Award Data

Material characterization and volume imaging of as-produced solid propellant grains are important issues in the design process of solid rocket motors. In particular, it is critical that the ballistician have tools that will enable him/her to understand any defects or morphological changes in a grain that might be caused by the manufacturing process, as well as the determination of bulk thermomecha ...

The objective of this proposal is to develop enabling technology for the production of bulk scintillating nanocomposites that have gamma radiation detection properties of single crystal NaI but with the manufacturability of plastic scintillators. These performance criteria may be met by developing nanoparticle polymer composites with ultra-high nanoparticle loadings. These ‘ultra-composites’ w ...

Turnkey Design Services, LLC of Blue Island, IL proposes to create a small lightweight “smart” fuel pump for unmanned vehicles using a small very efficient brushless motor with integrated controls and an internally-generated rotor pump. The overall size of the motor driven pump including electronics is about 2.5 ” long x 1” diameter. The proposed pump provides flow metering capability by a ...

Kinetic BEI and Beginning Technologies Inc. have designed a very compact and simple micro-injection pump. This SBIR Phase I will provide the opportunity to further advance this emerging technology for use on several current miniature/micro engine development programs for the military and commercial worlds. The pump was designed to provide high pressure supply to common rail type injectors on a 1 ...

Charged fuel injection accelerates the fuel vaporization process to the point that heavy fuels can be efficiently combusted at significantly reduced ambient air temperatures and pressures in engines that range in horsepower from below 5 to around 200. Phase I will focus on analytically and experimentally demonstrating charged fuel injection within an off-the-shelf 8.5 hp Lombardini 6LD 400 direc ...

Kinetic BEI intends to design, build and test MicroJectors during this SBIR Phase I contract. A first generation prototype of the MicroJector currently exists. This SBIR would provide the opportunity to expand on previous work, fine-tuning the mechanical design of the miniature fuel injection system and bench testing second-generation prototypes. During this effort, spray patterns will be evalua ...

Proposed is the preliminary design of an extremely small turbocharger sized for an 8 to 12 hp class engine. The entire unit will weigh roughly 240 grams. Design will incorporate pre-existing compressor and turbine designs for which hardware currently exists for Phase II test. Phase I will include design, fab and test of a 450,000 rpm, high durability, low-cost bearing system. Risk is medium to ...

In this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, a high throughput chemical micropropulsion system for nano- and microsatellites will be developed. The microthruster will use an all-ceramic construction to withstand the high temperatures associated with the high Isp, clean burning, high-energy-density, non-toxic liquid monopropellant. The developed high throughput propulsion system wil ...

The objective of this proposal is to develop a dynamically reconfigurable subaperature array architecture to achieve enhanced endo-clutter and interference suppression and realize target detection and identification. In addition, protection against mainbeam jamming is also addressed here using distributed Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) sensor technology. Generally, array manifold errors mak ...

The present lithium-ion battery technology needs further improvement with respect to specific energy (Wh/kg) and energy density (Wh/l) for military, aerospace, and transportation applications. The improvement in specific energy and energy density can be achieved by choosing (i) an electrochemical couple having high specific capacity of individual electrode materials and/or (ii) an electrochemical ...