Award Data

Highway-rail grade crossings, at which there is an abrupt change in the level of the road surface as it crosses the tracks, present a severe hang-up risk to vehicles with low ground clearance. In Phase I and II, ATR developed a conceptual design for a Low Ground Clearance Vehicle Detection System (LGCVDS) to actively prevent such accidents. The LGCVDS is able to use a priori crossing profile data ...

The discovery and commercial development of licensed vaccines often take many years of research followed by years of pre-clinical and clinical development. We propose to assess the feasibility of using a novel irradiation-inactivation technology to develop vaccines more rapidly. The technology utilizes a manganese-peptide complex to protect antigenic proteins from ionizing radiation while allowing ...

Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume fraction, size, and spacing of these voids are critical. It is importa ...

Broken rails are a common cause of mainline derailments and a particular concern given the increasing use of our rail system for passenger traffic and petroleum products. The progressive nature of the defects provides an opportunity for early detection of cracks before they become significant enough to cause a derailment. Unfortunately, current inspection technology does not allow these inspection ...

Air parameters such as specific surface (SS) and spacing factor (SF) are essential in evaluating Freeze-Thaw (F-T) durability in fresh concrete. Currently there is no method or device that can accurately meet such requirements. We propose to develop an acoustic air void measurement system that can be used in the field to measure in near real time air void distributions in fresh concrete. The propo ...

The service life of the wood ties has been diminishing with increased axle loads with higher rail car speeds and frequencies. The depletion of wood and creosote induced contamination are of great environmental concerns. It is of a substantial interest to develop an effective recycling/remanufacturing methodology for creosote-treated wood ties. A composite wood tie design is proposed here, with use ...

"The increasing complexity of devices, reduced budgets and accelerated program timelines, requires a new approach to predicting radiation of integrated circuit (IC) designs. Most approaches to date require gate level analysis and do not scale easily to device level calculations, leading to methods that are not practical under most program timeline and cost budgets. Previously, DfR Solutions has ...

Use of motorcycles helmets significantly reduces the risk of fatality or serious brain injury to riders in the event of a crash, but riders often do not wear helmets in warm weather because of thermal discomfort. We propose to develop an innovative ventilation and cooling system that will maintain a cool, dry environment inside the helmet while also meeting applicable safety standards. The key the ...

ACR proposes the development of novel composite systems for air burst munitions capable of releasing high temperature over an extended area. Investigation will use Fibrous Monolith (FM) processing and a cost-efficient, innovative reactive composite system to form an airburst system that will generate an expanding thermal cloud. The proposed FM system would have a cellular structure, consisting o ...

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