Award Data

The expected life of satellite Li-Ion batteries is determined by many factors, including thermal considerations, electrode chemistries, orbit and mission life, DOD, and pulse power requirements. First-principles battery model literature pertains primarily to orbital cycling at moderate DOD under isothermal conditions without variable power loads. Knowledge must be extended to encompass wider life ...

We propose to develop ultradense plasmonic integrated devices and circuits for optical interconnect compatible with the electronic circuitry. In our proposal, we will employ engineered metallic nanostructures that combine energy concentration by plasmonic lenses and retardation-based plasmonic resonances to even further boost the efficiency of materials exhibiting optical nonlinearity. These plas ...

The goal of this program is to develop devices that can detect small electric fields over large frequency ranges while being compact and power efficient. We propose an electro-optic resonant plasmon that enhances the electro-optic phase shift in a small volume (

The Barron Associates/Virginia Tech team believes that intelligent use of ambient riverine environmental factors together with novel drifter design and low-energy articulation is the key to enabling large non-overlapping river coverage. The proposed phase I research program focuses on (1) identifying key river characteristics which may be leveraged by riverine drifters, (2) fabricating a novel riv ...

Combustion stability is an important consideration in the design of liquid rocket engines. While fundamental modes of unstable operation in simple geometries are easily identified using analytical methods, recent times have seen these methods greatly expand in scope, applied in semi-numerical format to increasingly complex geometries and flow situations. Much remains to be explored in understandin ...

The leakage of electromagnetic (EM) energy into air vehicles, and particularly into ordnance, poses a hazard that requires careful evaluation. Under current guidelines, such evaluations are primarily to be carried out through extensive testing of items under possible field conditions, a process that can be both time-consuming and costly. The scope of this STTR Phase I activity is to implement a h ...

The gap between research in numerical methods and popular commercial solvers in CFD and related areas has been gradually widening in the recent past, particularly in the realm of high order accurate algorithms. At HyPerComp we are advancing a suite of high order codes based on the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) technique that can be used in electromagnetics, fluid mechanics, MHD and radiative heat tr ...

Radiative heat transfer is a dominant mode of heat transfer in combustion and propulsion systems as well as for hypersonic flow encountered during planetary entry. Solution of the Radiative Transfer Equation (RTE), which is an integro-differential equation, places stringent requirements on the computational resources as: (a) the radiation depends both on spatial and angular dimensions, (b) radiati ...

The United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is searching for a software-defined multi-channel radar receiver that would provide improved performance and added flexibility over currently deployed radar systems. In response, MaXentric is proposing a system codenamed MASR (Manycore Adaptive Software Radar). The MASR system is composed of a hierarchy of X-band front-ends, high-speed digitizers, F ...

Micro gas turbine engines with state-of-the-art ultra-compact recuperators could be a real game-changer for small unmanned air vehicles and portable power generation. A key enabling technology for these engines is a low-cost, high speed bearing system that has long life, while operating without either a separate lubrication system, or oil in the fuel. For this Phase I STTR effort, Xdot Engineerin ...