Award Data

Active Control eXperts, (ACX) Inc. proposes to design, fabricate, and demonstrate a novel hybrid vibration ccntrol actuator system capable of very precise, controllable motion. This system will combine the advantages of a capacitive actuator with feedback control capability. This system will possess the force and stroke characteristics of a small hydraulic device and the bandwidth of electric moto ...

A mobile satellite communications link operating from vehicles on-the-move would provide significant benefits to the Marine Corps in the battlefield environment. The antenna should be capable of simultaneous and rapid tracking of two satellites while the vehicle is in motion over rough terrain, as well as providing ultra-wide bandwidth (C-band through Ku-band), medium to high gain, low profile, ru ...

X-ray imaging is an important technique which is used in variety of applications such as general radiology in medicine, astronomical observations, non-destructive testing, X-ray diffraction for materials studies and others. The ability of X-rays to penetrate deep in to matter allows investigation of interior components with possibility of real-time dynamic studies. However, while significant advan ...

Silicon avalanche photodiodes are among the most sensitive optical detectors available today. It 11as been shown that large area APDs are potentially an excellent alternative to photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in applications such as LIDAR, nuclear medicine, physics research and nuclear radiation measurement instrumentation. They can offer improved performance based on their compact size, solid state ...

New power semiconductor device performance is limited by cooling because high heat-flux cooling systems have not matched their increased power density. Therefore, real designs rarely achieve device ratings. American Superconductor (ASC) demonstrated CryoPower+, which cools a variety of power MOSFET topologies by direct immersion in coolants from 77-300K, with boiling where appropriate. CryoPower ( ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase l project is proposed by American Superconductor Corporation (ASC) to establish the feasibility of hermetically manufacturing small-filament, high temperature superconducting (HTS) composite wires for use above 20 K in AC magnet applications such as inductive energy storage devices. HTS magnet wire applications will typically operate under fluctuating ...

This DOE SBIR proposal explores cost effective production of non-magnetic substrates which will have a major role in the production of YBCO coated conductors. Deformation textured substrates offer a cost-effective way of texturing. The substrate will be produced using inexpensive raw materials and processing. A novel feature is the production of a solid solution alloy with an excellent cube textur ...

Aspen Systems proposes to develop a novel process to increase the strength of sapphire at elevated temperatures. The resulting strength increase will alleviate the adverse effects of frictional heating of sapphire windows. Frictional heating can initiate a c-axis strength loss, leading to premature failure. The Aspen process will uniformly implant silicon atoms through the entire window, as ...

This Phase I SBIR proposal is aimed at developing and assessing the feasibility of Image Processing Techniques to distinguish between submarine and non-submarine in Active Sonar Echoes. Image Processing Techniques have proven to be highly effective in detecting objects in cluttered backgrounds using other sensors such as Synthetic Aperture Radar, Infrared Sensors, and Lasers. The highly reverberan ...

This Phase I SBIR proposal is aimed at developing and assessing the feasibility P of a new approach to track discrimination for shipboard IRST sensors. The proposed approach combines two complementary signal processing technologies; single scan discrimination and an innovative geometry-based technique that accomplishes the equivalent of track-before-detect (TBD) processing using significantly le ...