Award Data

Luna Innovations, teamed with University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth has developed a novel textile technology to provide improved protection for soldiers. Soldiers are exposed to significant risk of injury and death from gun shots and blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Whereas heavy protective armor exists, it is bulky leading to thermal discomfort, additional weight, and difficulty ...

For proper evaluation of fatigue life, it is imperative to have sophisticated analytical and computational tools to analyze crack growth in complex, aerospace structures subjected to severe loading conditions. In this study, the alternating Symmetric Galerkin Boundary Element Method (SGBEM)-Finite Element Method (FEM) technique, which is already a proven and established technique in terms of accur ...

ABSTRACT: The Phase II technical objectives follow directly from the Phase I effort, where all tasks necessary for RF photonic receiver fabrication were demonstrated. The Phase II effort will pursue two major objectives: 1) further development of SEO100 EO polymer based chips, packaged devices and arrays in collaboration with University of Dayton (antenna designs), taking advantage of multiphoto ...

ABSTRACT: Shared Spectrum Company (SSC) partners with Virginia Tech (VT) to develop resilient and agile space communication systems using innovative cognitive radio techniques. The objective of this STTR Phase II project is to develop anti-jamming capability using frequency agility provided by Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) technology for satellite communications (SATCOM) systems. The SSC team foc ...

In Phase I MER demonstrated the superior performance and power-to-weight ratios of the VS-Rotary engine. In Phase II MER will team with the University of Arizona who will provide engine modeling, simulation, and analysis along with advanced precision machining and fabrication. MER will also team with NCE of Tucson to provide test and systems integration development of the engine to the applicatio ...

STTR Phase I Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) technical feasibility demonstration using advanced mathematical techniques and Biologically Inspired Computing Architecture (BICA) concepts is proposed for Phase II prototype development. UQ in complex System of Systems (SoS) M & S environments is emphasized in Phase II. Graph theory based M & S techniques are explored that enhance and facilitate topi ...

Mathematical models of physical and biological systems contain parameters that need to be estimated from measured data. Models with parameters distributed probabilistically require the estimates of a probability measure over the set of admissible parameters. We propose to use frequentist-based approaches for non-parametrically estimating probability measures that describe the distribution of par ...

The objective of this phase II STTR program is twofold: (1) to design, prototype, and commercialize differential on-wafer probes for characterizing devices in the 140220 GHz and 220320 GHz bands, and (2) to engineer the geometry and material of the micromachined probe tip to enable robust, consistent, and low-resistance electrical contact to devices with various contact pad metallizations, includi ...

The area of thin film growth has progressed rapidly, producing many high performance new materials which require accuracy of their atomic composition to perform as expected. Any method to provide real time in situ information about the elemental composition of the growing surface is highly valuable for these new, complicated materials. Utilizing a new instrument design, the Phase I project team ...

ABSTRACT: The overall technical objective of this Phase II effort is to develop computational tools for computing response sensitivities of parametric multi-disciplinary air vehicle systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamic behavior for use in gradient-based optimization, smart sampling, uncertainty quantification, and risk assessment. To this end, the ZONA/MIT team will extend the 2-D ZEUS time-dom ...