Award Data

In a ship's bilge, water mixes with oils, cleaners, and other contaminants to form a complex wastewater that can be harmful to the marine environment. Naval vessels carry oil/water separators (OWS) to prevent discharging oily wastes overboard. These OWS systems can remove oil from water; however, serious problems arise when other contaminants, e.g. detergents, are present. These ingredients cause ...

Alaska Native Technologies, LLC (ANT) proposes to develop a hull-mounted sonar system that would be integrated into the DD(X) HF Mine Avoidance Bow Sonar processing chain to provide search and identification of small objects in the water column ±60° swaths in front of the vessel. The proposed approach will develop a dual-mode broadband sonar system, capable of operating in either wide-beam or n ...

The proposed project addresses the Navy's need to reduce shipbuilding costs and improve delivery schedules by developing equipment and methods to dramatically improve the welding of plate panel butt joints. Comprising the outer hull, decks, and bulkheads of ships, these panels remain one of the highest-cost welding and inspection operations in shipbuilding. In addition to welding and inspection ...

The current Shuttle LOX loading pumps have several issues requiring high-maintenance and resulting in low reliability. The proposed pump system would mitigate NASA's concerns on reliability in this critical application by virtue of the seal arrangement tested in Phase 1 and the design of each pump to be able to meet the current fill rates in the event of one unit's failure. Phase I focussed on the ...

There is significant need for arrays of miniature sensors that are completely wireless. Ideally these sensors would be built as an integrated device, including sensing elements, computation/signal conditioning, communication, and an on-board power supply. However, they have not been developed due to the difficulty with integrating sensing ele-ments, and the absence of miniature power supplies. ...

Uncooled focal plane arrays have improved dramatically and array sizes of 320x240 elements in a 50-?m pitch are commercially available at affordable cost. Black Forest Engineering proposes to design a readout integrated circuit to allow fabrication of a large format 1024x768 element uncooled sensor. The significant innovation is the use of 0.18 ?m CMOS design rules, high duty cycle signal sampling ...

Boulder Nonlinear Systems, Inc. (BNS) proposes to develop an Electro-Optic Imaging Fourier Transform Spectral Polarimeter (E-O IFTSP). The polarimetric system is based on BNS? patented FTS technology, where ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) polarization switches control device operation. The designed system has simple drive/calibration requirement, and the capability to acquire complete Stokes po ...

In comparison to stereovision, it is well known that structured-light illumination has distinct advantages including the use of only one camera, being significantly less sensitive to background clutter, and not requiring the target object to have nonambiguous features. But because structured-light illumination requires a scanning process, it is inappropriate for humancomputer interfacing where the ...

The proposed innovation is an integrated hybrid solid state electrochemical system providing co-generation of high purity hydrogen and electric power. The embodiment is a physical, chemical and thermal integration of three processes: (1) production high purity hydrogen, (2) electrochemical partial oxidation of hydrocarbon fuel, and (3) power generation by a solid oxide fuel cell. This highly integ ...

Reliable energy systems with high energy density capable of operating at high temperatures, pressures and radiation levels are needed for certain NASA missions. Batteries based on solid-state ceramic oxide composite electrolytes provide the benefit of operation at temperatures up to 550o C. The current high-temperature Li battery technologies use carbonate, chloride and other molten compounds bas ...