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 ...

Interference of unburned and activated carbon in fly ash with air-entraining admixtures (AEA’s) in fresh concrete mixtures is a major concern in the concrete industry. Therefore, a rapid and accurate measurement of adsorption capacity of fly ash is of great interest to this industry. In this project, a new method is suggested, which can qualitatively and quantitatively measure different surfact ...

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 laser-based acoustic emission (AE) detection device is proposed for structural stability assessment of buildings in order to provide warning of structural instability or pending collapse. It will help to reduce injuries and fatalities during emergency mitigation operations. This new device will take advantage of innovations in laser ultrasonics, artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced acoustic ...

A low cost Swimmer Detection Sonar Network (SDSN) is now being developed under an ONR Phase 2 SBIR and as a joint project between the USA and Singapore. The SDSN is a network of inexpensive sonar nodes where narrow sonar beams are formed using airbacked parabolic reflectors. The feasibility of the system has been proven through trials conducted in Singapore harbor and full development is well unde ...

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 ...

Hand-held gamma ray spectrometers are a vital tool for detecting and identifying nuclear materials to counter the threat of radiological and nuclear terrorism. The HPGe crystals in these detectors must operate at cryogenic temperatures to achieve good energy resolution. We propose to develop an innovative, miniature cryogenic cooling system that will be ideal for hand-held detectors. High efficien ...

Hand-held gamma ray spectrometers are a vital tool for detecting and identifying nuclear materials to counter the threat of radiological and nuclear terrorism. The HPGe crystals in these detectors must operate at cryogenic temperatures to achieve good energy resolution. We propose to develop an innovative, miniature cryogenic cooling system that will be ideal for hand-held detectors. High efficien ...

Surveillance systems record spatially and time-referenced sensor data, such as video imagery. With a growing need to monitor larger regions for longer intervals, there is a corresponding geometric growth in the size of the four-dimensional time-space surveillance recording. Tools that allow efficient exploration of this time-space are key to extracting value from the surveillance data. The critica ...