Award Data

Military and commercial aircraft operators are moving toward predictive maintenance to minimize costs while maximizing asset availability and safety. Key technological prerequisites for this new approach are the ability to monitor the condition of critical components, and the ability to accurately forecast their remaining useful life. Phase I of this project clearly demonstrated the feasibility of ...

Touchstone Research Laboratory has developed a novel material, CFOAMr. The primary enabling carbon foam characteristic is that the Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) values are comparable to carbon fiber polymer matrix systems in manufacturing advanced composites. Other advantages of carbon foam-based tools are low mass, reduced energy, easy modifications, unmatched repair capabilities, and r ...

Nomadics proposes to undertake a detailed investigation of key technical aspects relevant to explosive threats to US military forces, including suicide bombers, vehicle bombs and IEDs. This study will focus on compiling a detailed listing of relevant materials including explosives, detonators, initiators, and other materials employed in these devices. Detailed characterizations of explosive mate ...

In Phase I, Imagination Engines, Inc. (IEI) has made revolutionary advances in the field of autonomous robotics by developing deliberative neural architectures capable of self-originating strategies in navigating and mapping virtual reality environments. Having overcome critical technical issues associated with two-way communication between these neural structures and the virtual robots they gover ...

A newly developed "coal-based" porous graphite material has been recently produced. This development is a direct result of Touchstone Research Laboratory's Phase I funding to develop enhanced-strength carbon foam heat-exchanger materials for aerospace applications since low density carbon foams cannot endure high bleed air pressures in aerospace pre-coolers and heat exchangers. The newly develope ...

Development of an Optimal Bioaerosol Sampler with enhanced optical triggering capability is proposed, following a highly successful Phase I effort that clearly demonstrated feasibility. The threat of a bioaerosol attack can be partially mitigated by deployment of a cost-effective sensor network. High priority programs, such as BioWatch and Portal Shield will benefit from a sensor compliant to Join ...

The development of fast, reliable, accurate and non-destructive absorption measurements is critical to the development of very low absorption/high laser damage threshold optical thin films for HEL and other high value applications. The objective of this research project is to continue development of a practical method for quickly and accurately measuring the very low absorption in optical thin fi ...

The continued development of hypersonic vehicles and high performance space access vehicles has highlighted the importance of light-weight, load-bearing structures capable of prolonged exposure at elevated temperatures. The optimal solution to this problem would be a hot primary structure capable of supporting the required loads at elevated temperature while also providing the necessary thermal pr ...

Nomadics has a technology under development for chemical warfare (CW) agent detection that, when combined with light emitting diodes (LEDs) being developed under DARPA's SUVOS program, should be able to meet military and homeland defense needs. Further, this technology can be integrated with BW detection systems from the SUVOS program to make an integrated CW/BW sensor. This system should provide ...

This SBIR Phase II project will develop a new technology that provides 2D/3D/4D visualization of weather information within a commercial GIS (Geographic Information System) environment. GIS systems provide rich support for mapping, geographic data handling, spatial query, and geographic analysis functionality, but do not include native support for weather. GIS systems typically use static (atemp ...