Award Data

78365 Free-surface, flowing, liquid-metal cooling systems are an option for the removal of heat from energy-producing fusion devices. However, these free flowing liquid films are difficult to direct and contain because of their interactions with the high energy plasma and the powerful magnetic fields present in these machines. This project will develop a, capillary assisted, thin flowing, lithi ...

75554B Fuel cells are an efficient, combustion-less, virtually pollution-free source of power. In particular, Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells are ideal for a number of applications, due to their ¿quick¿ warm-up characteristics. However, these fuel cells contain some inherent inefficiencies, which results in waste heat that must be removed rapidly via a coolant ¿ currently, either D ...

The feasibility of producing robust miniaturized, broadly tunable mm-wave bandpass filters for space applications is discussed. Current work by the authors has demonstrated very high-Q, broadly tunable "Octave+T" resonators in the 1.2 Ghz to 5.0 Ghz frequency ranges. These resonators have been designed using low-risk, conventional fabrication techniques that are ideally suited to making mm- to cm- ...

78188S Ultra-Supercritical (USC) coal-fired power plants are being designed to meet the Vision 21 goals of fuel efficiency and environmental emission standards. The material systems for these plants will be required to limit degradation occuring from corrosion at elevated temperatures. Due to higher operational temperatures in USC plants (up to 750 C), the environments encountered in these plant ...

Ribbon Mills and its subcontractor Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC) propose a Phase II program, to continue the research into advanced complex performs concepts utilizing weaving technology applied to state-of-the-art composites to enhance the revolutionary low frequency, conformal load-bearing antenna structures (CLAS) foliage penetration ground/air moving target indicator (FOPEN GMTI/AMTI) rad ...

This Phase I STTR will demonstrate the feasibility of near-infrared (near-IR) excited surface-enhanced Raman optical activity (SEROA) as a sensitive new probe of biological molecules and trace chiral materials. The research will use nanoshells as fabricated and optimized at Rice University as a newly developed, tunable, highly-uniform, SERS substrates for chiral molecules and bio-molecules. The ...

Blade Diagnostics Corporation proposes to study the feasibility of developing a field mistuning tool and an associated approach for managing the mistuning problem in integrally bladed rotors (IBRs). The field inspection tool will determine the frequencies of individual blades in IBRs using the methods developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The tool will be a faster, automated version of ...

We propose to develop advanced antenna pattern prediction software using fast algorithm for integral equation. The software will be developed from first principle integral equation solver accelerated by the multi-level fast multipole algorithm. Material effects will be included using volume integral equation and a newly developed thin dielectric sheet model. The model entails full physics, a ...

Systems Development (SD) processes demonstrate a need for improvement, particularly to increase the frequency with which systems succeed in real world settings. Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) offers numerous principles, methods, and tools that are well-suited to addressing areas in which SD is currently most weak (e.g., handling complexity and supporting the design phase). In response to thi ...

Years of research in human behavior modeling have yielded a wide array of cognitive architectures. The most vital challenges confronting the field are to find an economical way to leverage the strengths of each of the multiple existing architectures and to facilitate and simplify the manner in which new cognitive models are produced, as well as to reduce the time entailed in their production. Req ...