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 ...

Sivananthan Laboratories (SL) with the University of Iowa as the STTR partner, proposes to develop metasurface-coupled type II superlattice (T2SL) LWIR detectors that are predicted to outperform HgCdTe detectors. We developed in Phase I fundamental understanding of metasurface-coupled T2SLs, likely performance, and issues related to scaling up device structure to form arrays for LWIR imaging. In P ...

Multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization of hypersonic aircraft require automated adaptive mesh generation across disparate length scales. In the current state-of-the-art, geometry-aware adaptive meshing techniques are still lacking and the such geometric discrepancy can lead to significant errors in the prediction of critical physics, such as shock-boundary layer interaction and fatig ...

The effect of particle ingestion in gas turbine engines has become a significant problem in recent decades. Commercial and military aircraft and helicopter engines currently operate over various terrains with particles. Vehicles near the ocean, for example, typically come across sea spray, which contains fine particulates of salt and can lead to the quick corrosion of metallic engine parts inside ...

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) have received a great deal of attention due to their unique capability in producing parts with complex geometries. However, a major challenge limiting the application of LPBF today is the high variability in the quality of finished components. To address this challenge, HIDENN-AI, LLC and Northwestern University (NU) prop ...

Infrared imaging systems mounted to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are critical for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. While much progress has been made in miniaturizing the electronics/cooling package of these imaging systems, the optical components, which are typically large and bulky, can exceed size and weight requirements as well as increase the time needed to reac ...

A new optics technology platform will be developed that reduces the cost of dual-band short-wave infrared (SWIR) and mid-wave infrared (MWIR) optics for high-performance wide field of view (WFOV) imaging. The use of infrared optics has been increasingly adopted by the military, but the cost of wideband infrared optical systems remains a challenge. This study proposes to increase the available DOF ...

Outpost Technologies, the CAO, and EO Solutions shall produce UV-class flat optical mirrors meeting the requirements above using proven flight-heritage material, machining, polishing, and coating processes.  Aluminum metal matrix composites (AlMMCs) have unique material properties that provide both mechanically and thermally stable substrates for mirror systems, especially in harsh launch and the ...

Additive Manufacturing provides many potential advantages, relative to traditional manufacturing methods, for the Navy and other organizations in the aerospace community.  Although flight critical aerospace quality metal alloy components have been produced and flight tested, confidently expanding the use of AM in these applications requiring stringent quality control and repeatability. The vendor ...