Award Data

Use of motorcycles helmets significantly reduces the risk of fatality or serious brain injury to riders in the event of a crash, but riders often do not wear helmets in warm weather because of thermal discomfort. We propose to develop an innovative ventilation and cooling system that will maintain a cool, dry environment inside the helmet while also meeting applicable safety standards. The key the ...

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 fraction, size, and spacing of these voids are critical. It is importa ...

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. Unfortunately, current inspection technology does not allow these inspection ...

High brightness x ray sources are large and expensive due to the extreme thermal conditions produced when generating the x rays. Creare proposes to advance the brightness of x ray sources in the 9-11 keV range beyond the current state-of-the-art using an innovative thermal design that builds on Creares experience in high-heat flux thermal management, vacuum systems, and precision machinery. Duri ...

Hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death in combat, and damage control resuscitation (DCR) research has shown that plasma is a superior resuscitation fluid for severely injured, bleeding canine casualties. However, cold chain requirements make managing fresh frozen plasma (FFP) supply logistics difficult in austere environments. Limited supplies of freeze dried plasma (FDP) are curr ...

A semi-active suspension upgrade kit for the SOCOM up-armored HMWWV will be developed that will achieve comparable performance for the entire weight range of a GMV: 8300lbs curb weight to 14,500lbs combat loaded. The baseline performance requirement is equivalent handling, stability and ride quality as an M1113 HMMWV at rated GVW. A dynamic model that incorporates the semi-active suspension into ...

The MOCA project will develop a network-enabled DSP+FPGA-enhanced image-intensified embedded system for self-contained low-power monitoring of crowds in open and in complex urban terrain. The Phase I effort will develop new algorithms explicitly for crowd management, rather than building on the traditional intelligent video surveillance algorithms that are focused on isolated targets in motion. P ...

Current methods of transmitting low-frequency RF energy from airborne platforms involve antennas such as blades that are electrically inefficient and a place a large aerodynamic burden on the airframe. SOCOM desires a method of efficiently transmitting low-frequency energy (VHF-UHF) at high power levels from airborne platforms. The desired gain numbers (-2 to 0 dB) at these frequencies would requi ...

Human biometric recognition systems are essential in the automated personal identification and verification applications market. This market spans the commercial and military sectors to include a myriad of identification applications from secure entrance, to time card clocks, to bio-certified delivery systems, to automobiles that recognize their drivers, to money transaction systems, to weapons th ...

The single most effective method to thwart security threats posed by people with hostile intent is to detect their presence early. Unfortunately, large scale standoff detection of humans is difficult. Various sensors, including still and video cameras, have been designed and applied to human detection, however, to date a person is required to be in the detection loop since robust, automated detect ...