Award Data

Fires in dry bays of military aircraft present a significant hazard that must be addressed with advanced fire suppression systems. The USAF is interested in concepts that do not require power or active sensing of fire for proper operation. ADA Technologies, Inc. has been developing fine water mist fire suppression technology for the past 10 years, and proposes a solution for this problem that inco ...

Research is proposed for the development and implementation of state of the art, reduced order nonlinear aeroelastic models for multidisciplinary/multi-fidelity optimization problems. Highly efficient and accurate aeroelastic simulation tools will be constructed based upon the mathematical formalism of optimal prediction theory and a novel implementation of a filtered harmonic balance solution met ...

Under sponsorship of the Air Force SBIR program, the small business Advanced Fuel Research, Inc. (AFR) is developing an innovative sensor system to map the surface temperature of thermal barrier coated (TBC) turbine blades during operational testing of advanced military jet engines. Temperature mapping is a high priority capability needed to prove ceramic coatings as a reliable means to prevent bl ...

Gas turbine engine development requires sensors to measure gas path properties in engines during ground testing.  The data collected with these sensors are critical to the development of advanced engines with high performance, high efficiency, and low emissions.  While instrumentation is available to measure most of the important gas path properties, the drive toward higher turbine inlet tempera ...

The drumbeat for higher efficiency gas turbine engines is driving new designs capable of operating at higher temperatures and pressure ratios, in fewer stages, and with higher airfoil loads.   These conditions pose a great challenge for turbomachinery designers.  They must now accurately predict airfoil metal temperatures to design effective cooling schemes that counter the high external gas te ...

There is a need to monitor the structural health of aerospace components operating in extreme temperatures ranges (e.g. -60 to +300C) and with high accelerations. Ideally the sensors employed for this task should be passive (i.e. not powered through batteries), permanently placed on the critical components and transmit the relevant data to a remote data processing center wirelessly.  Albido is pr ...

Polymers in space are subjected to various threats including hyperthermal oxygen atoms, UV and VUV photons, and ions.  These threats can degrade the polymer and lead to static charge accumulation.  This Phase II proposal will build on the Phase I work which demonstrated that inorganic films grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) can protect polymers such as Kapton, Teflon and PMMA.  Al2O3 ALD f ...

Pursuits of highly efficient and reliable solar cells place high demands on the materials and processes used in their fabrication. For extraterrestrial cells, specific efficiency is of utmost importance, and thus the ability to reduce module weight without impacting efficiency is highly desirable. Flexible solar cells are a new direction in solar cell technology and robust substrates are required. ...

Aqwest proposes to develop an advanced thermal management for cooling of electronic components using a variable conductance heat sink (VCHS) offering unparalleled capabilities in high-heat flux handling and temperature control. The project will produce a cooling system with the following benefits to wide band gap amplifiers and high-power laser diodes (HPLD): 1) Heat flux handling > 1200 W/cm2 2) ...

Military network environments will be subject to both internal and external threats for the foreseeable future. Internal threats to cyber networks from U.S. personnel receive little attention in comparison to external threats; yet, the consequences can be even more devastating. The lack of tools for understanding insider threat, analyzing risk mitigation alternatives, and communicating results e ...