Award Data

The low weight, excellent durability and heat resistance of ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) make them attractive materials for use in aircraft engine hot sections, where improved overall engine efficiency can be realized. Nevertheless, the interlaminar properties of CMCs must be well understood before CMCs can realistically replace metallic superalloys in engine hot sections, and no standardized ...

RDRTec Inc. and Lincoln Laboratory propose to establish the feasibility and develop the plan for an extensible analytic framework and methodology to address unanticipated maneuver encounter modeling, collision risk estimation, and ownship maneuver logic. With the widespread introduction of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), the nature of the airspace will change significantly over the next 10-20 yea ...

For Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to operate seamlessly in both the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) and abroad, it will be crucial that they possess a sense-and-avoid (SAA) capability that can ensure safe operations among maneuvering, non-cooperative aircraft. Numerica Corporation, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University, proposes to develop a set of algorithms to model the uncertaintie ...

Submarine commanders must make complex decisions to accomplish increasingly diverse missions. Moreover, concurrent missions may involve contradictory requirements. Planning must also account for the unexpected, including equipment failures, environmental factors, or external events that impact the ship's mission(s). Since all submarine operations involve a degree of risk, the commander must b ...

This STTR aims to develop a novel method for detecting and tracking growth of cracks in rotorcraft gearbox. Aerospace structures are subject to dynamic loading. In particular, gearbox components experience continuous cyclic loading, wear and eventually develop fatigue cracks. As opposed to most other aircraft components, gearbox components are non-redundant, so a failure can have catastrophic cons ...

The OASIS/WHOI team will design and develop a long-range under-ice acoustic navigation and telemetry system. The Phase I work has resulted in a much-improved model for under-ice acoustic propagation and an in-depth exploration of the potential for regional scale (200-500 km) acoustic navigation and communication. Phase II work will focus on bounding the design problem and selecting a suitable freq ...

Functional encryption (FE) is a new vision of public key encryption that allows access controls to be embedded within a ciphertext. This project has three main components: (1) develop an FE toolkit and FE-based key management service, (2) conduct essential cryptographic research to support deployment, and (3) explore opportunities for interoperability and integration for FE with existing and futur ...

Large aerospace composite structures currently require autoclaves and ovens to achieve desired performance which are expensive to purchase, costly to operate, and often limit part size and production rate. Ovens and autoclaves rely on convective heating which is inefficient, consumes large amounts of energy, and can be difficult to predict. Alternative cure processes using external heaters or hot ...

For this research program, Mainstream will collaborate with Colorado State University (CSU) to develop a nanostructured heater capable of curing aerospace grade composites out-of-autoclave (OOA). The use of autoclaves is the primary cost driver in composite manufacturing due to size limitations, long processing times, and inefficient energy usage. Therefore, the Navy is looking to develop a nanost ...

Manufacturing of structural composites traditionally employs autoclaves to achieve high quality parts, including high fiber-volume-fractions and low porosity. A laminate comprised of stacked prepreg plies are cured under a vacuum in addition to ~7 bar of pressure to prevent formation of voids, particulalry in interlaminar (inter-sheet/ply) regions. However, manufacturing composites within an autoc ...