Award Data

ABSTRACT: A major limitation to the wide deployment of high sensitivity infrared detector arrays in space environment is the cooling system. Major developments of active cooling capabilities in terms of performance, capacity, reliability and cost remains a primary need. Current conventional cooling systems are bulky and introduce additional vibration, heat, and power consumption. The goal of thi ...

ABSTRACT: Current automatic target recognition (ATR) training processes require expensive data collections or extensive, high fidelity target modeling and validation whose costs and lead times will limit the ongoing sustainability of ATR target databases. Radar based systems for combat identification (CID) suffer from sustainability issues due to the extreme complexity of the target databases an ...

ABSTRACT: CU Aerospace (CUA) and team partner the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) propose to perform research, development and demonstration of energy management optimization tools based upon existing UIUC and CUA expertise to expand the operational envelope of military and commercial vehicles (aircraft and automobiles). Such a subsystem control methodology will optimize aircra ...

ABSTRACT: We present a mixture theory based approach for process modeling in ceramic matrix composites. The model is derived from a consistent thermodynamic framework for diffusive-reactive flow of an anisotropic, non-linear viscoelastic fluid through a poroelastic body. A salient feature of the method is that the constraints due to stoichiometry are taken into account in a physically and mathema ...

ABSTRACT: There is an urgent Air Force need for an advanced cycle turbo-fan for UAV applications. Spytek Aerospace proposes a 2-ITB, 500 LBT turbo-fan engine equipped with ITB driven fan capable of running a generator, thru a second ITB in variable modes for additional power on demand and at high altitude. Northrop Grumman has indicated significant interest for a flexible high performance, turbo ...

ABSTRACT: Chrome-based coating systems are being phased out of most applications due to the toxicity of chromium compounds. Emerging coating technologies designed to replace chrome systems exhibit a glaring technical shortcoming, which is that hey fail to replicate the self-healing functionality that stems from the reduction of Cr [VI] present in chrome-based systems to a Cr [III] oxide layer, wh ...

ABSTRACT: For navigation of space platforms under GPS denied conditions, there is a need for micro-inertial sensors, with better accuracy and smaller volume and weight than the state of the art. We at Digital Optics Technologies (DOT) have been developing a superluminal ring laser gyroscope (SRLG) that can improve the accuracy of rotation sensing by nearly six orders of magnitude. Alternativel ...

ABSTRACT: Development, implementation and validation of a computational model to simulate combustion processes coupled with acoustic phenomena is critical to quantitatively predict acoustic waves inherent to gas turbine engines, i.e. screech and rumble. For a rigorous high-fidelity numerical model for acoustic combustion in engine augmentors, we identified several critical technology components. ...

ABSTRACT: FG Systems proposes to develop a Solid State Magnetocaloric Refrigerator (SSMR) which will provide a means of cooling infrared focal planes and other system components to their operating temperatures without significant consumption of cryogens. The SSMR will be a low vibration level system suitable for space-borne and air-borne applications, as well as have a very high efficiency comp ...

The primary goal of this proposed work is to develop a long wave infrared (LWIR) colloidal quantum dot (CQD)-based focal plane array (FPA) in order to significantly reduce the cost of LWIR hyperspectral imagers. In order to realize this goal, it will first be necessary to successfully fabricate and demonstrate the performance of novel LWIR HgTe CQD detector arrays. This will be accomplished thro ...