Award Data

The Significant Optical Manufacturing Advancement (SOMA) program will capture the principles of Design for Assembly (DFA) and apply them to the fabrication of precision optical systems. This will provide the Navy with the ability to design optical systems that can be assembled efficiently for much lower costs. We will use the DFA discipline of axiomatic design coupled with optical design equations ...

The military’s recognition of the need to share battlefield intelligence between all branches of the armed services has led to the development of the Joint Fires Network (JFN). In JFN, intelligence data from the many sensors deployed must be assimilated for targeting information. Computers perform some of these operations while people perform others. The bottom line is that there are massive ...

As the US Navy fleet reduces in size, the requirement for multiple capabilities on remaining ships is increasing. Combined with the requirement to reduce crew compliments, these capabilities are becoming unmanned, increasing the utilization of the ships, while allowing a safer distance from the threat. The use of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV), Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) and other vehicle ...

There is an acute need for a networked chemical sensor that is inexpensive enough to allow it to be treated as a disposable item - deployed and left in-place until the end of its useful life, or until operations move out of communications range. Electrochemical microarray sensors can be fabricated at low enough unit cost to make the development of a disposable sensor node feasible. These sensors ...

In high F/A military gas turbine combustors such as JSF, localized pockets of carbon monoxide and hydrogen can exit the combustor, causing severe cooling challenges for designers of turbine inlet guide vanes. Instead of cooling the vane, cooling air can interact with the hotpath flow to release heat near the vane surface, resulting in durability challenges and possibly catastrophic damage. In this ...

Under NAVAIR Contract N683535-04-C-0240 Phase I, CFDRC has demonstrated the feasibility and advantages of using copper catalyst coated energetic nanoparticles to assist in heterogeneous cold start combustion for high-thrust propulsion applications. The feasibility studies were carried out using CFDRC’s multiphysics high fidelity engineering analysis tool. Enhancements and improvements were made ...

CFDRC has completed preliminary design of a next generation Ram Air Turbine (RAT) suitable for operation in the Navy’s next generation electronic warfare pod. The RAT will be capable of delivering 60 KVA at a sea level flight speed of 280 knots. The unit will also be capable of providing adequate liquid coolant to maintain electronic component operating temperatures below specified levels. Du ...

Combustor Lean BlowOut (LBO) is a significant challenge in modern military gas turbine combustors. LBO can occur either during rapid engine deceleration or during operation at idle conditions with water/steam ingestion. Current practice is to design adequate safety margins to avoid the onset of blowout. However, significant engine performance improvements can be realized though the development o ...

The overall objective of this project is to develop a system-level prognostic modeling tool for predictions of the spread of chemical/biological agents in shipboard air systems. The intent is to integrate the tool with existing DC systems. The proposed system will be modeled as a set of interacting software components coupled through a simulation environment. To achieve execution speed and accurac ...

In this SBIR program, CFDRC will develop and implement an innovative, multi-tiered data integrity software system named DINES to guarantee data integrity in the GIG-NCES environment. DINES uses digital signatures to guarantee the integrity of the data and meta-data, and provides mechanisms to optimize performance for permanent storage, network communication, and streaming data. DINES addresses d ...