Award Data

In battlefield environments, ballistic impact may result in the failure of military structures and materials, including armor. To improve the reliability and safety of military structures and materials, it is important to study material failure under ballistic impact in the design stage. There are two main failure phenomena related to the material response due to ballistic impact. One is adiaba ...

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells require a relatively pure, concentrated hydrogen stream, with very low levels of sulfur and carbon monoxide (CO) in order to prevent poisoning of the fuel cell anode catalyst. In addition, removing inerts and impurities (such as CO2) from the hydrogen feed to the fuel cell increases a fuel cell's electrical conversion efficiency. TDA Research, Inc. ...

This project addresses the Army's needs for a compact power source. The system design is based on state-of-the-art high CO tolerant solid acid fuel cells (SAFCs) operating at 250 degrees C and a thermally matched methanol reformer creating a 20 Wnet lightweight, rugged, efficient unit capable of running for 72 hours with an energy density of about 1 kWh/kg.

Laboratory investigations have suggested that acoustically or vibrationally inducing motion in buried targets can aid in improving target detectability through a characteristic response related to differential target motion. This gain is realized by adding an additional degree of freedom, modulation due to motion in the GPR return signal, to use as a discriminating feature. The AKELA team is propo ...

White River Technologies, Inc. (WRT) and University of Vermont (UVM) present this proposal, "Acoustically/Vibrationally Enhanced High Frequency Electromagnetic Detector for Buried Landmines". Among the primary gaps in our current landmine detection technology base is the ability to detect a wide range of buried explosive hazards including emerging low-metal mines and improvised explosive devices ...

The video surveillance industry is experiencing dramatic change with the move from analog to digital video. Command centers need to have coordinated viewing of multiple camera feeds at one time, and the ability to switch automatically between feeds and display relevant patterns. Conventional security control rooms include a bank of monitors connected through a switch to an array of security camera ...

Logistic operations for all branches of the military have historically been a guessing game relying on the intuition and past experience of the responsible officials. Unfortunately, this strategy often means that resources are deployed prematurely to areas that do not have an immediate need, thereby denying those assets to other areas that could have used them immediately. Worse, resources can als ...

Efficient laser beam delivery on a distant target remains a key problem for practical implementation of tactical laser systems. Since the conventional target-in-the-loop (TIL) concept is generally not effective in such operational environments, new solutions are needed. MetroLaser has developed an innovative approach for effective compensation of laser beam aberrations in TIL systems. It is based ...

Layer-by-layer additive manufacturing (AM) has been flourishing. The next generation AM will be hybrid which includes 3D AM printer, CNC mill, micro-milling capability, CAD/CAM, pick-and-place tool and many interchangeable print engines. In other words, this next generation of printers will be a completely computer integrated system. For the last four years, we have been integrating an industr ...

The purpose of this proposal is to additively manufacture (AM) smart structures with embedded electronics such as sensors, accelerometers, antennas, etc. The goal of these smart structures will be to enhance the effectiveness and survivability of the Armys ground systems. The use of additive manufacturing smart structures provides flexibility in the materials used and the functionality of the elec ...