Award Data

Jet engine titanium compressor airfoils are susceptible to erosion damage ranging from a few percent loss in blade chord length in fighter engines to more significant erosion exhibited by helicopter engines operating in desert environments. The application of titanium nitride coatings on individual compressor airfoils have provided significant operational, maintenance and safety benefits for helic ...

The mitigation of mainlobe jamming is essential to missile defense radar performance. Applied Radar is currently investigating distributed aperture and adaptive processing architectures that promise a new generation of advanced radar performance. Our proposed program will research the application of these distributed aperture radar techniques to determine the mainlobe jammer suppression possible w ...

The design and development of phased-array radars requires the integration of solid-state components and adequate thermal mitigation within the array lattice constraints. The current trend is towards increasingly planar designs and a reduction in the array depth. The MDA SPEAR program is one example in which a planar T/R “tile” architecture is utilized. System-on-a-chip technologies such as Si ...

Long-duration wide-area surveillance missions increasingly are space-based. MEO orbits offer space-based radar systems more time on station, but require very large array apertures on the order of 100m in diameter. Achieving larger apertures with smaller, lighter launch packages and stable on-orbit pointing is a challenge that E-Textiles promises to meet. Textile processes can be used to achieve a ...

We propose the evaluation and measurement of single crystal materials to support performance prediction of cylindrical ring sonar transducers and bar transducers for imaging sonar. The project also encompasses the construction and evaluation of exemplar devices.

We propose the development of a detailed Cylindrical Transducers User Toolkit for the design of underwater acoustic transducers and sonar systems employing cylindrical transducers and relaxor piezoelectric single crystals. The User Toolkit will providing the systems designers with a simple way to project the acoustic performance for the class of cylindrical transducers and explore the design space ...

We study the problem of sensor calibration as it might be applied to a tactical UAV system where operability and robustness are paramount. A large number of airframes and diversity of sensor types argues for an approach that is low cost (exploiting calibration targets in the field) and applicable for various sensors. The study considers various approaches to sensor calibration and measurements e ...

We will develop "flexible sensing" techniques that will enable a single sensor to perform the functions of both a "seeker" and a "target detection device". One set of approaches will comprise resolution enhancement and other techniques to extract target identification and tracking information, as would be provided by a "seeker", from a low resolution / high update rate sensor. Hyperacuity-based a ...

The objective of this project is to develop a novel expander that can increase the efficiency of cryocoolers for IR sensors at very low temperatures and in remote cooling and across gimbal applications. Miniature Thermoacoustic Expanders (MTAE) that employ high energy acoustic waves generated with no moving parts at the cold expander to produce efficient cooling over a wide range of temperatures a ...

The proposed Phase II effort will complete the development, design, fabrication and hot gas evaluation of unitary, net-shape braided throttleable divert and attitude control system (TDACS) components. The program will demonstrate a low cost, thermally-stable, triaxially braided C-SiC integrated throat / plenum / exit cone structure for advanced DACS application. This structure will be designed t ...