Award Data

Control Theory tools and processes for analyzing the interactions of complex System of Systems (SoS) are lacking, specifically when sub-systems are independently designed and/or higher levels of SoS controls are applied. Integrating these sub-systems into the SoS, can result in dynamic interactions between these sub-systems and the SoS controls resulting in unexpectedly large deviations between ex ...

There is an urgent need to develop and demonstrate innovative control, design and analysis techniques to characterize the stability and performance of a system of systems (SoS) as a function of sub-system dynamics, network structure and control/decision processes. This is particularly true in the missile defense scenario, which involves a coordinated defense against threats. However, there is no e ...

In this research effort, GTD Unlimited will design tools for efficiently specifying, representing, and analyzing the interactions between control systems in System of Systems (SoS). Our approach will be to model the problem as an uncertain system and analyze the resulting models using control methods. Control methods can be related back to the standard Nyquist criterion for stability, ensuring t ...

DfR Solutions and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have formed a team of experts in solder joint reliability and gold embrittlement to perform a series of experiments that will provide the data necessary to create mechanistic reliability models. Critical to any application of these models and of interpreting experimental results is the ability to determine solder joint gold contaminatio ...

Gold contamination in Circuit Card Assembly (CCA) solder joints leads to brittle intermetallic compounds (IMCs), which is one of the major factors in solder joint failure. The conventional rule of thumb considers 3 wt% of gold (Au) as a safety threshold, which is not always reliable due to varieties of package platforms, solder types, reflux settings, operational and environmental conditions, etc. ...

Circuit card assembly (CCA) reliability is dependent on solder joints, which join components to printed circuit boards (PCBs). Board users strive to mitigate risks associated with gold-embrittled solder joints. Enig Associates, Inc. (ENIG), in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, proposes to develop a risk-forecasting tool for quantifying the risks associated with gold-embrittled sold ...

Combining information from disparate sensors can lead to better situational awareness and improved inference performance; unfortunately, traditional multi-sensor fusion cannot capture complex dependencies among different objects in a scene, nor can it exploit context to further boost performance. Integrating context information within a fusion architecture to reason cohesively about scenes of inte ...

Missile defense faces the challenges of rapidly maturing and evolving complex threats, possessing capabilities which require the use of all available resources to successfully detect, track and identify the lethal objects. Future performance will rely on multiple sensors such as ground and sea based radars and electro-optical and infrared sensors for target recognition. It is crucial to develop a ...

We propose a novel computational framework for discrimination that incorporates sensor data from observations of the engagement and from kill assessment (KA) that such sensors can provide. The KA information is combined with data from other sensors to improve the discrimination decision and to reduce the probability of correlated shots. Approved for Public Release 16-MDA-8620 (1 April 16)

The goal of this program is to design a lightweight optical bench capable of remaining stable under temperature and moisture changes, while isolating the precision optical array from vibrations such as engine noise and air turbulence. By integrating a customizable periodic stack in the bench, vibrations are attenuated more effectively than commercially available mounts. Additionally, the periodic ...