Award Data

An emerging class of passive millimeter-wave (pmmW) sensors currently provides an unmitigated threat to the US Navy. While considerable effort has been expended reducing RADAR signatures of the next generation of Naval vessels, these ship designs often present significant signatures to pmmW sensors. To date, little has been done to understand or reduce these signatures. However, as a new class of ...

This project will develop a robust, reliable and low cost networked sensor capability for advanced turbine engines and other applications. This system will enable pressure, temperature, vibration and strain to be measured in extremely harsh environments such as turbine engine combustors, enabling improvements in current control and monitoring capability to be achieved. In addition, the system will ...

In this Phase II SBIR project, NexTech Materials will continue development of high power density solid oxide fuel cell power systems for ship-service applications. The system being developed is based on planar stacks of NexTech"s proprietary FlexCells, which offer unprecedented sulfur tolerance (simplifying the use of JP-8 as a fuel) and scalability to very large areas (making it feasible to build ...

High performance mechanical systems such as bearings and gears in advanced gas turbine engines for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) are required to operate at ever increasing speeds, temperature and loads. An advanced high temperature case hardened bearing steel Pyrowear 675 has been developed for these applications. The basic mechanical properties and desired microstructure can be achieved by conve ...

Efficient and effective operation of a communications satellite constellation involves health and safety assurance as well as high-performance operations execution. Interruption to service or loss of satellite functionality can result in compromised mission objectives. It is essential for Network Management Facilities (NMF) and Space Operations Centers (SOC) to have the ability to quickly respond ...

The measurement of skin friction on hydrodynamic surfaces at high Reynolds numbers is essential validation of computational models and design of advanced maneuvering systems. In this proposal we introduce an optical sensor for measurements of mean skin friction on large models that operates in water. This sensor is based on the diffusion of a fluorescent dye from a polymer film into the water, a m ...

A new genre of sensing technology is being employed to develop reliable, low cost, pressure sensors that are able to make measurements at locations in aircraft turbine engines, such as P4, where it has not previously been possible to do so.

There is an urgent, growing demand for versatile, lightweight, low profile, phased arrays to be utilized on advanced ISR platforms. These arrays can be employed for accurate determination of the direction of arrival of emitted signals and for detection of weak signals in noisy environments. The array may be used with lens systems having many channels or with digital receivers with fewer channels t ...

The Navy"s fleet relies heavily on UHF SATCOM for communications in Navy"s worldwide operations. Narrowband interference is a crippling factor in many UHF SATCOM channels. When even a single channel is rendered unusable by interference, many users are potentially affected, owing to the multiple-access scheme. In this Phase II program GIRD Systems plans to revise a previously demonstrated narrowban ...

Measurements of skin friction on high Reynolds number hydrodynamic surfaces are essential for the design of advanced Naval technology, such as advanced propulsion systems and drag reduction techniques. Accurate measurements of skin friction on complex surfaces however, continue to be problematic. Here we propose continued development of an elastic polymer film that deforms under the action of appl ...