Award Data

The development and implementation of new damage morphology models for concrete materials is critical to understanding their dynamic behavior during severe shock loading environments. Current constitutive models of conventional strength concretes do not accurately represent the behavioral characteristics of new ultra-high strength concretes because of differences in damage mechanisms during failur ...

New, innovative laser spectroscopy technology will be developed for performance quantification and combustion characterization in a Rotational Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE). The effort will push the state of the art in tunable laser absorption spectroscopy to enable fast time response diagnostics of the extreme pressure and temperature conditions of an RDRE.

This effort seeks verification tools and techniques to ensure safety and stability of spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) algorithms, particularly the attitude control system integrated with autonomy software. Advanced control algorithms and autonomy are increasingly necessary to enable responsiveness of fleets of vehicles to attitude constraints and object avoidance. Verus Researc ...

Locating objects that vibrate is a way to discern potential threats and locate targets. However, current vibrometry technology typically measures only the global vibration of target and cannot create an extended spatial measurement of the vibration profile of the target. These solutions cannot identify what the target is, nor can they locate potential weak spots on the target, because they lack sp ...

We propose a three-dimensional imaging approach based on digital holography. Our approach is based on frequency diversity using a single chirped pulse instead of a train of pulses with different frequencies. Our approach promises to mitigate most of the issues limiting the performance of current methods and offer additional enabling capabilities that will improve target identification and tracking ...

Tau Technologies is teaming with Dr. David Voelz and his research group at New Mexico State University (NMSU) to propose “Vibration Imaging for the characterization of extended non-cooperative targets�, which employs dual-pulses in two different variations for vibration imaging in order to characterize non-cooperative targets at extended standoffs. One method is based on double-pulse ...

Efficient design, build, and test of an HEL system leverages modeling and simulation (M&S) to reduce cost and increase robustness. Designers use models to explore parameter variations and to estimate performance in conditions which cannot be tested due to physical or financial constraints. This provides significant savings in cost and time. Because live testing is so expensive, it is best used as ...

Target tracking and aimpoint maintenance are critical functions within a laser directed energy system. Traditionally, the optical sensor is a conventional camera viewing an actively illuminated target. In the absence of turbulence, it is still difficult to point the laser weapon to a specific hit spot when there are no features in the required direction. Further, atmospheric turbulence scintillate ...

We will deliver a new software architecture for scene generation named the Realistic Image and Neighborhood Generator (RING). Instead of being tied to a single tool, RING will provide interfaces suitable for a wide variety of image and scene rendering tools to run and interact with other codes. As an initial implementation of the interfaces, we will incorporate Stellar Science’s powerful, f ...

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 ...