Award Data

Tantalum alloy and silicon nitride gun barrel liners have demonstrated excellent corrosion resistance and wear characteristics for U.S. Army applications. The quality and accuracy of the rifling profile is critical; however, the processes and tooling needed to successfully rifle a gun barrel made from these advanced materials have not been developed due to the difficulty of machining the material ...

The overall goal of this project is to develop an optimized surface texture process in order to maximize the efficiency of rolling/sliding contacts such as gears. Development of this high efficiency, rolling/sliding surface will be guided by Sentient's unique combination of modeling capabilities in the area of mixed-EHL contacts, scuffing, and contact fatigue life prediction. Phase I wi ...

Gearbox seal wear and leakage is a major source of maintenance and downtime for rotorcraft. Sentient will use our advanced tribology modeling technology to evaluate coatings and surface texturing processes for carbon face seals and provide a generalized modeling approach that can replace physical testing of seals. These models will be used to evaluate several rotorcraft seal designs proposed by ou ...

Small manned and unmanned aircraft need advanced propulsion technology to increase mission capabilities and improve reliability. We propose to develop an innovative recuperator technology that can significantly reduce fuel consumption for small gas turbines. Our microchannel recuperators are built using advanced manufacturing techniques that will enable a compact, inexpensive recuperator to signif ...

Sentient will be developing a Smart DigitalClone Sensor for application to rotorcraft drivetrains and other rotating components on high value systems. This technology is enabled by our DigitalClone Ground Truth model, developed through Navy and Army SBIR funding and validated with multiple OEM partners. This technology predicts the behavior of the drivetrain from physics based model and merges thi ...

The advanced properties achieved by modern ceramic matrix composite (CMC) structures depend critically on the surface condition of reinforcement materials used in the manufacturing process. Contamination of reinforcement surfaces can result in brittle phases, low melting point eutectics, or foreign compounds at the critical interface between the reinforcement material and the ceramic matrix, which ...

Sand and dust ingestion can be a significant issue for military aircraft operating in desert environments. For gas-turbine engines, ingested sand erodes engine components such as turbine blades, accelerating engine wear. Currently, no operational systems exist for tracking sand and dust loading in gas-turbine engines. We propose to develop an Optical Particle Counting, Sizing, and Composition (OPC ...

A key technology enabler for next generation EMI shielding applications is low loss, lightweight, flexible, conductive carbon nanotube (CNT) tape. The primary goal of this effort is to determine the optimal geometry for a CNT based EMI shield to provide equivalent shielding effectiveness of cable harnesses and other electronics on the V-22 Osprey, while maintaining a maximum weight savings. The ap ...

Cabling faults can be difficult to identify and locate when a large number of interconnections are used such as in the shipboard Machinery Control System. Ungrounded systems further complicate diagnosis, since signal voltages and currents are small amplitude. It often takes a considerable amount of time to identify and locate the fault, and the equipment capability can be substantially reduced whi ...

The boat transfer, launch, and recovery system proposed will utilize a system of composite moving ways, cradle, and configurable bouyant bladders, controlled by the Advanced Communication and Control System (ACCS) to safely launch, recover, and transfer a variety of boats ranging in size as a minimum, from 7 M to 11 M, with a variety of hull shapes and materials, including unmanned surface vessels ...