Award Data

Proposal title: Rapid Assessment of Air Void System in Fresh Concrete Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume ...

Proposal title: Broken Rail Detection from Flashing Rear End Device Broken rails are a common cause of mainline derailments and a particular concern given the increasing use of our rail system for passenger traffic and petroleum products. The progressive nature of the defects provides an opportunity for early detection of cracks before they become significant enough to cause a derailment. Unfortu ...

The proposed Phase II effort investigates innovative finite element formulations, alternative structural modeling procedures and modern parallel computational strategies to improve the computational performance of high fidelity simulation software for modeling the progressive collapse behavior of blast damaged buildings. Its goal is to reduce the time required to compute and visualize high fideli ...

DTRA and other DoD agencies are currently seeking earth penetrators with higher efficiency for reaching deeply buried targets. Current penetrator materials and designs suffer from high levels of frictional drag, unbalanced resistance due to lateral forces and localized melting of the warhead leading to shape change and further instability. General Sciences, Inc. (GSI) has developed a method for en ...

More than 1,300,000 Level 1 commercial vehicle inspections - a safety-critical, time-consuming, often difficult and painstaking process, especially as regards the brake inspection component -- are performed every year in the United States, under all sorts of weather and lighting conditions. The current technology used adds to the complexity and error potential inherent in this important task. In ...

Laser Technology Inc. (LTI) proposes a Phase II SBIR research project to further develop a Compact Shearography System, Analysis Method and Software for micro-crack detection in concrete. There is an urgent need to detect and characterize fine cracks in concrete that form because of various damage mechanisms including alkali-silicate reaction, delayed ettringite formation or frost damage. Fine s ...

Orora Design Technologies proposes to develop electronic design automation (EDA) tools employing minimally invasive circuit design-based methods to mitigate single event effects (SEEs) for next generation Ultra-DSM CMOS (

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 ...

Development of the basic EMAT based transverse rail defect detector has progressed toward finished form, as envisioned in the original solicitation. This modification is intended to produce a demonstratable version of a 2-rail detection system with automated signal interpertation. The objectives of this work are to: a. Further develop the system into a functioning 2-rail detection system, as ori ...