Award Data

Accudyne proposes a SBIR program, endorsed by Sikorsky, Cytec Engineered Materials, and NASA-LaRC, to develop a cost-effective thermoplastic automated tow placement (ATP) process and demonstrate it by fabricating and testing a complex contoured skin (Phase 1) and a CH-53K rotorcraft lower cabin or ramp skin (Phase 2). The process employs in situ consolidation, avoiding the autoclave. The targete ...

This proposal will supply to NAVAIR and to rotorcraft manufacturing companies the emerging solution to their fabrication needs as it relates to the production of Rotor Blade Spars. The process and machine concept developed in Phase I will provide NAVAIR and the rotocraft manufacturing companies an automated solution to spar manufacturing. This will enable: • Low part manufacturing cost • High ...

Adaptive Materials, Inc. (AMI) proposes to evaluate technologies and mission profiles for use in the development of an efficient power management system for the United States Marine Corps Distributed Operations Squads. The base Phase I effort will focus on optimizing existing AMI power management technology to analyze mission profiles and provide optimized power solutions for given combat load. T ...

Ceramic thermal barrier coating (TBC) on first-stage turbine blades is a vital component of advanced engines under development for future military aircraft, protecting the metal alloy blades from the extreme combustion temperature in these high-performance engines. TBC must be proven as a reliable means to prevent blade failure but current engine development programs are hindered since there is no ...

This proposal details the feasibility, design, implementation, risk mitigation, and plan for construction of prototype millimeter-wave, electronically tunable filters. Such a technology can achieve near fixed frequency filter performance while tuning over a respectable bandwidth enabling applications to take advantage of reduced size, weight, and potentially additional bandwidth.

Turbine performance increases through increasing turbine inlet gas temperature which can result in reduced turbine durability. Currently the design practices employed by the major OEM’s for cooled turbine airfoils are generally very empirical in nature and can easily miss important physical behavior thereby compromising airfoil durability. This in turn leads to turbine airfoil durability issues ...

Because of its condensable nature Bi may cause unacceptable spacecraft contamination when used as a Hall thruster propellant. Experiments are proposed to determine the potential for bismuth deposition on spacecraft surfaces. The proposing team’s extensive experience with bismuth technology has uncovered surprising bismuth/surface interaction kinetics that will greatly complicate deposition mea ...

The Local Space Imaging System (LSIS) proposed here will be capable of continuous, autonomous situational awareness of the local space about a high-value host spacecraft with minimal impact to the host. The LSIS can independently determine instrument inertial attitude and bring a high-resolution imager to bear on a hemispherical field-of-regard. Innovative image processing algorithms will be use ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. (AI) and the University of Michigan (UM) detail the development of a compact, portable, and low cost in-process weld defects detection system. Key innovations of the proposed system include: a) weld defects monitoring based on plasma emission characteristics; b) use the electron temperature of the plasma as an indicator of the weld quality, c) use multiple plasma ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. (AI) and the Oklahoma State University (OKState) detail the development of a novel Cavity Enhanced Terahertz Absorption Spectrometer (CETAS). Key innovations of the proposed system include: a) the use of a small Whispering- Gallery- Mode (WGM) cavity to achieve very long pathlength; and b) the integration of the WGM cavity with the conventional pulsed and continu ...