Award Data

In this proposal, Alphasense, Inc. details the development of a novel microwave NDE sensor for defect inspections in silicon nitride bearing balls. The key innovations of this proposal include the following: a) the use of the spherical bearing ball as a dielectric resonator, thus enabling us to correlate the resonance characteristics of the bearing ball with various defects; b) the measurements in ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. (AI) and the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) detail the development of a novel noninvasive microwave sensor to quantify the DoS in marine aluminum alloys. The key innovations of this proposal include the following: a) DoS quantifications based on the correlation between the surface resistivity with the microstructures of the aluminum alloys, b) measurements o ...

Corrosion is becoming an increasing problem in the Air Forces aging fleet. Corrosion is developing in airframes in inaccessible areas never intended for disassembly.  This potentially leads to premature failure due to fatigue or significant reduction of material integrity. Mitigation efforts are proving to be costly and time consuming. A methodology to locate and evaluate hidden corrosion in-situ ...

Aging and newer composite aircraft fleets have led to the need for advanced damage detection systems. Inspections for damage in the field are limited due to equipment capability, size/weight, automation challenges, human error and disassembly issues. A portable, lightweight, robust inspection system powered by an user-friendly, automated software system, with remote scanning capability, could imp ...

The proposed technology has the potential to change the paradigm such that the traditional “brute-force” method of the mechanical breaker is replaced with natural commutation. Further, a downfall of the conventional solid-state breaker is that it still must interrupt large fault currents requiring very specialized semiconductors and controls. Ultimately, the dc breaker herein prevents large cu ...

The is an effort to increase radiation hardness/survivability of microelectronics through innovation of production processes and capabilities by establishing an economically viable low-volume sub-65nm rad-hard foundry CMOS capability based on Digital Beam Processing (DBP) technology. American Semiconductor (ASI) and Digibeam Corporation (DBC) propose a collaboration to evaluate sub-65nm radiation- ...

AstroPower is developing a two-junction monolithic tandem solar cell composed of (AlxGa1-x)0.51In.49P lattice matched to GaAs for use as the top cell in a three-junction, two-terminal tandem stack. This tunable bandgap material system is capable of current matching, at 2.03eV, in a two-junction monolithic tandem solar cell two terminal design of (AlxGa1-x)0.51In0.49P/GaAs yielding a best case pred ...

Gear tooth surface fatigue (pitting) is common precursor failure mode that leads to excessive gear vibration, liberation of debris particles that damage ancillary components (e.g. bearings), and serves as crack initiation sites that lead to eventual catastrophic tooth failure. Current gearbox life estimation techniques commonly underplay the significance of gear tooth surface fatigue due to the co ...

Recent advances in computing have produced special-purpose hardware comprised of vector processors streamlined for high-performance computations. Development of these devices, such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell Processor), has been advanced by the videogame industry. In an effort to increase flexibility and enter new markets, vendors have increased platf ...

The next generation of photovoltaic systems need to meet both physical (shape, size, packaging, durability) and electronic (efficiency, stability) requirements of applications that are not possible to implement today. One of these requirements is to be able to stretch electronic devices without sacrificing the performance and lifetime. Commercially available photovoltaics that incorporate thin sem ...