Award Data

A Multimodal Acoustic Tool for Inline Pipe Inspection 3/19/2018 The US energy transport pipeline system is a longstanding distribution network with most of its still standing pipes being installed between the 1950s–1970s. Due to degradation mechanisms, such as embrittlement, capable of causing a two-fold reduction in fracture toughness, pipe rupture is a major risk. Current nondestructive ins ...

NDT of Fracture Toughness for Pipeline Steels 3/16/2018 Ultrasound-based technology to nondestructively determine fracture toughness of pipeline steels will be developed. Fracture toughness is the material parameter that, along with applied loading and flaw geometry, dictates the critical crack size, and therefore controls the flaw size that must be detected during inspections. A major challeng ...

Proposal title: Rapid Assessment of Air Void System in Fresh Concrete Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume ...

Proposal title: Broken Rail Detection from Flashing Rear End Device Broken rails are a common cause of mainline derailments and a particular concern given the increasing use of our rail system for passenger traffic and petroleum products. The progressive nature of the defects provides an opportunity for early detection of cracks before they become significant enough to cause a derailment. Unfortu ...

Cooperative robots can explore the surface of planets with higher efficiency and lower mission risk, perform novel and precise resource and science surveys, and gather and share resources and information with other assets to bring planetary exploration. In order to work together more efficiently and effectively, robots must understand their location relative to their peers, which is challenged in ...

The proposed Bifunctional Regenerative Electrochemical Air Transformation for Human Environments (BREATHE) for life support and habitation is part of the atmosphere revitalization equipment necessary to provide and maintain a livable environment within the pressurized cabin of crewed spacecraft. Sustainable Innovations (SI) has developed a novel solid state technology for gas compression based on ...

We propose to develop a method to effectively utilize the massive amount of image and range data that cameras and laser scanners can generate for an autonomous navigation system. Our innovative approach is to use deep learning to detect and segment only the most useful portions of the data and to use that to build better 3D models. We have proven methods for building accurate 3D models of the en ...

In contrast to the standard cold reservoir Variable Conductance Heat Pipe (VCHP) where for tight thermal control an electrical heater is used for the reservoir (wicked), Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc (ACT) developed a hot reservoir VCHP with the reservoir thermally coupled to the evaporator. This novel feature will provide a tight temperature control capability without the need for control po ...

There is a large unserved and well-defined need in several heavy industrial markets such as steel, petroleum, energy, and mining for aerial inspection, particularly by small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) conducting close proximity imaging and contact sensing. We propose to increase the utility of aerial inspection beyond the current state of the art where imagery typically is manually collected ...

The topic defines the problem as the development and demonstration of computationally efficient tools capable of modeling sound propagation in an urban environment for creating auralizations of UAM vehicles. The tools would be suitable for eventual integration with the NASA Auralization Framework (NAF).The topic requires a set of modules to be delivered which will integrate with existing NAF infr ...