Award Data

We propose to design and implement a novel field portable THz detector for examining vehicle armor panel and body armor based on the high frequency (0.5-10 THz) and high power THz source and a commercial high resolution focal-plane array (FPA) camera. The crucial high frequency THz source will have subwatt-level power that is sufficient to penetrate thick armor ceramics for high resolution imaging ...

High energy laser can provide a tremendous benefit to the army for area protection against rockets, artillery, and mortars (RAM). There is concern about high energy laser systems potentially causing collateral eye damage due to scattering off of target surfaces. We propose to develop innovative high efficient high power 2.1 micron fiber laser that is scalable to power levels of greater than 10kW. ...

Thulium doped fiber laser near 2 micron is of great interest because of the potential possibility of combining high efficiency, high output power, and retina safety together. This proposal is for the development of new Tm-doped glass fiber for efficient high power 2ƒÝm fiber laser capable of generating an output power of up to thousands watts. The doping concentration of the proposed glass fiber ...

The proposed research program aims to develop a physics-based identification, modeling and management infrastructure for aeroelastic limit-cycle oscillations. This infrastructure will be built upon high fidelity state-of-the-art theoretical/computational methods as validated and verified by available experimental data bases, and will include (1) rapid flutter boundary determination for a wide ran ...

Many technical challenges will need to be surmounted to create practical cybercraft: assurance, control, rules of engagement, representation and discovery of the target environment, among others. However a serious challenge lurks behind all of these: scaling solutions to fleets of up to a million craft. New approaches are needed to deploy and control the craft at this scale. Failure to come to gr ...

Current base and force protection vulnerability assessments tools are limited in their ability to a) prioritize prevention, detection, and mitigation options based on adversary intent and defense objectives, b) share results between different sites and support new (rapid) force protection training as personnel rotate, c) reuse past analyses and keep adversary data, defender data and the resulting ...

With improvements in high performance military jet aircraft engines and the increase in complexity of the exhaust systems the noise produced has become problematic. Reducing these noise levels, while maintaining overall system performance, has become the driving issue in new nozzle designs. This proposal will focus on nozzle designs of practical application that can be implemented on current high ...

The proposed effort will investigate optimized modulation formats, error-correction codes and coherent operation to improve high-bandwidth undersea communications. Analysis suggests that these methods can provide significant improvement over current optical communications methods.

Due to the phasing out of TNT usage in explosives due to safety and environmental concerns, insensitive explosives utilizing wax binders instead of TNT have gradually replaced TNT in bombs and other explosive shells. The wax material that has been the most utilized in this application has been carnauba wax, but due to its non-domestic production and its dependence on natural growth and harvest me ...

The formation and use of optical filaments resulting from high-power, ultrashort pulses propagating within the atmosphere is currently an active area of research for military and commercial applications. Optical filaments can be used to ionize molecules and atoms and produced related spectral emissions. Importantly, the range at which the filament formation occurs within the atmosphere can be cont ...