Award Data

Composite avionics enclosures with liquid-cooled card guides are predicted to weigh less than current state-of-the-art aluminum enclosure. While there are many successes in developing composite-based Thermal Planes for advanced avionics applications, limited effort has been spent on the enclosure and significantly less on the card guide. The objective of this program is to design, fabricate and qu ...

The state-of-the-art clutch plate for the lift systems is made of carbon-carbon composites and is challenged to meet future life and frictional requirements. This clutch is very similar in configuration to an aircraft brake, but operates at significantly higher speeds approximately 8500 rpm. Generally speaking, the clutch plates are required to withstand a high shear load, resist sliding wear, wit ...

Manufacturing defects in ceramic composite matrix require 3D fiber architectures to reinforce and toughen both in-plane and out-of-plane directions of CMCs. Modeling 3D material properties and evaluating durability of structures made of 3D composites are of great importance in their application in advanced turbine engines. Alpha Star proposes to develop a micro/macro-scale finite element failure m ...

To support its use of MEMS sensors for vehicle health monitoring, the Air Force seeks to couple the harvesting of ambient energy sources with a micro energy storage device. Microbatteries have demonstrated their viability as a high density power source, but their short operating life limits their usefulness. To extend the operating life of microbatteries, ambient energy sources can be used to co ...

Malicious software is an alarming threat - recent studies show: 80% of corporate computers are infected; 23% of surveyed companies reported deliberate malware downloads by employees; and 75% of the top 50 Internet worms were designed for identity theft. We identify three threat scenarios in defusing malware: (a) actual source code is available; (b) binary code is available but not source code; and ...

Tools from the proposed program will help the Government maintain the upper hand in the “arms race” between software protection and software attack (reverse engineering). Escalating in the commercial sector, this digital war now threatens national assets. The innovative products help achieve two goals: 1. Perform the most demanding tests conceivable on next-generation software protection tec ...

The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of a process for producing ultra-high conversion efficiency (37-41%) AM0 multijunction solar cells from dislocation-free non-lattice matched heterostructures using a proprietary wafer bonding / layer transfer process. The overall cell fabrication process will yield a two terminal, series-connected four junction InGaP/GaAs/InGaAsP/In ...

We propose to design a compact, rugged and low-power optical system for use in rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) systems and to validate critical design features. AOSense previously has designed and fabricated atom-optic (AO) sensor laser systems and control electronics for a variety of terrestrial moving-platform applications. Innovations proposed in this work include: (1) laser sources a ...

Applied Minds, Inc. (AMI) seeks to investigate the application of a variety of techniques to enhance its current portfolio of technologies, based on previous research carried out at AMI and on work done for a variety of client organizations including the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). AMI’s technologies in this area provide a number of features – linking people, projects, documents, an ...

Terrorism is one of the greatest threats facing military and civilian personnel today. US military forces are increasingly exposed to deadly shoulder fired rocket attacks and improvised explosive devices in Iraq and other hostile environments. Such trends raise a significant security threat for terrorist attacks within the United States. In order to deter terrorist activities, US military warfight ...