Award Data

OBJECTIVE: To provide innovative technologies and system components which increase the lifetime and utility of various systems within DTRA"s Tag, Track, and Locate (TTL) portfolio to combat weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The specific innovations sought under this topic are improved technologies that advance the state of the art for energy scavenging or capture from the ambient environment an ...

Military combatants face the threat of unconventional radiological, biological and chemical agents. Sensors that can detect the presence of these warfare modes, particularly chemical warfare agents, are vital to protecting U.S. forces personnel and their assets. Almost all of the currently available devices for chemical warfare agent detection require electrical power, wherein the power source it ...

Applied Physical Electronics, LC (APELC) proposes to develop an innovative Silicon Carbide (SiC) Planar Avalanche Switch (PAS) in which a small optical pulse is used to initiate a planar avalanche over a large cross section instead of the filamentary avalanche that is optically initiated in GaAs. The solicitation seeks filamentary avalanche switches based on the large amount of previous work in ...

Manufacturing of bulk metallic glasses (BMG) requires very rapid cooling and some recent work in laser direct deposition or laser engineered net shaping (LENS) techniques has indicated the possibility of producing net shaped bulk quantities of these materials. To date several groups have had some initial success in forming BMG"s using laser direct deposition suggesting that a careful variation of ...

Until now gamma radiation detection has required large single crystals of sensitive materials that are difficult to produce consistently on an industrial scale. In collaboration with a research group at the University of Texas at Arlington, Agiltron proposes to develop a new class of nanocomposite scintillator materials. The radiation detection characteristics of the synthetic nanoparticles in the ...

High-resolution scintillation crystals and crystal arrays are important components of current and future handheld and arrayed detectors (used for DOD/DTRA applications), and scintillation spectrometers (routinely used in high energy physics research, medical imaging, diffraction, homeland security, nuclear waste clean-up, nuclear treaty verification and safeguards, and geological exploration). Un ...

A new type of compact induction accelerator currently under development at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) promises to increase the average accelerating gradient by at least an order of magnitude over that of existing induction machines. The machine is based on the use of high gradient vacuum insulators and advanced dielectric materials and switches. The system, called the Diel ...

The team of Protection Engineering Consultants (PEC) and Applied Research Associates (ARA) will develop a fast-running methodology that predicts damage levels of structural members subject to the blast environment from high explosives detonated inside a building (i.e., internal explosions). The research in Phase I will focus on reinforced concrete slab components. The methodology will consist of a ...

Predicting the response of building components to internal detonations is more complex than the corresponding task for external loads because of the more complex loading waveforms which include multiple reflections in the shock phase followed by a long duration pseudostatic loading that depends upon room venting. Add the possibility of additional impulsive loading from primary debris. We propose t ...

In Phase I of this effort we analyzed the structural response of a BLU 109 during typical penetration events. Based on these finite element results, we proposed and demsonstrated a simple robust concept for a passive penetrator sensor that identifies the material being penetrated and also correlates strongly with its underground trajectory. Such a sensor would obviously provide valuable informatio ...