Award Data

INNOVATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO SOLVE MANY COMPLEX AIR FORCE PROBLEMS. ADVANCES IN COMPUTING SPEED AND EXISTING SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY ALONE ARE UNLIKELY TO RESULT IN REAL-TIME AERONAUTICAL SYSTEMS CAPABLE OF MEETING THE COMPLEX REQUIREMENTS OF THE AIR FORCE MISSION. RATHER, AN ALTERNATIVE METHODOLOGY SUCH AS ABDUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY, A NEW TECHNOLOGY PRESENTED IN THIS ...

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Nuclear energy is widely held as being the only viable source of abundant, CO2 emissions-free electrical energy meeting projected needs in the near term. The primary challenges associated with emerging Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTR) stem from their extremely high operating temperatures, especially during accident conditions. This environment has necessitated new material systems to be devel ...

Identifying non-cooperative and potentially hostile vehicles is of the utmost importance to the operators of manned and un-manned surveillance aircraft. Utilizing ISAR imagery has been one method for performing target identification by many organizations. However, the complicated motions of the target vehicle and ISAR platform often prevent a clear 2D image from being recovered. Over the course ...

One of the difficulties encountered in EW is the amount of spectrum available to target emitters. Effective surveillance of such wide bandwidths requires one or more EW receivers with high instantaneous bandwidths. The outputs of these receivers are usually channelized to facilitate signal detection and characterization. Current channelizers based on FFT filter banks provide channels equally sp ...

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROPOSED WORK IS TO USE ADVANCED THEORETICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL TECHNIQUES FOR STUDIES OF HYPERSONIC BOUNDARY LAYER STABILITY AND TRANSITION TO TURBULENCE. THESE STUDIES WILL ENHANCE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE TRANSITION PHENOMENA AND THUS HELP PREDICT AND CONTROL TRANSITION WITH A HIGH DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE. TO ACHIEVE OUR GOAL, WE USE LINEAR STABILITY THEORY, SECONDARY INSTABILI ...

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants are an attractive alternative to current coal fired technologies. Industrial Gas Turbines (IGT) engine manufacturers seek to produce engines capable of operating at higher temperatures by using closed loop steam cooling in place of compressor discharge air to raise inlet firing temperatures from approximately 1260oC to around 1427oC. This ...

The space environment poses two significant challenges to spacecraft that have been historically mitigated by coating systems: electrostatic discharge (ESD) and thermal threats. The ESD spacecraft threat is a result of high radiation flux from both solar storms and potential nuclear threats that can cause charge build-up on exterior spacecraft surfaces. While spacecraft systems referenced to stru ...

THE AVAILABILITY OF NEW ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND MATERIALS MAKES POSSIBLE GREATLY SIMPLIFIED, LOWER COST AND MORE RELIABLE AIRCRAFT ANTENNA SYSTEMS. AS AN EXAMPLE, THE ELIMINATION OF THE HF HIGH POWER COUPLER FROM THE PRESENT HF TRANSMITTING SYSTEM CAN RESULT IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN SAVINGS FOR INITIAL ACQUISITION AND INSTALLATION COSTS. IT CAN ALSO RESULT IN ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE GREATER SAVINGS F ...

Aircraft tires experience extreme forces during landing. Since a failure can result in loss of personnel and equipment, the health of aircraft tires is carefully monitored. Currently inspection is done by various methods of manual inspection. This is labor intensive and can only detect certain types of failure. The Air Force needs a system that can quantify the normal and shear forces across the e ...