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Major concerns for implementing a practical built-in structural health monitoring system are prediction accuracy and data reliability. It is proposed to develop robust state-of-the-art structural health management (SHM) technologies to overcome these concerns. The proposed solution will be capable of detecting and quantifying damage with a high probability of detection (POD), accurately predictin ...

Aging and durability of aircraft in both the military and civilian sectors are becoming major issues as the existing fleet continues to age. Additionally, the increased use of composite structures in the civilian fleet, such as in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A380, make the understanding and/or improvement of composite durability, particularly durability of repairs, even more critical ...

Establishing human presence outside the protective cover of earth's atmosphere is a challenge. On earth, the atmosphere does not only present breathing gas, it also acts as a thermal buffer and protects the biosphere from harmful radiation. Shielding of humans from harmful radiation during long-term stays on an extraterrestrial body like the moon is a difficult task. Lunar regolith provides an ...

Any manned missions to extraterrestrial locations will require shelter structures for a variety of purposes ranging from habitat usage to biomass production. Such shelters need to be constructed in such a way to minimize stowed volume and payload weight. The structures must also be very durable and have the ability to survive punctures without collapsing. Ways of increasing available crew-load ...

The proposed Phase I program will demonstrate the feasibility of the in-space production of large aperture antenna structures. The use of a novel open cell foam, previously developed for NASA space antennas, will allow the deployment of reflectors at low cost and very low transport volume compared to currently used technologies like solid metal or mesh reflector. The use of a foam substrate also ...

An integrated computational environment for multidisciplinary, physics-based simulation and analyses of airbreathing hypersonic flight vehicles will be developed. These vehicles are among the most promising alternatives for the next generation of Highly Reliable Reusable Launch Systems (HRRLS). The proposed work will enable development of models with varying fidelity, incorporating the coupled dyn ...

In this proposed SBIR project, we seek to implement the Adaptive Chemistry methodology in existing CFD codes used to investigate the emissions performance of gas turbine engine combustors. We will demonstrate the feasibility of integrating Adaptive Chemistry algorithms to current CFD codes. We will also further develop the Adaptive Chemistry method to take advantage of species reduction enabling e ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project concerns the development of a multi-wavelength monitor that will provide rapid, real-time measurement of the average aerosol absorption coefficient in the parcel of sample air. This monitor will employ Aerodyne's proprietary Cavity Attenuated Phase Shift spectroscopy technology in order to produce a far simpler, smaller, lower cost alterna ...

We propose to design, build and test an optical extinction monitor for the detection of spacecraft cabin particulates. This monitor will be sensitive to particle sizes ranging from a few nanometer to tens of micrometers in diameter. Designed to utilize commercial off-the-shelf components, the monitor, once calibrated, will require no recalibration and only periodic baseline determinations, a pro ...