Award Data

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 ...

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 ...

A playing-card deck sized, logistics-fuel Pocket Stove design employing a compact, low power electrostaticatomizer is proposed. Micron sized logistic fuel sprays are generated at one bar operating pressure ( 15 psi ) by a Spray Triode electrostatic atomized. A Single coupled to a compact DC-DC converter provides the low milli-watt level electrical power necessary for over 1000 hours ...

THE FEASIBILITY OF BUILDING A PERSONAL COMPUTER MODEL OF THEEVACUATION PROCESS WILL BE STUDIED, USING AN EXPERIMENTAL MODEL DEVELOPED BY GOURARY ASSOCIATES INC. THE RESULTING MODEL WILL PERMIT THE STUDY AND VISUALIZATION OF PASSENGER MOVEMENTS DURING EVACUATION. IT WILL ALSO ALLOW THE STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF CROWDING, FIRE, OBSTRUCTIONS, AND OTHER EFFECTS DURING THE EVACUATION PROCESS. THE MODEL W ...

We propose to determine what outputs from the SSAJ measurement system would be suitable for traffic control applications, to determine what the "real time" needs and accuracies are for measurements of signature, speed, acceleration, and jerk (SSAJ), to integrate the output of our IST-222 Standard Signature Output Card with and Advanced Transportation Contorller (ATC) and finally to demonstrate pro ...

There is a need for an inexpensive, lighter, effective nonhalogenated, and environmentally friendly fire-resistant (FR) textile material for batting insulation and shell fabrics to be used in ground soldiers combat uniforms. The current FR textile materials are very expensive, ranging in price from $13/pound (Nomex TM) TO $70/pound (polybenzimidazole). Less expensive FR textile material either c ...

The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative design that combines centrifugal separation, cross-flow filtration (CFF), Dean flow surface cleaning and back-flush techniques into an effective micro-filtration unit. The centrifugal separation is effective in separating particles that have higher specific gravity that the feed fluid down to 20 microns. CFF is espe ...

Future High Level Architecture (HLA) simulations will incorporate non-visual stimuli. One such stimulus will be force feedback that is provided using haptic displays. Force feedback will be instrumental in o btaining high fidelity information exchange between the simulation and the user. However, one significant problem with providing force feedback between a simulation and a user is that time ...

Satellite communications, Airborne radar, EW, and Communications systems differ significantly in their antenna requirements. Not only do the various systems differ in their primary functions, but the many variations within one system will affect antenna requirements. For example, an airborne radar system may be configured functionally as a tracking, search and track, altimeter, navigation, groun ...