Award Data

Future NASA flight missions are considering passive wavefront and amplitude control in astronomical applications such as the search for exo-planets. NASA's Discovery mission proposal called out the need for a coherent 2-dimensional array of fiber bundles for this application. In this SBIR proposal we propose to develop monolithic polarization maintaining (PM) coherent fiber bundle arrays consistin ...

High power fiber lasers have made significant progress in last several years. Fiber laser operating in the 1.9-2.1micron wavelength regimes have achieved operating powers approaching 1kW. Such fiber lasers have great potential in the areas of laser radar, remote sensing, medicine, and infrared (IR) countermeasures. However, further development of these technologies is hindered by a lack of commerc ...

An all-fiber mid-infrared laser source offers many unique features that are key to next-generation infrared countermeasure systems. We propose a low-cost all-fiber mid-infrared light source operating in 2-5 micron wavelength range with ~1000watt average output power, based on our proprietary infrared glass/fiber technology. All-fiber monolithic design allows us to develop such a low-cost fiber las ...

High spatial resolution infrared imaging fiber bundles are needed to spatially analyze combustion processes accessible only by probe penetrations into high pressure and/or high temperature regions such as turbine combustors and afterburners. Specialized infrared fibers including chalcogenide and ZBLAN fibers are typically very expensive and brittle and fragile. We propose to develop an innovative ...

High power fiber lasers have made significant progress in last several years. Several kW of output power has been demonstrated, which enables a wide range of new applications from laser welding, laser cutting, and laser drilling to military defense. While high power fiber lasers have been successfully deployed in industry, one piece of critical components, fiber isolator, is still not available. F ...

High power fiber lasers have made significant progress in the last several years. Ten kW of diffraction-limited output power at 1 micron from one single mode fiber has been demonstrated. Department of Defense (DoD) needs 100s of kW for missile defense as well as for protection against rockets, artillery, and mortars (RAM). There is serious concern about current 1 micron fiber laser system potentia ...

In 2009, Virtual Learning Technologies received an award to develop Frachine, a web-based single player fraction learning game for elementary school students. This project will develop an intelligent tutoring system that will integrate with the existing game to provide the individualized instructional support required to further improve student math outcomes. Phase I will develop a prototype of t ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. (AI) and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) detail the development of RF front end based on MEMS components for miniaturized digital EVA radio. Key innovations of our approach include: a) the use of a novel parallel receiver front end architecture based on MEMS components, b) a novel design of a high Q mixer-filter for RF mixing and IF filtering, and c) the imp ...

Thermal barrier coatings have been widely used to provide thermal protection to superalloy components in gas turbine engines. After certain amount of service time, the coating experiences a reduction in thickness by processes such as wear, erosion and foreign/domestic object damage. When the thickness decreases below a critical value, the thermal barrier effect provided by the coating is no longer ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. and the Center for Non-destructive Evaluations at Iowa State University detail the development of a compact, low cost handheld sensor for non-destructive material case depth verification. The key innovations of this proposal include the following: a) case depth evaluations based on electromagnetic property measurements, b) a model based alternating current potent ...