Award Data

This Phase II project aims to assemble the key set of sensor modalities that are needed to reliably view the key process anomalies and properties of laser powder bed fusion. The research team will down-select from the Phase I sensors investigated and integrate the sensors into a sensor fusion software package that facilitates data collection and synchronization, and eventually feedback control of ...

Accurate simulation of nuclear power plant behavior is necessary for both engineering and training applications. An engineering grade simulator, used for design, safety analysis and operations, is characterized by high fidelity, computational power, lack of real-time capability, and user non-interactive environment. By contrast, a training grade simulator, used for operator training and education, ...

The composition of atmospheric particulate matter (“aerosols”) strongly influences health and environmental impacts, but there exist few time-resolved, long-term records of particle-phase chemical composition due to lack of appropriate monitoring tools. Needed is an instrument that is robust, easy-to-operate, with automated calibrations and data reduction, to provide operationally-inexpensive ...

"The next generation of very high field accelerator magnets (20 T or more) are expected to be made with high-temperature superconductors (HTS) along with conventional low-temperature superconductors (LTS) to reduce cost. The operation and protection of these magnets becomes very challenging particularly if the HTS coils are made with the tapes and operate at a much lower current than the LTS coils ...

To increase the utilization of electric vehicles, the US Department of Energy is seeking to reduce the cost of electric vehicle batteries to less than $125/kWh by 2022. To achieve this goal, the costs of cathode materials, which account for approximately 30% of the cost of vehicle batteries, must be reduced significantly. To address the challenge of lowering the costs of advanced lithium battery c ...

Direct Solar in partnership with Colorado State University's Next Generation PV Center (NGPV) and H. B. Fuller Company will develop a new solar module architecture and manufacturing process optimized for crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules that significantly reduces manufacturing costs and improves reliability. The outcome of this program will be a new c-Si module design, streamlined manufacturing ...

Plastics are indispensable materials for the modern life and global economy, but current practices in the generation and disposal of commodity plastics are largely unsustainable and causing severe worldwide plastics pollution and enormous materials' energy and value losses to the economy. In particular, plastics are a material of choice in packaging applications but they are currently designed for ...

The problem being addressed is the development of high intensity ultrashort pulse lasers, in recognition that today’s ultra-high intensity lasers are limited to repetition rates of < 10 Hz. Technical solutions are sought to enable the generation of high energy (joule-level) laser pulses that can be focused to highly relativistic intensity at high repetition rates (100-1000 Hz). The proposed proj ...

Neutron scattering is one of the most useful methods of studying the structure and dynamics of matter. These methods require large installations at national laboratories, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other facilities constructed or planned in the US and around the world. These facilities serve a large and diverse community ...

Separations often account for a majority of process costs. This is because all traditional separation processes have inherent weaknesses that prevent the system from achieving perfect (or even near perfect in many instances) selectivity. These weaknesses result in large recycle streams and require multiple separation units in concert in order to produce a product clean enough for use or sale. An a ...