Award Data

In order to remain competitive in today's global marketplace, U.S. manufacturers are constantly striving to hold tighter and tighter tolerances on the parts that they produce. What this means is that the manufacturer needs to better control the machines that they use, and in order to do that they need an instrument that can quickly and easily characterize the geometric properties of the machines ...

In response to the increasing demand for better understanding of the manufacturing processes and the machining systems, a new testing standard--ASME B5.54 and a family of new testing instruments have been developed for evaluating the performances of a variety of CNC machining centers. Because of the advancement and versatility of the new instruments, test data are being collected at a much higher ...

The near-field scanning optical microscope can supply information on the shape and electrical properties of surfaces with nanometer resolution. The quantitative interpretation of images is difficult because of the difficulty of electromagnetic field solutions in the near-field limit. We propose to supply software to aid in this analysis. The finite-element programs generate two and three-dimension ...

Fire fighter burn injuries continue to be a frequent problem despite significant advances in protective clothing. A reason for this is the buildup of moisture in fire fighting garments as a result of sweating or fire fighting activities. This buildup of moisture increases the heat transfer through the garment and can result in scald burn injuries as the water is quickly heated. Currently, there is ...

Intelligent Automation, Incorporated is developing a new innovative approach to concurrent product-process development. The resulting system will also allow integrated development of production planning and scheduling, including external supplier integration. Our approach is based on the paradigm of autonomous agents. The work herein proposed focuses on improvements and extensions to the "Intel ...

A growing number of fire fighters are suffering third degree burns; this has led to questions about the adequacy of thermal protective performance (TPP) measurements for protective clothing. A new heat flux sensor, whose response approximates that of skin, will be developed to provide better measurements of heat transfer in TPP tests. This sensor will be used with nonlinear parameter estimation an ...

As fire protection engineering moves towards the implementation of performance- based fire codes, the use of validated fire models is becoming a necessity. Part of the validation process involves demonstrating model capabilities for predicting key fire environment parameters. One of the key parameters for estimating time to ignition and fire growth is the heat transfer rate to compartment surfaces ...

The storage photostimulable phosphor (SPP) technique has been demonstrated to be sensitive to ionization radiation. It is especially suited for detecting alpha particles since the efficiency is practically 100%. In addition to being able to quantify total ionization deposited in a SPP sensor, it also captures the radiation source distribution information in a digital image which can be readily ana ...

Critical issues associated with the design of a rugged, compact "real time" sampling system using photoconductive switches as the signal generator and sample will be investigated. The design concept is based upon an optoelectronic equivalent time sampling principle developed by the Principal Investigator. It involves first the phase locking of the temporal waveform to be measured to the optical pu ...

Production Products will develop an integrated, multi-axis preform manufacturing system that will fully integrate, hybridize, and automate the braiding/filament winding preform manufacturing process. This hybridized, automated system will provide significant process improvements and cost savings compared with the current preform manufacturing process developed in the Air Force ManTech Engine and ...