Award Data

Hemp fibers have been used in textile applications for thousands of years, but have been limited to textiles for home furnishing, rope, sacks, and other non-clothing textile applications. However, new treatment methods for hemp fibers to improve their hand, as well hemp’s general softening properties with time and wear, make these fibers attractive for use in performance clothing due to hemp’s ...

A new approach is proposed for high fidelity analysis of aeroelastic characteristics of integrally bladed rotors. This new multiscale approach for nonequilibrium flow path analysis will yield high fidelity solutions including all turbulence scales at a fraction of the computational cost of RANS. Integration of this advanced capability within an existing multidisciplinary, multifidelity, transien ...

Hemp-based clothing are excellent for outdoor active wear, due to high strength, UV-protective qualities, mold resistance, and excellent moisture absorption and desorption. While academic research on hemp-based textiles in the US is increasing, it has naturally also become an area of interest to competing countries. Specifically, China is outperforming the US in hemp fiber technological advanceme ...

Lattice Block Structures are innovative, periodic cellular materials whose combination of affordability, low relative density, and substantial strength represents a significant advance in the state-of-the-art of engineered structural materials. Lattice Block Structures in particular have superior kinetic energy absorbing ability that stems from the collapsibility of the internal cells. As a result ...

Users of additive manufacturing machines expect the highest quality when it comes to the mechanical properties of parts, the usability of the machines and associated processes, and overall machine design. The main contributor to the quality of the part is the involvement of process-related by-products originating from the melting process. To handle these by-products in additive manufacturing - in ...

High power semiconductor devices suffer from difficulty in dissipating heat and thermal stresses. Silicon carbide-based power modules, in particular, have increasingly challenging heat loads despite their high efficiencies. In general terms, the module packaging methods used to improve cooling (moving metal heatsinks closer to the die) also increase thermal stresses, and the methods used to reduce ...

Perceptronics Solutions and the MIT Humans & Automation Laboratory propose to develop a decision support system that creates cognitive bridges among subjective information assessment, naturalistic decision-making, and a collaborative net-centric decision analysis infrastructure. The objective is to provide an improved method by which a distributed group of decision makers can evaluate, share, and ...

The Micro-Factory/Nano-Factory will employ piezoelectric devices to realize a high precision, controllable micro/nano-manipulation fabrication/assembly unit that is self-contained and portable. The low cost unit will incorporate adaptable multipurpose Micro-Piezoelectric Microfabrication Tools, or tools, that can provide the miniaturization and efficiency needed as to meet the needs of commercial ...

Current laser-based infrared countermeasure (IRCM) system integrates a mid-infrared laser with a pointer-tracker (P/T) as a mated pair. The full protection of tactical aircrafts requires six IRCM systems to cover all fields of attack. Today each mid-infrared laser for IRCM costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars, measures about 9 inches x 8 inches x 3 inches, and weighs approximately 10 lbs ...

We propose to jointly develop a miniaturized novel chemical sensor system through a collaborative effort between IonFinity, LLC, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Imaginative Technologies, LLC. This field portable chemical sensor system consists of 1) a new and powerful detector called a Differential Mobility Spectrometer (DMS) developed by Imaginative Technologies, and 2) a novel “soft-io ...