Award Data

With infrastructure costs escalating it is becoming essential to monitor the health of asphalt and concrete pavement so that timely maintenance can maximize their usefulness. This SBIR will develop a sensor that can be embedded within concrete or asphalt, which can measure moisture, temperature, stress and strain. It will provide critical data for evaluating pavement performance starting with th ...

Mechanical damage (typically from third party excavations) is the most frequent source of leaks and ruptures in pipelines. The most common type of mechanical damage is dents, sometimes associated with secondary features such as gouges, external corrosion, or cracks. Currently used techniques for assessing dents are not accurate enough for reliable determination of fitness for service. In this p ...

This proposal seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of using impulse radar techniques to detect and identify explosive detonators. It relies on the fact that a radar impulse will excite natural electromagnetic resonances which characterize the size, shape, and material composition of an object. These resonances are present in the scattered transient return from the object and can be extracted by ...

Accuwave Corporation will study the feasibility of a volume holographic, phase-encoded optical image correlator for credit card and document validation and security application. Fourier transform holograms of a phase-encoded input image are stored using wavelength multiplexed holographic gratings in a photorefractive crystal. High spatial resolution images can be sotred with low crosstalk using ...

We Propose to enhance rotorcraft simulation model to support land and sea-based flight testing and operational analysis. The model enhancement will resolve the long-time perplexing problems related to the fundamental simulation requirement for an accurate prediction of rotorcraft response in full range of flight. The solution proposed is to improve the widely used finite state dynamic wake ...

A new Navy process substitutes low toxicity trivalent chromium for toxic hexavalent chromium in aluminum conversion coatings. Further work is needed to investigate variations on the original formulations, with special consideration to formulas useful with common alloys of aluminum. Both a yellow and a blue-bright conversion film are desirable. Fractional Factorial Experimental Designs will be used ...

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Pattern recognition systems using optical correlation are being developed. The optical correlator is a powerful tool since it simultaneously processes large data arrays. This capability reduces data handling and process control, makes the system less susceptable to obstruction and increases throughput. An optical correlator is also a phase sensitive detector. It can read an optical phase mask ...

Cylindrical non-axisymmetric optical components are becoming increasingly important to both commercial and military applications. Current manufacturing methods are very labor intensive and require dedicated tooling. This resulted in a major shift of manufacturing base to off shore manufacturers. Recent advances in Deterministics Microgrinding of spherical surfaces demonstrate that specular surf ...

Quantitative measurement of spray patterns is of fundamental importance in the development of efficient and practical aerospace propulsion and power systems. At present, there is considerable interest in obtaining measurements of fuel and air motions in both fuel droplet and solid particle combustors since the velocity of the fuel relative to the gas strongly influences the local oxygen supply, t ...