Award Data

Our objective is to develop advanced mediator architectures for efficient electron transfer in enzymatic fuel cells (EFCs) for low power systems. The proposed EFC will leverage ongoing research at both CFDRC and Michigan State University to provide a fully-integrated lightweight, low-cost, manufacturable, and renewable power supply, for various military and civilian applications. EFC systems offer ...

The goal of the proposed research is to develop advanced computational tool for high-fidelity simulations of hypersonic non-equilibrium plasmas. Octree adaptive Cartesian mesh will be used for automatic mesh generation and dynamic mesh adaptation to plasma properties, particularly important for hypersonic flows with strong shock waves, transient laminar and turbulent domains with large gradients o ...

Higher efficiency solar cells are needed to reduce solar array mass, volume, and cost for Air Force space missions. Intermediate-band quantum-dot (QD) solar cells can yield dramatically higher efficiencies than current multi-junction (MJ) technologies. However, several issues must be addressed to demonstrate manufacturable, high efficiency devices. CFDRC aims to develop: 1) High-efficiency, ligh ...

The objective of this Phase I project is to evaluate the use of novel Laser Induced Surface Improvement (LISI) techniques to provide surface modification to substrate materials which will provide superior wear resistance in extreme conditions. The specific application of interest is the hypersonic metal-to-metal contact that occurs at high speed test track facilities that can and has lead to catas ...

The design of future hypersonic vehicles requires detailed understanding of flow regimes ranging from rarefied to continuum. Hypervelocity flows are characterized by high temperatures, real gas effects, nonequilibrium chemistry, and ionization. The goal of this project is to develop unified kinetic/continuum solution methods with automatic domain decomposition for a wide range of Air Force applic ...

Next-generation turbulent combustion models must enable accurate prediction of lean blow-out and flashback for complex geometries, fuels and operating conditions relevant to the Air Force. Improved models are needed to better predict kinetically and hydr...

hazardous chemicals such as JP8, chromium, and byproducts of led-free frangible ammunition and to hazardous environments. Of the many dangers Airmen face, the hypoxia-like unexplained physiological events pilots face are some of the most dangerous and elusive. Current wearable sensors cannot decouple complex, interdependent in vivo response. We propose to develop (design, fabricate, test, and demo ...

The proposed effort aims to deliver a novel process model for carbon-carbon manufacturing to determine thermo-mechanical properties of these materials and their components, thereby enabling a faster cycle for material development for hypersonic platforms. The proposed solution consists of (1) requirement and functionality analyses, (2) a six-level model representing the key steps of the manufactur ...

High-pressure turbulent combustion occurs in many combustion devices critical to the Air Force. Notwithstanding significant progress in computational modeling of these devices; several challenges have remained. A fundamental challenge is identification of reaction pathways and reactions in small molecule foundational chemical kinetics requiring improvements under these high-pressure turbulent cond ...

Human analysts are presented with ever-increasing amounts of data to process, taxing the limitations of human cognitive capacity. This cognitive overloading leads to increased likelihood of errors and accidents, with costly consequences in mission critical operations. Consequently, there is a rising demand for more efficient processing of increasingly large amounts of intelligence. Transcranial di ...