Award Data

NASA's long range goals of reducing the fuel consumption by 30% and increasing fuel efficiency by 35% can be partially accomplished through increasing engine operation temperatures. As a result, the disk section is desired to operate in increasingly higher temperatures, which will subject it to additional degradation mechanisms of oxidation and hot corrosion. One approach to enhance the tem ...

The liberation of particles induced by rocket plume flow from spacecraft landing on unprepared regolith of the Moon, Mars, and other destinations poses high mission risks for robotic and human exploration activities. This process occurs in a combination of "extreme environments" that combine low gravity, little or no atmosphere, with rocket exhaust gas flow that is supersonic and partially rarefie ...

The NASA Phase I program would develop and demonstrate semiconductor nanomembrane (NM) based flight sensors and arrays on flexible substrates, using SOI (Silicon on Insulator) silicon NM technique in combination with our pioneering HybridsilTM copolymer nanocomposite materials. Specifically, ultrathin nanostructured sensor skins with integrated interconnect elements and electronic devices that can ...

Sentix and Brigham Young University propose the research and development of embedded payload intelligence for inflight optimization of surveillance, reconnaissance, and scientific missions. The current proposal leverages a substantial body of scientific and experimental knowledge derived from the Tactical Seeability™ System developed by Sentix' staff and BYU researchers to provide fully automated ...

Launch vehicles experience extreme acoustic loads during liftoff driven by the interaction of rocket plumes and plume-generated acoustic waves with ground structures. Currently employed predictive capabilities to model the complex turbulent plume physics are too dissipative to accurately resolve the propagation of acoustic waves throughout the launch environment. Higher fidelity liftoff acoustic a ...

Longhurst Engineering, PLC, and Vanderbilt University propose an in-space friction stir welding (FSW) machine for joining complex structural aluminum components. The proposed FSW machine is innovative because it can be deployed by 2 people and be used to weld complex surfaces that extend beyond linear welding applications. The in-space FSW machine is a 3 axis system that can be mounted to work p ...

Advances in structured heterogeneity together with nanomaterials tailoring has made it possible to create thermoelectrics using high temperature, polymer composites. While such thermoelectrics do not have the capability to approach the efficiency of top performing ceramic modules such as BiTe, they do provide two unique aspects of use in energy scavenging: the ability to cover large areas easily, ...

The objective of this proposal is to develop three unique energy harvesting technologies utilizing our existing research strengths that will be of interest and utility to NASA applications and environmental conditions. By developing multiple technologies, NASA will be able to harvest energy from multiple waste energy sources, namely environmental vibrations, thermal energy, and solar flux. These d ...

GaN-based devices are the basis of a variety of modern electronics applications, especially in optoelectronics and high-frequency / high-power electronics. These devices are based on epitaxial films grown on single-crystal wafers. The single-crystal wafer substrates are limiting because of their size, expense, mechanical properties and availability. If one could make GaN-based devices over large a ...

Control of extremely lightweight, long endurance aircraft poses a challenging aeroservoelastic (ASE) problem due to significantly increased flexibility, and aerodynamic, structural, and actuator nonlinearities. To obtain the benefits of increased aerostructural efficiency, the controller needs to trim at a specified optimal shape while minimizing structural fatigue from gust disturbances. Tao Syst ...