Award Data

Ceramic thermal barrier coating (TBC) on first-stage turbine blades is a vital component of advanced engines under development for future military aircraft, protecting the metal alloy blades from the extreme combustion temperature in these high-performance engines. TBC must be proven as a reliable means to prevent blade failure but current engine development programs are hindered since there is no ...

The Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase I project will address the need for an advanced process control system for improved manufacturing of photovoltaic cells. Thin film silicon photovoltaic modules offer a potentially lower cost alternative to crystalline silicon modules through reduced materials utilization and lower processing temperatures if improvements in conversion ef ...

Radiological sources are in everyday use in numerous industries. Illicit removal of this material from storage could result in construction of a Radiological Dispersal Device or "Dirty Bomb." A pervasive means of securing radiological materials and identifying breaches in security is required. Ideally, existing passive surveillance technology would be used, thereby enabling rapid and cost effectiv ...

Turbine performance increases through increasing turbine inlet gas temperature which can result in reduced turbine durability. Currently the design practices employed by the major OEM’s for cooled turbine airfoils are generally very empirical in nature and can easily miss important physical behavior thereby compromising airfoil durability. This in turn leads to turbine airfoil durability issues ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Affomix would like to commercialize antibody chips to enable researchers to study the human proteome. Currently, researchers use gene chips as a surrogate means to estimate the concentration of the vast variety of pro teins in cells and tissues. But given the choice, most researchers would prefer to study the proteins directly because of the; i) poor correla ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nearly 20 years ago, partially as a response to leveraging the genomics research the NIH invested in the development of gene array technologies. These gene chips' enabled great breakthroughs in our understanding of the underlying biological processes that occur in cells and tissues. These increased understandings have already led to new therapies that affect ...

Air-Lock, Incorporated proposes to design an Enhanced Shoulder Mobility Joint Assembly (ESMJA) that increases dynamic mobility and static sizing capabilities for spacesuited crewmembers (CM) employing a Hard Upper Torso (HUT). The proposed shoulder joint will allow historically fixed Hard Upper Torsos to be sized in-situ by crewmembers of varying anthropometries. The Shoulders will also increase ...

People who work in the marine sciences field often need to analyze the transmission of sound through the ocean. Today, there are more than 60 different propagation loss models available; no single model is the best in all cases. Choosing the appropriate model, as well as the necessary input data to the model can be a daunting task. In this proposal, we discuss an approach to designing a compute ...

Safe and reliable launch and recovery of small offboard assets is important to the concept of operations for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), as they are deployed to complete a wide range of missions. The LCS design specification requires launch and recovery of watercraft to be completed within fifteen minutes in conditions through Sea State 4. These operations are expected to be difficult becaus ...

The propagation of acoustic signatures from vehicles, aircraft, boats and artillery can have a significant impact on military operations. Specifically combatants need to reliably detect enemy acoustic signatures while at the same time concealing their own. The physical propagation environment, including surface and atmospheric parameters, may drastically alter the range at which an emitting object ...