Successful commercialization of oil shale will involve largescale underground mining or retorting, and will require support technology to evaluate the integrity of support pillars, mine roof rock, and other large structures in oil shale. in order to eliminate time consuming and obtrusive evaluation… More

A real-time data processing enhancement to existing saft inspection systems is proposed through the development of a special purpose residue-number-system (rns) processor. because of the regularity in the architecture and clocking of rns arithmetic elements, a high degree of computational parallism… More

Ultrasonic imaging systems of various types are presently under development for nondestructive testing. all of them require a two-dimensional aperture to be scanned by a transducer, or filled with multiple transducers. a particularly interesting system is one based on holographic principles. in many… More

This proposer's research is intended to apply a technology developed for nondestructive testing of b-scan ultrasonic imaging. this technology, linear ultrasonic holography, promises to improve the lateral resolution of b-scan images significantly. it depends heavily on the recent introduction of… More

A significant impact on the design of engineered systems is the ability to perform reliable nondestructive evaluation onthe manufactured components. nondestructive evaluation (nde) of parts and assemblies can be simulated from solid model representations of the parts and assemblies. designers may… More

Pulsed laser holography has been shown to be a superb tool for capturing and analyzing dynamic particle fields. however, commercially available holographic cameras are large, heavy, bulky, and expensive. preliminary work by theauthor has shown that it is possible to build a small holocamera… More

A new method for achieving visualization of flaws in nonferrous conductors such as aluminum is proposed. less direct visualization techniques, including eddy current and dye penetrant techniques, already exit. however, these methods are time consuming and require considerable support and… More

Large-grain materials are difficult to inspect with conventional ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation (nde) methods. this is particularly true of the cen- trifugally cast stainless steel used for coolant piping in pressurized water reactors (pwr). reduced test frequencies must be used to penetrate… More

The phase i research is intendedto demonstrate the basic feasibility of constructing and optimizing a new magneto-optic 'sandwich' device intended for direct visualization of flawsin ferrous materials (steel) in a marine environment. the device is based in the property of some magneto-optic… More

Weld quality and weld inspection are major concerns of pipeline construction. present inspection methodology requires significant time delays between welding and acceptance of the weld. the cost of these delays is enormous considering that pipeline costs run upwards of $10 6/mile at rates of… More

Thick fiber-reinforced composites will be obtained and evaluated using an advanced ultrasonic inspection method to characterize the material for cracks and delaminations, porosity and density variations. the advanced ultrasonic inspection method is based upon synthetic pulse technology, which was… More

There are currently available many microcomputer-based hazard response models for calculating concentrations of hazardous chemicals in the atmosphere. the uncertainties associated with these models are not well-known and they have not been adequately evaluated and compared using statistical… More

This project is directed at advanced methods for detecting and locating small metallic components of the type contained in selected ordnance. the work calls for substantial increases in sensitivity over that currently provided by conventional electromagnetic testers and metal detectors. innovative… More

The u.s. army has a need to estimate whether differences are significant in smoke/obscurant effectiveness for a single munition from one time to another or for two munitions under similar conditions. the proposed research will develop a framework for accounting for the influence of meteorological… More

Currently available toxic vapor dispersion models at air force facilities do not adequately include the effects of structures on the rate of dispersion. some relevant models and data sets are available in the literature as a result of research by other organizations. the literature will be reviewed… More

The objective of the phase i research is to determine the technical feasibility of the development of a long range radioactive plume transport model/code for the nrc. this code would be used to simulate the movement, dispersion, decay, and deposition of radionuclides released from severe nuclear… More

In most u.s. army atmospheric dispersion models, the pasquill methodology is used to estimate stability in the boundary layer. as a result, there are discontinuities in calculated dispersion among the six stability classes. furthermore, corrections for surface conditions (i.e., fields, urban areas,… More

There is a growing need for a multispectral smoke dispersion model that can rapidly evaluate concentrations of diffusing obscurant clouds using the modest resources of a personal computer. as different size smoke particles differ in their light scattering properties and their surface deposition… More