Award Data

This SBIR/STTR project delivers an ultra-low power structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses autonomous, wirelessly embedded sensors to monitor and assess structural integrity in wind turbine blades. EASE features impedance-based active SHM, which is highly sensitive to damage like cracks, delimitations, mass variations, fastener failures and stiffness changes. Blades are the only wind t ...

he Storable Clean Ethane-ethylene Nitrous Engine (SCENE) is a proposed technology designed to provide upper stages and spacecraft with non-toxic, liquid, non-cryogenic, high-performance propulsion with an Isp on the order of 300 seconds. The propellant components are stored as liquids under their saturated vapor pressures. With the SCENE, nitrous oxide is used as an autogenously pressurized oxidiz ...

An advanced hit detection technology is needed for MDA that can report impacts at hyper-velocities and at multiple hit locations. We present a technology with a high level of performance that leverages decades of hit technology experience and utilizes existing technologies developed under previous efforts. Our technology offers a low latency non-interpolated direct indicator of multiple hit locati ...

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 ...

Understanding the genomic basis of economically important plants for growth time, crop yield, responses to drought and disease resistance is of critical importance to sustaining and improving food supplies for humans and livestock, as well as insuring sufficient raw material availability for industries that depend on plant materials, such as biofuel manufacture. Current computational methods for a ...

There is significant opportunity for energy efficiency improvements in the industrial and manufacturing sectors in the U.S., both from the production and consumption perspective. Higher energy density battery materials will play a role in both, through improved storage of electricity from renewable sources, the enabling of electric vehicles, and through the development of longer lasting, higher po ...

Bright coherent light sources in the soft x-ray region of the spectrum are useful for a variety of applications of interest to DOE in the basic sciences, nanoscience and biology, and for technological applications. At Free-Electron Laser Facilities, peak power output of the x-ray pulses is enhanced by using a mid-infrared laser pulse instead of a near-infrared pulse. The current front end for mid- ...

The feasibility for fusion as a practical energy source needs to be enhanced significantly by removing some of the restrictions that low-temperature superconductors put on the fusion magnet systems. This can be done by using high-temperature superconductors, allowing for much larger temperature margins, a higher magnet performance and less mechanical degradation during operation. There are curren ...

Improved ignition methods are needed for advanced vehicle combustion systems, in particular those that allow reliable ignition of lean mixtures in gasoline engines at elevated pressures. Laser ignition is a candidate technology having the potential to address these needs. However, despite more than 40 years of laser ignition research, the technology is not yet in commercial use. A critical proble ...

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) represent a growing segment of the U.S. passenger vehicle market. An increasing number of PHEV models are available to consumers. PHEVs are similar to parallel hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius in that they have an electric motor and internal combustion engine that are used synergistically to significantly reduce fuel consumption while maintaining a nea ...