Award Data

Widespread damage in aging aircraft is becoming an increasing concern as fleet operators are extending the aircraft service increasing the risk of crack-like damage of aircraft components. Predicting the exact fatigue life is a difficult process and fatigue life prediction based on crack length measurements can be grossly inaccurate mainly because the appearance of these cracks typically occurs ve ...

Low temperature superconducting electronics have the potential to revolutionize digital communications from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), but must operate at cryogenic temperatures. Commercial cryocoolers are large and inefficient and are unable to meet size, weight, and power requirements for UAVs. Our approach and the innovation is a reverse turbo-Brayton cryocooler that provides refrigeratio ...

Safe efficient operations on the flight line or on the deck of an aircraft carrier require effective communications between members of the crew and between members of the crew and the aircraft pilot. Maintainers working on the flight deck or flight line are often subject to extremely loud noise fields (110 to 140 dBA), which makes natural voice communications challenging or impossible. Missed comm ...

Arrays of vector velocity sensors provide major system gains over legacy arrays of omnidirectional hydrophones in bottom moored and submarine/unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) towed applications. For example, the left-right ambiguity of legacy devices is eliminated and an array sensitivity null can be steered at a noisy source of interference making much quieter targets detectable. The exceptionally ...

In this Phase II SBIR research, Azure Summit will leverage substantial prior work and experience in small Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) software defined radio and radar to create an important capability for a Sense and Avoid (SAA) radar for multiple platforms, including Triton and Fire Scout. Azure is working closely with RDRTec and NAVAIR to develop this DREX technology in conjunction with the o ...

For proper evaluation of fatigue life, it is imperative to have sophisticated analytical and computational tools to analyze crack growth in complex, aerospace structures subjected to severe loading conditions. In this study, the alternating Symmetric Galerkin Boundary Element Method (SGBEM)-Finite Element Method (FEM) technique, which is already a proven and established technique in terms of accur ...

TDA will collaborate with Missouri University of Science and Technology to design and develop modified tags with dynamically switching impedance using adaptive beam forming techniques for better read performance of target passive RFID tags. TDA will collaborate with Applied EM to study and develop systematic methodology for positioning the modified tags. TDA will also collaborate with Columbia Uni ...

Tanks and enclosures were named the top corrosion expense on Navy vessels, accounting for $204 M in annual direct costs. To control these costs, there is a need for an automated monitoring system to assess coating damage and cathodic protection (CP) system performance. During the Phase II program, Luna proposes to complete a prototype coating condition monitoring system (CCMS) suitable for submari ...

The objective of this project is to develop high-fidelity, computationally efficient, physics based models for electro-optical imaging systems that operate from an above-water platform and are used to detect underwater objects. The goal is to accurately simulate the output of such systems and provide meaningful quantitative measures of their performance based on environment and threat specificatio ...

Recent events such as the fire on the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON have shown that communications and decision making can have a dominant impact on scenario outcomes involving shipboard fires. The processes by which information is learned, disseminated, assembled, and processed have a direct effect on where, when, and what kind of response is mounted by the crew. Current recoverability simulations, such ...