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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 ...

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 ...

There is a significant gap between the properties of materials that are produced using the current 3D printing processes and the properties that are needed to support critical space systems. The polyetherimide/polycarbonate (PEI/PC) composite recently demonstrated on the ISS is a significant step forward in development, however, FDM with PEI/PC represents the current practical limits of AM in spa ...

Many existing or proposed NASA small propulsion systems and advanced scientific instruments will require high voltages at medium to high power levels to function. Such space power supplies are generally bulky and lossy and, as missions increasingly migrate to ever smaller platforms, there will be an increasing need to substantially reduce the size/weight costs of providing such on-board power acce ...

All space missions utilize low-voltage power for small signal, processor core and peripheral systems. The traditional approach for non-isolated point of load (POL) converter systems is to perform multi-stage down-conversions from space bus down to 5V, then down to the lower core voltages for provision of power to processors and small-signal components. We are proposing to research and develop a ne ...

Passive Microwave Remote Sensing is currently utilized by NASA, NOAA, and others to conduct Earth Science missions, including weather forecasting, early warning systems, and climate studies. These sensors could also be used in upcoming missions such as Saturn’s moon to study atmospheric makeup. On earth, humidity and temperature sounding is conducted near several absorption lines to determine k ...

Software-based redundancy methods offer a solution to achieve high reliability with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, providing a significantly reduced development cycle as well as lower SWaP and cost. By contrast, conventional hardware-based methods for the use of high performance applications-specific processors in space are very costly and introduce a long delay between terrestrial and ...

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is investigating technologies for thermal control systems (TCS) in human spaceflight vehicles, such as variable geometry spacecraft radiator. The TCS in crewed vehicles must maintain a relatively constant environment temperature for a wide range of external thermal environments (low earth orbit, trans-planetary coast, and planetary surface opera ...

A reliable thermal management system that will enable at least 24-hours survival of Venus landers in the extreme environment (460°C, 92 bar) is highly desirable for NASA future Venus in-situ exploration missions. In response to the NASA SBIR solicitation, Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) proposes to develop a consumable-based cooling system for Venus landers waste heat rejection. The pro ...

NASA Fission Surface Power Generation systems are weight challenged based mostly on the very conservative radiation tolerance specification of COTS components and in terms of lander limitations for surface operational uses. The proposed programs will drastically reduce both the mass of the shielding and the amount of shielding necessary to protect power and control electronics. Moreover, it enabl ...