Award Data

A unique type of air lubricated thrust bearing called a Wave Bearing is proposed to assist a rolling element bearing to carry the thrust load and to improve the bearing’s life when used in a micro gas turbine engine. The Wave Bearing technology will provide improved reliability, safety and life compared to rolling element bearings used alone, as well as to allow simplification of engine design a ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), in partnership with the Electrical Engineering Department of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), proposes to compute and reduce mutual coupling between E-field antennas (in Transmit mode) and SQUIDs magnetic loops (in Receive mode) for improved signal reception in SQIF arrays. For the computation of the mutual coupling in the near field PSI and WPI will use an ...

While there are established methods available in determining the fatigue life of critical rotating components, there is still room for improvement for better understanding and prediction of life limiting factors. Improved risk assessment of jet engine disk components would require probabilistic modeling capability of the evolution of microstructural features, residual stresses and material anomali ...

The Navy seeks devices that can provide power to maintain charge in batteries for shipboard sensors. The transduction materials proposed for most energy harvesting devices under development are either too brittle to endure significant loading or are too compliant to extract significant energy from the small amplitude vibrations present on ships. Terfenol-D (in a composite form) and Galfenol each p ...

A boat’s coxswain is adept at analyzing the wave environment, adjusting the craft’s propulsion system and control surfaces to mitigate its motions and reduce the chance of capsizing. There is a significant predictive component in the coxswain’s control decisions. Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) lack the benefit of a highly trained coxswain reading and predicting oncoming waves - existing au ...

Diver communication is vital for the US Navy while carrying out strategic underwater missions. Diver-to-diver communication and diver-to-vehicle communication can allow the sharing of information as it is discovered and also enable performing cooperative maneuvers. Emergency situations can also benefit from such communication. In addition to the communication capability, it would be useful to know ...

Scientific Systems and Brigham Young University will develop and test an autonomous helicopter landing system using vision-based navigation and control.

There is need for fast, easy-to-operate, and low-risk methods for mapping geography, velocity, and bathymetry of rivers. River charts can be nonexistent or inadequate because of changes in water volume, tides, sediment transport, flooding, and other events. This is a hindrance and a hazard for navigation and other operations. Currently, procedures to map rivers involve navigating surface vessels i ...

The U.S. Navy has initiated a program to develop the next-generation Joint Counter Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (JCREW) 3.3 system to detect and jam enemy improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The objective of this proposed effort is to develop the manufacturing processes and antenna designs needed to integrate a wideband metamaterial antenna within the ballistic ...

The promise of printed electronics can not be realized without high-speed manufacturing processes to drive the cost down for wide spread distribution. This proposal will outline the key points for rapid manufacturing of new electronic devices and systems and make recommendations for making them a reality. There are two main focus areas that encompass all the limitations to printed integrated circu ...