out the aeroshell structure and to interface with underlying rigid structural elements. In the deployed state, it is expected that the carbon fabric will be under substantial tensile loads (up to 300 lbf/in), and during hypersonic flight, aerodynamic loading could increase the tensile loading in the fabric to 650 lbf/in. It is essential that the stitching used to join gore sections be capable of maintaining integrity at high temperature (~ 3500 F), which suggests that carbon fiber threads will be needed. It is also important that multilayer fabrics can be stitched in incremental layers, so that failure of the top layer does not compromise the entire stack. However, stitching with carbon thread is challenging, as the handling and stress involved in the stitching process tends to adversely affect its structural properties, leading to low seam strength.