Award Data

Aerospace composite panels containing a core structure usually use an expanded honeycomb of either aluminum, NOMEX, or carbon fiber. These types of composite panels are often used as structure since the honey-comb core provides stiffness in the "Z" direction. However, they provide no thermal insulation value. Aerospace craft operating both inside and outside the earth's atmosphere experience envir ...

Currently manufactured aerospace composites absorb water vapor to varying degrees. This moisture absorption adds weight to the composite, however, it lowers the glass transition temperature. And, subsequently, the ultimate strength of the resin holding the composite together, in the total composite matrix. For aerospace vehicles that slip the bonds of Earth and enter the vacume of space, any compo ...

Solid-state electronic devices are often subjected to high voltage transients generated by switching, lightning, or electrostatic discharge. These transients can cause mission critical components to fail. Varistors are increasingly used to avoid such failures. The current varistor devices, however, are not well suited for high frequency applications and the increasing trend towards device miniatur ...

Inductors are essential components of military and commercial power management and electronic systems. Existing ferrite based inductors have reached a technology plateau that allow only marginal improvements in performance per unit volume. It is anticipated that the future inductor based technologies, such as EMI suppression, would require significantly higher energy density inductors. Fundamental ...

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Semiconducting lasers, laser arrays and other diode-laser devices for both military and private sector applications benefit greatly if used in conjunction with isolators capable of preventing reflections from reentering the device. This proposal describes an approach which can be integrated with laser/amplifier semiconducting material system, to produce efficient non-reciprocal magneto-optic isola ...

Passive broadband limiter with high response speed is a promising device used to protect optical sensor against determined attack. Lam Optics, Inc. (LOI) proposes to investigate the development of a novel optical limiter using commercially available materials. The optical limiter operates on the following principles. These are beam self-defocusing and total internal reflection induced by absorptio ...

This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I project will focus on the development of a compact, rugged, low-maintenance, cost-effective, all Solid-State Raman Image Amplifier (SSRIA) capable of amplifying low-level LIDAR images and producing gated images with potential gate times of less than a nanosecond. The innovative technology to be implemented is based on a solid-state stimulated Raman s ...

We propose to design and fabricate an adaptive beam expander that can be switched between two magnifications. Specifically, the beam expander provides diffraction-limited performance for laser radar beams with diameters of 1 mm and 3 mm. The adaptive beam expander is lightweight, and it has no moving parts. Because the beam expander is an afocal system, it operates on both outgoing and incoming be ...

Design and fabrication of a high thermal conductivity carbon fiber/aluminum matrix composite architecture is proposed which consists of discrete segments of functional areas that can respond to complex design calling for thermal management, low-expansion, structural, and low specific weight requirements. Composites will be produced utilizing Hollow and Planar Cathode Magnetron Sputtering Processin ...