Award Data

Applied Physical Sciences and the University of Maryland propose to develop a magnetostrictive transducer that harvests electrical energy from shipboard machinery while simultaneously suppressing vibration to improve the ship’s stealth characteristics and thereby improving the performance of hull mounted sonar systems. Analysis performed during the Base Effort will provide an initial design spec ...

Applied Physical Sciences (APS) and the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory (ARL/PSU) will collaborate in the development of a novel sensor system to measure the low frequency acoustic pressures within a fluid-filled pipe. The proposed concept improves upon the Navy’s current Array Based Acoustic Measurement (ABAM) system for laboratory characterization of full-scale piping ...

The US Army has underscored the importance of developing more effective obscurant material for shielding US soldiers and their equipment from visible, microwave, and infrared observation. Current separation techniques tend to allow the nano-particles to agglomerate at higher density than desired for efficient obscurant devices. ElectroDynamic Applications, Inc. (EDA) in partnership with the Univ ...

FuelCell Energy, Inc., in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, is proposing to develop an innovative fuel processor for person-portable fuel cell power system applications. The system will be designed to reform butanol into a hydrogen-rich stream suitable for use in a low-temperature Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The technical approach will focus on the development of a no ...

The goal of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of new multi-scale models for linking higher order micro-structure descriptions to failure initiation and crack propagation for high cycle fatigue of high strength titanium alloys. This includes new high temperature materials such as the lightweight intermetallic titanium aluminide turbine blades to be used in the lower pressure sections ...

A software tool for fracture evaluation and load deflection prediction of welded aluminum ship structures subjected to impulsive loading will be developed by enhancing and integrating an existing extended finite element method (XFEM) for dynamic fracture of thin shells in Abaqus. The software package will be able to model arbitrary crack paths as dictated by the physics of the scenario, completely ...

Free-play nonlinearity of the control surfaces has a direct impact on aircraft’s dynamic stability characteristics. . It is impossible to design and manufacture a control surface with zero free-play. As control surface free-play increases, tighter limits must be imposed on the aircraft mission capability. Typically, researchers have utilized an oversimplified piecewise-linear torque-rotation rel ...

Michigan Aerospace Corporation proposes to develop an optical MEMS based skin friction sensor specifically designed for hypersonic applications. This instrument will be capable of shear stress resolutions as small as 0.01 Pa, have a high dynamic range, and data rates in excess of 100 Hz. The sensor will be compact and tolerant of the extreme environmental conditions of hypersonic propulsion test f ...

The realization of materials with record mechanical and electrical properties is of paramount importance to the Air Force and other branches of the US Armed Forces. Layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly is capable of producing nanocomposite materials with record properties surpassing those made by many traditional composite preparation techniques. However the process is time consuming and typically yiel ...

The proposed effort leverages the capabilities of data-driven and physics of failure (PoF) based prognostic techniques for electronic systems by combining them within a hybrid approach. Data-driven and PoF-based techniques both have shortcomings; combining them into a hybrid framework allows using their capabilities in a complementary fashion, and thereby providing a reliable way of prognostics an ...