Award Data

Active imaging systems are used in degraded visual environments, like those found in marine fog and other areas with a high level of attenuation and scattering from obscurants like rain, smoke and dust. These systems are still limited in range and resolution. SA Photonics is taking advantage of new eyesafe, hybrid fiber-bulk laser technology capable of high pulse energy at high repetition rate to ...

The objective of this project is to advance the capabilities of the Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis (COBRA) system by creating a Surf Zone Modelling Tool (SZT) that can create realistic synthetic imagery of the surf zone (SZ). Through the use of this synthetic imagery the COBRA Program will be enabled to inform concept of operations (CONOPS) in unfamiliar environments as well as mo ...

Current decision tools often omit important situational context. Unfortunately, this can lead to dangerous and costly errors, as context drives decision making. For example, in operational navigation planning tasks, decisions must be made that rely on multiple information sources of different fidelities and uncertainties. Furthermore, after obtaining additional information the necessity for replan ...

Materials for thermal protection are required to protect structural components of missile launching systems, space vehicles during the re-entry stage, and solid rocket motors (SRMs). Polymer resins that have high char retention (e.g., phenolic resins) are the most common matrices in the composite materials for rigid thermal protection systems (TPSs) due to their tunable density, lower cost, and hi ...

The variety, volume and velocity of data available from the internet, sensors and other sources has grown dramatically providing the opportunity to gain novel insights in many fields.  In order to derive actionable insights from these data sources many challenges must be overcome including the need to summarize or distill large amounts of data that preserve salient features/relationships and meth ...

Department of Defense (DoD) operations critically rely upon efficient, robust, resilient and secure wireless network communications. Recently, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a key technology to support wireless communications systems in their adaptation to spectrum dynamics including novel adversarial threats. While ML is getting traction in wireless security applications such as detecting c ...

Predicting the emission signature and radar cross-section of rocket exhaust plumes is of vital interest to the Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Army to protect the U.S. homeland and our forces abroad.  The current STTR Phase II project has shown that a single-conditioned Premixed Conditional Moment Closure (PCMC) can employ detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms while efficiently modeling combustion ...

Solid oxide fuel cells have long suffered from degradation due to impurities in the fuel and complexities associated with dissimilar materials and high operating temperatures. This degradation lowers the usable cell power output and requires ancillary equipment for fuel sulfur removal and reformation. A unique microstructure for a tubular anode-supported SOFC is being developed using a novel freez ...

Current design tools for gas turbine engines invoke a variety of simplifying assumptions to estimate heat transfer to solid/metal engine components (e.g., isothermal boundary conditions). These approximations are often not valid, result in inaccurate predictions of heat transfer, and ultimately compromise the thermal integrity of propulsion and power systems. Wall-modeled large eddy simulation (WM ...

ATA Engineering has developed a wavelet-based damage squeezing methodology for generating optimally compressed fatigue test signals that produce an equivalent amount of fatigue damage in a predictably reduced amount of time compared to the baseline (uncompressed) signals. Fatigue-critical signal characteristics (e.g., magnitude, phase, frequency, and sequencing relationships) are identified in the ...