Award Data

THIS EFFORT WILL ENHANCE THE CAPABILITY OF THE AIR FORCE PARABOLIZED NAVIER STOKES CODE (AFWAL PNS CODE) TO PREDICT SKIN FRICTION AND HEAT TRANSFER TO HIGH SPEED FLIGHT VEHICLES. THE CURRENT PREDICTION TECHNIQUES REQUIRE EXTREMELY ACCURATE CALCULATIONS OF VELOCITY AND TEMPERATURE IN THE VICINITY OF THE WALL. THE EFFORT HERE WILL REPLACE THIS PROCEDURE BY USING INTEGRAL MOMENTUM AND ENERGY EQUATION ...

Accurate real-time microbial monitoring of water environment is of paramount importance to crew health as well as to ensure proper functioning and control of the life support system during space exploration. The existing methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the devices used are bulky, consumable-hungry, and ill-suited for spacecraft deployment. We propose to develop and demonstrate ...

THE OVERALL CYCLE EFFICIENCY (HENCE, INPUT POWER REQUIREMENTS) OF REVERSE-BRAYTON CRYOCOOLERS FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS IS HIGHLY SENSITIVE TO THE THERMAL EFFECTIVENESS OF THE HEAT EXCHANGERS. APPLICATIONS FOR THESE CRYOCOOLERS IN SPACE DICTATE THAT THESE HEAT EXCHANGERS BE AS SMALL AND LIGHT AS POSSIBLE. TO DATE, ONLYHEAT EXCHANGERS EMPLOYING ORGANIC MATERIALS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO ACHIEVE THE HIGH THER ...

Current drug discovery and development efforts are severely limited by expensive animal trials and oversimplified in vitro models. Results obtained from in vitro models are not predictive of in vivo toxicity owing to significant difference from the in vivo physiological conditions. In this context, we propose to develop and demonstrate a novel microfluidic device that reproduces the physiological ...

For lunar-based fission power systems that will support In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) or Mars robotic and manned missions, power requirements may vary from 10s to 100s of kWe to support initial human missions and longer term lunar bases. Due to the large amounts of waste heat generated by these systems, a key consideration is the development of lightweight, highly efficient heat rejection s ...

For a number of years Creare has developed, fabricated, and tested highly miniaturized, high vacuum pumps specifically designed for mass spectrometers used on NASA Mars missions. These pumps would also be useful on other missions to planets and satellites with atmosphere, such as Titan, as well as terrestrial applications on Earth. In order to allow these high vacuum pumps to operate in high-pr ...

The goal of this SBIR project is to develop a predictive computational tool for the aerothermal environment around ablation-cooled hypersonic atmospheric entry vehicles. This tool is based on coupling the relevant physics models to the LeMANS code for hypersonic flows and to the MOPAR code for material response, both developed by the University of Michigan. In Phase I of this project, we developed ...

Increases in amount and diversity of high-throughput data presents tremendous organizational and analysis challenges to researchers. Our objective in this effort is to address these challenges by designing and implementing a database management system (cipherDB) for the storage, management, analysis, and visualization of diverse biological data types. The Phase I design and implementation of ciphe ...

Environmental control systems for manned lunar and planetary bases will require condensing heat exchangers to control humidity in manned modules. Condensing surfaces must be hydrophilic to ensure efficient operation and biocidal to prevent growth of microbes in the moist, condensing environment. The coatings must be extremely stable and adhere to the condensing surface for many years. We propos ...

Accurate estimates of the vibroacoustic loading placed on space vehicles and payloads during launch require knowledge of the rocket noise source properties. Given the extreme nature of acoustic environments near the plume, data sufficient to characterize the noise source region have been difficult to acquire. Without these data, structures may be designed to handle insufficient or excessive vibroa ...