Award Data

The rare earth elements are commodities of great value that are necessary for many applications of modern technology, including national security (e-g-, missile defense), consumer products (e-g-, smartphones), and renewable energy (e-g-, wind turbines)- It would not be an overstatement to suggest that the United States economy and national security are now dependent on a stable supply of rare eart ...

Space-based systems have become indispensable elements of global communication, militaryreconnaissance and scientific research. The expenses associated with any space launch areenormous and, once in orbit, a system failure can have catastrophic consequences. ExtensiveEarth-based testing is essential to ensure a high success rate. To approximate the demands of space deployment, the Air Force mainta ...

Increasingly stringent exhaust emissions and fuel economy legislation is forcing automotive engine designers to: 1) demand increased pressure ratios from turbocharger compressors to ensure complete fuel combustion, 2) use Exhaust Gas Recirculation for emission reduction, and 3) reduce engine displacement while maintaining or even increasing output power to reduce fuel consumption. These three chan ...

After decades of research into carbon capture methods, we still do not have a favorable option.Current carbon capture technology using aqueous amine scrubbing has found a degree of usage in specific applications, but the drawbacks such as high cost, low capacity, degradation during cycling applications, and its corrosive nature have prevented widespread adoption. One potential solution is the deve ...

Increased productivity of wind turbines and wind plants requires a better understanding of the unsteady blade aerodynamics.This understanding could lead to improved energy capture and reduced blade loading and to a better understanding of wake development and propagation that promises to increase the overall production of a wind plant. Unsteady pressure measurements on the surface of the blades of ...

The technology development for the supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power plant is well underway, and the first pilot plants are now under construction. The new pilot plants are sized for a 10 MW net power output; a good size to gain valuable data for larger utility scale power plants. This is also a very good size for the smaller, distributed power applications. The distributed power application is envis ...

A novel integrated inter-propellant seal and thrust bearing (IPS/TB) for rocket turbopump applications that uses the latest technology developments in seal coatings and additive manufacturing to advance the state-of-the-art. The IPS/TB has low propellant loss, requires little or no purge gas, and no continuous purge when the turbopump is not in operation. The thrust bearing portion can handle all ...

Many contaminated DOE sites are located in arid regions where depth to groundwater is significant and/or contaminants were discharged into a vadose zone through which transport to the groundwater table is dominated by unsteady, unsaturated groundwater flow. The absence of an effective means to monitor vadose zone moisture content in profile has been a persistent impediment to developing and calibr ...

Increased use of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) combined with engine downsizing has pushed automotive turbocharger compressor operation towards and often beyond its efficient and stable operating boundaries. Much of the drive cycle is spent operating the compressor at low flow rates and low pressure ratios, near the compressor surge line, in an area which is usually of low efficiency. Our prelimi ...

ABSTRACT: In order to significantly advance the fidelity and capability of current computational engineering tools, algorithms, techniques, and software which map effectively to emerging massively parallel hardware architectures must be developed. The objective of this project is to investigate and demonstrate specific techniques for enhancing the scalability of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ...