Award Data

When many Lithium-ion battery cells are integrated into a large pack, the possible outcomes resulting from individual cell faults are complex and difficult to predict. Consequently, there is great interest in developing design tools to aid in the optimization of pack performance as well as to understand and mitigate the effects of individual cell failures from propagating to other cells or even th ...

Generator and motor systems with high power density are needed as watercraft, aircraft, and land vehicles evolve toward more electric designs. In response, we propose to develop a system that operates at extremely high speed to provide ultra-high power density. The resulting system will be compact, lightweight, efficient, robust, and reliable. Our team is ideal for this project because we have foc ...

Northwest UAV Propulsion Systems proposes using our purpose built heavy fuel engine designed and built in the USA for small unmanned aerial systems in the tier 2 & 3 class. We will be adding a lightweight ceramic material set combined with FEA (Finite Element Analysis) and heavy fuel atomizer (IRAD Project) to create a lightweight engine for a SUAS or STUAS class UAVs. The Ceramic material set is ...

There are many efforts underway to develop distributed shipboard health monitoring sensors. These devices face strong opposition by fleet maintainers unless the requirements for power supply cabling and/or battery maintenance are eliminated. Consequently, methods for harvesting energy from local environmental conditions using heat, solar, and vibration are of great interest. As opposed to piezoele ...

The presence of noise in piping systems often serves as an early warning of mechanical problems such as faulty or cavitating pumps and valves, or boiling in cooling lines. Additionally, in many Naval environments, especially submarines, minimizing noise radiated from vibrating pipes is highly desirable. The ability to quantify the sound pressure level in fluid-filled pipes with an external sensor ...

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power systems offer an attractive approach for compact, simple, and reliable energy conversion needed in applications such as portable power systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. A key challenge with TPV energy systems is achieving a high-energy conversion efficiency, and one of the critical aspects of the energy conversion process is creating spectral emissions from the h ...

Mentis Sciences, Inc. and the University of New Hampshire will continue the design work started in Phase I of the program to develop an ultra-lightweight modular electronics enclosure. During the Phase I effort, a concept for the enclosure was developed, and preliminary structural and thermal analysis was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept. At the conclusion of Phase I, the pr ...

The performance of modern combustion systems used in propulsion devices (e.g., gas turbine main combustors, augmentors, rockets, etc.) is largely dependent on the mixing of fuel and oxidizer (e.g., compressor air, vitiated air, and oxygen). This mixing process, usually involving a liquid jet emanating into a gaseous flow followed by subsequent breakup and atomization, is critically important to ma ...

Legacy power distribution cables will not be able to meet the future requirements of Navy electric ships. While power distribution systems employing high temperature superconductors (HTS) have the potential to meet this need, further development work is required to improve the performance and increase the technology readiness level of key system components. The proposed work focuses on the current ...

Future military communication systems will utilize advanced superconductor digital electronics that will require efficient cooling at low temperatures near 4 K. We propose to improve the efficiency of pulse-tube cryocoolers by addressing the two primary performance limitations. These are operation in adverse orientations and performance of the regenerator at low temperatures. We will develop (1) a ...