Award Data

Terrorist use of radioactive nuclear materials via nuclear and/or radiological dispersion devices (dirty bombs) is a serious threat. Therefore, it is crucial to detect proliferation of nuclear material. Critical challenges include: (a) high sensitivity detection of signature emissions from radioactive isotopes, and (b) cost-effectiveness for deployment of sensor networks across large storage facil ...

Electronically dimmable materials with sufficiently strong visible transmission shift, color neutrality, durability and switching speeds have eluded development since the search began nearly half a century ago. We demonstrate the potential for dynamic optical dimming using plasmonic nanostructures with electrodynamic simulations of promising plasmonic metamaterial architectures. In order to achiev ...

The machine learning and artificial intelligence community has recently garnered much attention for ground breaking performance of novel neural network architectures for self-driving cars. One of the machine learning methods used in self-driving cars is semantic segmentation. In this fashion each pixel in an image is label with a class, allowing for contour-based image segmentation which is differ ...

Modern electronic warfare (EW) employs agile, dynamic, convert waveforms. It has become challenging for legacy electronic intelligence (ELINT) receivers to intercept such waveforms. To cover a wide frequency band, many frequencies must be scanned rapidly. Therefore, the probability of intercepting by the super heterodyne receiver is limited by the intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth and tuning s ...

hazardous chemicals such as JP8, chromium, and byproducts of led-free frangible ammunition and to hazardous environments. Of the many dangers Airmen face, the hypoxia-like unexplained physiological events pilots face are some of the most dangerous and elusive. Current wearable sensors cannot decouple complex, interdependent in vivo response. We propose to develop (design, fabricate, test, and demo ...

The proposed effort aims to deliver a novel process model for carbon-carbon manufacturing to determine thermo-mechanical properties of these materials and their components, thereby enabling a faster cycle for material development for hypersonic platforms. The proposed solution consists of (1) requirement and functionality analyses, (2) a six-level model representing the key steps of the manufactur ...

Quantum computer technology is so critical and strategic that the Air Force Research Laboratory is itself working on a quantum bit focused on the trapped ytterbium (Yb+) ion. The current technology based on entangling electrons, photons, or ions are challenging to put together in multiple qubits. To make a qubit stable, it is essential to protect it from outside interferences that can disrupt the ...

Current fielded sensor protection is limited to fixed wavelength filters. Broadband filters designed to circumvent multi-wavelength laser threats are plagued by low transmittance, which degrades the sensitivity and performance of the sensor. Future warfighter threats include frequency agile lasers and thus have the potential of defeating fixed filters. Self-activating (passive) devices where prote ...

Oceanit proposes to first is to use radiative transfer techniques pioneered for astrophysics, instead of Monte Carlo simulation. In particular, we used a variant of the Bohm-Vitense method, which expresses the solution as a weighted sum of basis functions, allowing us to convert the radiative transfer equation into a set of linear equations that we can solve with standard linear algebra methods. S ...

High-pressure turbulent combustion occurs in many combustion devices critical to the Air Force. Notwithstanding significant progress in computational modeling of these devices; several challenges have remained. A fundamental challenge is identification of reaction pathways and reactions in small molecule foundational chemical kinetics requiring improvements under these high-pressure turbulent cond ...