Award Data

The aerospace industry has been transitioning to the use of pi joints as an assembly technique for primary structure to reduce both the weight and costs of these assemblies by eliminating the cost and weight of using fasteners.  The pi-joint is a woven preform co-bonded between a skin and a stringer. While these joints are inherently weight-effective for highly loaded structural applications, the ...

U.S. Navy countermining operations can be made more efficient by acoustically confirming the success of neutralization events, eliminating the need to revisit the site with mine sensing equipment.  The goal of this project is to develop a small, lightweight signal processor that can be embedded in the surface unit of a sonobuoy to detect and localize neutralization events using a resident ultra-s ...

The proposed program involves the development of a novel additive fiber reinforced composite fabrication technology capable of supporting the design and manufacturing of lightweight, robust cylindrical structures.  Such structures (which have wall thicknesses of multiple inches, diameters in excess of 2 feet, and lengths in excess of 30 feet) are capable of functioning in a high torque environmen ...

An autonomous domain control system for US Navy surface ships that deconflicts, decomposes, and triages tasks in Hull, Mechanical, & Electrical (HM&E) control systems may reduce operator burden related to the monitoring, operation, troubleshooting, and recovery of HM&E systems.  A domain control system in operation that can automatically adapt to novel environments from actual experience operatin ...

The goal of this topic is to produce low density and high stiffness space mirrors. 3DFlexible has developed a new additive manufacturing process which incorporates fabricating parts via layer-by-layer printing using glass bubble paste (GBP) and sintering the parts into cellular solids. Cellular solids are structures that are composed of a network of solid struts forming the edges and faces of cell ...

Navy seeks a passive thermal management solution that can maintain the cryogenic temperature (30 K) for a 100 W superconducting system for 2 hours when the use of active cryocoolers is limited. Cu-based shape memory alloys (SMA) have the potential to meet Navy’s requirements. An SMA undergoes diffusion-less solid-state phase transformation, accompanied by a latent heat as a result of the first o ...

Inspection of naval vessels is arduous, time consuming, and risky.  Automated inspection systems would provide valuable information more efficiently than manual inspection and help prioritize worker effort.  There are no current UAS systems that can operate in enclosed environments. Adapting existing quadrotor drone to carry electronics for inspection has many hurdles for successful task complet ...

The proposed system consists of two types of antenna arrays, a low frequency vector sensor for coverage below 300 MHz and a high frequency circularly dispersed array with coverage to 20+ GHz. Both arrays are omni directional  with enhanced response across their entire operating frequency range. Both antenna arrays can handle horizontal, vertical or elliptically polarized waves. The low frequency ...

The proposed modeling and simulation approach aims to bridge the gap in terms of accuracy and cost between 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics solvers and currently available design tools. The Hypersonic Flow Analysis Tool (HyperFAT) will combine 3D Euler simulations using a higher-order immersed boundary method with viscous corrections to account for boundary layers. The use of the immersed boundary ...

A novel approach to moving Minotaur data (with its unique data model) across Line-of-Sight networks using UHF radios and across SATCOM networks using Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (PLEO), such as, emergent Starlink, MUOS for IP based low data rated links, and emergent S-Band.  The approach includes development of API translators for Minotaur data model to UHF radio data protocols.