Award Data

Under sponsorship of the Air Force SBIR program, the small business Advanced Fuel Research, Inc. (AFR) is developing an innovative sensor system to map the surface temperature of thermal barrier coated (TBC) turbine blades during operational testing of advanced military jet engines. Temperature mapping is a high priority capability needed to prove ceramic coatings as a reliable means to prevent bl ...

Gas turbine engine development requires sensors to measure gas path properties in engines during ground testing.  The data collected with these sensors are critical to the development of advanced engines with high performance, high efficiency, and low emissions.  While instrumentation is available to measure most of the important gas path properties, the drive toward higher turbine inlet tempera ...

The drumbeat for higher efficiency gas turbine engines is driving new designs capable of operating at higher temperatures and pressure ratios, in fewer stages, and with higher airfoil loads.   These conditions pose a great challenge for turbomachinery designers.  They must now accurately predict airfoil metal temperatures to design effective cooling schemes that counter the high external gas te ...

The focus of the proposed effort is to develop a coupled composite damage assessment and repair evaluation tool for a given damage state measured by a NDI technique. New solution modules for damage and repair representation will be developed and linked with our existing mesh independent extended finite element (XFEM) toolkit for ABAQUS. This tool will for the first time be able to model arbitrary ...

We propose a suite of nonlinear image processing algorithms derived from the analysis of the underlying diffusion geometry of a collection of hyperspectral images of interest. These tools enable the comparison of spatio-spectral features of hyperspectral images acquired under different conditions, for the purposes of target detection, change detection and anomaly assessment. This methodology also ...

Optical switching fabrics (optical cross-connects) require arrays of highly interconnected optical switching devices. Such fabrics require a high density of optical and electronic interconnect.  The optical switching devices are also required to switch configurations in sub-ns time intervals to enable reconfiguration times between packets that introduce little if any latency. Currently such fabri ...

The digital signal processor is currently dominated exclusively by CMOS technology. This is largely due to the fact that it is the only low power (VLSI density) technology available. However, CMOS is near the end of its scaling potential and it has a severe liability for space applications due to a weakness to radiation.  Recent progress in integrated optoelectronics has indicated dramatic perfor ...

PCI proposes a novel reformer/injector system for aviation fuel combustion that offers the ability to produce compact/low residence time combustion at high efficiency.  This technology offers a simple, light-weight, compact and cost-effective design providing stable combustion with low emissions in two stages for gas turbine engines.  In the first stage, the Liquid to Gaseous Fuel Reformer will ...

The proposed technology will reduce the size and weight of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) power systems for unmanned air vehicle and munition (UAV) applications thus making future UAVs lighter and more fuel efficient. In addition, the proposed technology will further enable the Air Force to move toward more electric aircraft. The technological advance will have a spillover benefit to land and sea ba ...

This program seeks to identify and demonstrate improved solid lubricant coatings for use on compliant foil air bearings for gas turbine application. The Phase 1 effort will be to evaluate selected coatings for improved low speed operation, typical of a gas turbine engine, and to investigate a motion limiting snubber system to best protect the bearing and engine during high load conditions. The mot ...