Award Data

Traditional approaches to accelerated fatigue testing rely on heuristic methods with thresholds based mostly on experience and engineering judgment. These methods generally do not apply to the multiaxial dynamic loading situations characteristic of most aerospace applications and often result in uncharacteristic fatigue damage and failure modes during testing. To overcome the limitations of tradit ...

The Tunable Active HEterodyne Terahertz Imager (TAHETI) system will use Terahertz Quantum-Cascade Lasers (QCL) combined with a Schottky diode detector for ultra-high dynamic range heterodyne imaging. Distributed feedback (DFB) QCLs with milliwatt power levels are engineered to emit at slightly offset frequencies, and are used as local oscillator and illumination for imaging. The QCLs will be down ...

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a technique used to detect near-field interaction when a sample is rater-scanned by a probe. Example include atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscope (STM). It offers nanometric and atomic image resolution. In this field, an emerging technique, Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscopy (SMM), utilizes microwave evanescent waves to attain the ...

Scalable, inexpensive manufacturing processes that produce yarns capable of storing energy are required for new breakthroughs within the wearable electronics sector. To enable to further improve the properties of yarn-based electrochemical performance in energy-storage systems, fiber-based yarns are proposed and developed via a scalable and cost effective wet spinning manufacturing process, and la ...

The strain engineering effort will constitute development of a synthetic biology toolkit applicable for food waste conversion in clostridium. The engineered strain will enable high efficiency conversion of army food waste to fuel. The proposed project will scale up a clostridium based fermentation method to produce fuel from food waste. A batch reactor will be optimized. Overall techno-economic fe ...

TransWave Photonics, LLC proposes to develop mid-wave infrared photonic integrated circuits based on monolithic integration of passive low-loss waveguides, thermo-optically tunable photonic elements, and quantum cascade gain sections within the same InGaAs/AlInAs/InP platform. The proposed approach will enable power combining and 2-dimensinoal beam steering of the outputs from multiple high-power ...

We will develop a lab-on-chip optical absorption spectrometer spanning 3-15micron molecular fingerprint region, in a single epitaxially grown heterostructure that monolithically integrates thermally tuned distributed feedback quantum cascade laser (QCL) and quantum cascade detector (QCD) arrays with slotted photonic crystal waveguides (SPCWs) in a mid-infrared InGaAs passive photonic waveguide. In ...

Our nation’s warfighters require advanced armor to give them the best protection while allowing mobility to perform their missions. This proposal will develop two powerful tools to aid future body armor advancements. First, this research program will develop a statistical analysis software that will predict likelihood of impacts based on defined attack scenarios (i.e. rifle, distance and firing ...

The NMR relaxometry instrument developed in Phase I project will be refined and thoroughly calibrated for nondestructive evaluation of the structure and properties of polymer-inorganic interfaces. The system design, operation conditions and data acquisition/analysis algorithms will be improved for precise and reliable evaluation of the structure and properties of the interfaces formed between dive ...

A Battlefield Airman (BA) has one of the most challenging positions in the military. BA personnel are tasked with the dual roles of being warfighters as well as Combat Controllers, Pararescuemen, Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) members and Special Operations Weather Technicians often while behind enemy lines. These complex duties require high fidelity training. In some cases, such as Pararescuem ...