Award Data

ABSTRACT: Busek Co. Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) propose to explore the physical limits of ionic liquid propulsion via development of new theory to explain effects of close packing emission density and to predict performance limits. The research is motivated by observations and tests demonstrating that emission from 2-dimensional porous surfaces yields order of magnitude g ...

GaN-based devices are the basis of a variety of modern electronics applications, especially in optoelectronics and high-frequency / high-power electronics. These devices are based on epitaxial films grown on single-crystal wafers. The single-crystal wafer substrates are limiting because of their size, expense, mechanical properties and availability. If one could make GaN-based devices over large a ...

ABSTRACT: Due to increasing communications demand for tactical mission operations force the DoD to initiative to migrate the existing circuit-switched, bent-pipe satellite communication systems to the onboard packet switched satellite systems using Internet Protocols. The new approach offers significant flexibility and performance gain, but there are still tough challenges, e.g., high bit error r ...

ABSTRACT: Underground facilities can be used by rogue governments to conceal command-and-control and to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, and are an increasingly important operational challenge to U.S. military forces. Our objective is to determine improved methods of detection essential to address this critical intelligence need. Activity below the ground causes seismic surface waves th ...

ABSTRACT: Given the results obtained in the Phase I effort, we are now in a position to advance to the next generation of High Power Phased Array Transceiver Systems. The new approach proposed here is to use enough elements in the phased array to ensure that significant wavefront compensation performance can be obtained with only piston commands. A system of this nature can be developed in two ...

ABSTRACT: LongShortWay Inc, Boston University, and Applied Communication Sciences propose to develop a dynamic multi-sensor learning system that can adaptively detect target types and activities and schedule sensors to optimize the detection rate BENEFIT: Improved detection rate, increase field of view

ABSTRACT: NextGen Aeronautics, leveraging past experience in generating stress spectra from static and vibratory loads as well as knowledge of gas turbines, is proposing a method for estimating blade stresses from multiple vibratory loads in rotating systems from limited manufacturer data from Campbell diagrams and strain gage blade stresses. The method hinges on utilizing 3D parametric generic i ...

ABSTRACT: Strong coupling in ionized plasmas occurs when inter-particle interactions result in correlation energies that are comparable to the mean kinetic energy of the thermal motion of individual particles. Strongly coupled plasmas are known to be present in a number of physical systems including ultra-cold plasmas created in the laboratory and present in the ionosphere, explosive gases associ ...

ABSTRACT: Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI) will develop an innovative system to measure and control the cryodeposit layer thickness that develops on cold (~20 K) surfaces in cryogenic radiometric calibration chambers. Currently removing the cryo-layer involves a lengthy process that warms the entire cryo-system to desorb the cryo-layer that incr ...

ABSTRACT: In Phase II of this research, Creative Aero Engineering Solutions (CAES) and its academic partner University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) will design, fabricate, and test a semispan model based on the novel aeroelastic models analyzed in Phase I. The objectives are to develop a physics-based understanding of transonic aeroelasticity near Mach 1, and to provide high-fidelity experime ...