Award Data

The Navy intends to start using a significant quantity of composite structures in surface ship construction in an effort to decrease costs as well as to reduce the visibility of the ships to radar. The large size of the target structures necessitates the use of low temperature, non-autoclave processing techniques such as Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM). In the recent past, most m ...

This effort joins the MEMS-based deformable mirror technology available from AgilOptics, a New Mexico small business, with the aero-optics technology of the University of Notre Dame to develop an Aero-optics Simulator. This simulator will develop a library of aero-optics patterns to simulate atmospheric distortions for test and evaluation of military or commercial beam control systems.

Off-board vehicles deployed in littoral environments are subjected to severe operational loads, including wave slamming, high-speed collision with debris, and underwater explosions. They additionally serve as sensor platforms, and would benefit from reduced self- and radiated noise for towed array performance and mine defense. Consequently, we propose to exploit the flexibility of design offered ...

The work proposed here augments the increasing body of research on capturing energy from walking. It focuses on the aspects associated with converting the captured energy, in the form of physical displacement, into an electrical form. The proposed Power Generator Back Pack is based on a Vernier Hybrid Machine (VHM) and magnetic gearing. The Vernier hybrid machine is a member of the family of vari ...

The Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle utilizes 14 hydropneumatic suspension units (HSU) that have variable stiffness controlled by the nitrogen charge (mass) in each. Each HSU consists of a primary spring that contains a nominally 50/50 mixture of nitrogen and oil, and secondary spring that contains nitrogen with a small amount of oil. The vehicle ride height is effected by ambient tem ...

Higher efficiency solar cells are needed to reduce solar-array mass, volume, and cost. In this project we propose to develop: (i) a concept of the novel quantum dot superlattice (QDS) solar cells, which are estimated to be more efficient and radiation tolerant than conventional multi-junction solar cells, (ii) new computational tools for the quantum-dot nanostructure optimization for the specific ...

Morphing technology enables aerospace vehicles to achieve a broader range of operational modes. Computational aeroelastic and design analysis tools of these vehicles must be able to handle arbitrarily large deformations and shape changes. Innovative Volume of Solid technology is proposed to cast structure/body-dynamics equations in an Eulerian reference frame, preserving the order of accuracy of ...

A number of modern technologies utilize unique properties of highly non-equilibrium plasmas produced by electric discharges in molecular gases. Electron kinetics and vibrationally excited molecules define key chemical reactions in these plasmas. The goal of this project is to utilize the non-local nature of electron kinetics to improve the performance of various plasma devices under pulsed power c ...

Static stability is a major challenge for modern augmentors that feature close-coupled fuel injection/flameholders operating at low pressures and high inlet velocities, inlet temperatures and vitiation levels. Reduced dilatation and baroclinic vorticity effects at augmentor conditions cause large scale von Karman vortices to dominate the blowout event, in contrast to conventional bluffbody shear l ...

The leading edge of the V-22 rotor blade is made of titanium and nickel abrasion strips bonded to the composite substrate. Although effective for rain erosion protection, nickel and titanium show poor sand erosion resistance. In addition, this metal and composite hybrid configuration limits working strain and fatigue life. This hybrid concept also hampers field serviceability and increases the ...