Award Data

Structural state awareness can be vitally important to a wide variety of both commercial and military systems, including buildings, bridges, vehicles and advanced sensors. Equipment required to provide this telemetry has typically been large and heavy making it difficult to incorporate into the desired environment. The use of a strain and temperature sensing technique based in fiber optics can p ...

With the advances in solid-state electronics and optoelectronics, ultra wideband radio frequency receiver designs are now practical. One of the consequences of these large bandwidth waveforms is the very high range resolution that results. Various architectures of receivers have been proposed for the ultra wideband applications, but most popular architectures among them are heterodyne, homodyne, l ...

Characteristic modes are proposed to optimize placement of vehicular antennas in the HF through lower UHF bands (2MHz to 450MHz). Characteristic modes provide physical insight into the currents induced on the vehicle and provide for placement of the antenna to excite desirable mode with increased efficiency. Computation of characteristic modes for arbitrary shaped platforms is documented in the l ...

Aurora Flight Sciences and the MIT Aero-Astro Department have been jointly developing the human interfaces and underlying automation for a planning system that enables a field operator to command a team of UAVs to perform operations consistent with expeditionary missions. During Phase II, these tools will be further developed and demonstrated as a comprehensive system including high-level collabo ...

AVID LLC and Profs. Neu, Philen, and Stilwell of Virginia Tech propose development of an artificial fish using Flexible Matrix Composite actuator technology for propulsion and control. This innovative approach to fin actuation uses structurally integrated hydraulic actuators to avoid the losses associated with conventional means of driving bioinspired propulsors, and more closely match the except ...

The primary objective of this program is the investigation of new approaches to achieve well-dispersed ultrahigh loading of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in structural resins for advanced composites. “Well-dispersed” means CNTs that are optimally dispersed for achieving desired properties like strength, modulus, toughness, and thermal conductivity, rather than uniformly dispersed CNTs. Phase I will ...

Photonic links and networks offer numerous advantages to analog RF systems including inherent wide bandwidths, a harness exhibiting a reduced size, weight and improved flexibility, and nearly lossless signal. Current all-electronic delay line systems based on microwave components suffer from high signal loss and dispersion as well as large size and weight. An efficient way to achieve true-time-del ...

Existing methods to provide cable orientation and array element localization in the Navy’s fixed and towed array systems and tethered unmanned vehicles rely on devices embedded in the cable itself, such as hydrophones, magnetic heading and orientation sensors, and accelerometers. These traditional sensors have power, weight, space, and EMI budgets within the cable that require design compromise ...

The proposed concept to be developed under this Phase II STTR is a novel ultrasonic measurement technique which will be used to determine the remaining life of turbine disks. The result of this program will be a field inspection instrument that will determine the fatigue state of a component under test. It will be able to assess the integrated pre-crack fatigue experience of the part and determine ...

The goal of this project is to provide a novel ultrasonic measurement of the onset of bubble formation in tissue to help counteract decompression sickness. This capability will revolutionize our understanding of DCS, ultimately leading to improved methods for counteracting the effects of DCS in divers and during disabled submarine rescue attempts. Widespread use of this important new research to ...