Award Data

Development of a reflection control and direction device (RCDD) is proposed. This innovative device will progress the state of the art for propulsion of solar sails used to fly space weather monitoring sensors to sub-LaGrange point orbits for earlier warning times of impending destructive space weather events. A reflection control device (RCD) utilizes polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) mater ...

Drought is responsible for $327.7B in economic loss since 1980 in the United States and typically precedes, cooccurs, or initiates other hazards like wildfires or prolonged periods of intense heat. The compounding or cascading of these hazards routinely threatens the wellbeing and stability of communities. The economic impact from drought can be especially harsh when the drought begins rapidly in ...

The Missile Defense Agency is seeking innovative material and manufacturing processes for advanced metallic components for hypersonic flight systems. Triton Systems and their academic partner are proposing to develop the manufacturing and qualification evaluation techniques for reliable production of hypersonic environment appropriate metallic components at reduced cost and timelines compared to t ...

The Advanced Composite Structures group at Physical Sciences Inc. has partnered with the University of Virginia to develop a high temperature, ceramic syntactic foam that can be fabricated using additive manufacturing (AM) techniques. The AM ceramic insulator is compatible for co-processing with other CMC components such as aeroshells, fins, and additional hypersonic flight vehicle control surface ...

The DoD is looking for high temperature IR aperture materials to operate on high speed missile platforms including hypersonic vehicles. Current boost-glide vehicles require forward looking sensors in mounted flush on a doubly curved surface and placed in a forward-looking location on a high L/D body. Temperatures may reach or exceed 1800°C for limited portions over the course of flight. Aperture ...

Diode-pumped alkali lasers (DPAL) offer the potential for scaling to high output powers required for directed energy weapons systems. As power-scaling studies have progressed, increasing concern has emerged about uncertainty in the roles of higher-lying states and the degree of ionization, and their effects on device performance. Ionization by multi-photon absorption and collisional energy pooling ...

Physical Sciences, Inc. (PSI) will develop an Ultra High Apparent Temperature Large Format Infrared Scene Projector (UHAT-LF-IRSP) employing digital micromirror device (DMD) technology with structured quantum cascade laser (QCL) illumination, addressing requirements for next generation scene projector capabilities to keep pace with evolving threats and associated threat detection sensors. Of prima ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) will leverage its extensive experience in infrared scene projector (IRSP) design and harsh environmental operability to create a hybrid, foveated, radiation hardened IRSP (RH-IRSP). This design allows long-life, low-maintenance, modular and field-upgradable operation of conventional optical components inside a pressure, thermal and radiation environment similar to that ...

Reusing prior work is an adaptive strategy that allows an organization to learn from missteps and extend its most promising insights and capabilities. Reuse grows as a challenge as the artifacts of effort accumulate. For example, stove-piped or hidden data streams make keeping abreast of internal reports and reviews difficult for engineers. The challenges are not merely in the variety and volume o ...

In this work, we propose a heterogeneous computing system which can seamlessly integrate with the COTS part and provide design hardening against radiation without modifying the inherent design of the COTS part. In Phase I, we worked on the base design of proposed heterogeneous computing system using a digital COTS part as circuit under test (CUT). A machine learning based intelligent mathematical ...