Award Data

The nature and requirements of military operations lead to high noise levels, exposing military and civilian personnel to the possibility of noise-induced hearing loss. Otoacoustic emission (OAE) probes can assess the health of the inner ear by testing the response of the cochlea to various types of stimuli. The measurement of emissions at high frequency has the potential to detect noise-induced d ...

The US Navy operates a vast fleet of combat and support vessels with complex power control systems under the control and decision authority of human operators. Several current resources such as SPY-1D radar and Vertical Launch System (VLS) and future resources such as railgun, AMDR, and high energy laser (HEL) are energy hungry, exceeding current and planned power generation capability when deploy ...

Measurement surveys of full-scale ship airwakes are needed to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of these wakes. Airwake computations guide the design of ship superstructures, improve the fidelity of flight simulators, and save time and reduce risk during flight tests to define launch and recovery envelopes for ship and aircraft combinations. Current full-scale test techniques invo ...

Wireless charging of unmanned aerial system (UAS) platforms from the environment has the potential to greatly increase flight and mission times. A promising option is to use electromagnetic fields from the power transmission infrastructure as an energy source. EH Group and the University of Alabama propose a design for UAS wireless charging in the near-field environment of the commercial power tra ...

Electromagnetic launchers or rail guns are a key component of the Navy’s all-electric ship of the future, but they lack the durability required for repeated firings. TDA Research and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) are developing a tough, durable and conductive refractory metal coating that will protect the copper alloy conductors (rails) from the extreme heat and wear conditions inside the ...

The Navy has been developing superconducting systems, based on high-temperature superconductors (HTS), for future use on Navy ships. One of the challenges associated with superconducting magnets is the possibility of a quench, which is an event where a local hot spot develops within the superconductor that quickly spreads throughout the device, driving it into its normal and dissipative state. Sen ...

Complex software systems are typically developed by disparate engineering teams working concurrently. At the same time, software requirements are frequently dynamic, evolving even during active development cycles. Discrepancies between how software is defined and how it is implemented at the modular level can cascade into critical system errors when modules are integrated. More troubling is that i ...

The development of a catastrophic optical damage model for quantum cascade lasers describing instantaneous laser damage at high optical power levels is proposed. The model will be validated by comparison to experimental data. Based on obtained results, changes to laser design and laser fabrication resulting in an increased damage threshold will be implemented. The work will ultimately result into ...

While there are established methods available in determining the fatigue life of critical rotating components, there is still room for improvement for better understanding and prediction of life limiting factors. Improved risk assessment of jet engine disk components would require probabilistic modeling capability of the evolution of microstructural features, residual stresses and material anomali ...

Thermo-mechanical processes of turbine disks have been progressively improved to meet microstructural requirements tailored for advanced, sustainable high temperature performances. However, the chemistry of typical Ni-base turbine disk alloys is very complex, and yields a variety of phases and microstructural anomalies under different thermo-mechanical heat treatments. These microstructural hetero ...