Award Data

Successful completion of this Phase II proposal will fully characterize and evaluate a material for use in RF windows on hypersonic flight vehicles. Phase II will specifically examine the materials suitability through RF testing in X, Ku, and Ka bands and at elevated temperatures to 2000°F. The desired outcome will be a material with predictable, repeatable dielectric properties over frequency ...

In Phase I, ISSI will design and demonstrate a laser absorption-based sensor for time-resolved measurements of combustion fuel/product concentrations (H2O, CO, CO2 and fuel) and gas temperature within the detonation channels and nozzle exit-plane of a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE). The goal of this STTR is to develop a single sided sensor that plugs into the outer wall of the RDRE simil ...

FIRST RF will lead the Phase II effort and will leverage the system architecture of the MAINLINE system and integrate multifunctional SiGe integrated circuits (ICs) developed by The University of California San Diego under the supervision of Prof. Gabriel Rebeiz. The SiGe devices developed during the Phase II effort will significantly reduce the power requirements of the MAINLINE system allowing f ...

High-pressure turbulent combustion occurs in many combustion devices critical to the Air Force. Notwithstanding significant progress in computational modeling of these devices; several challenges have remained. A fundamental challenge is identification of reaction pathways and reactions in small molecule foundational chemical kinetics requiring improvements under these high-pressure turbulent cond ...

The research objective of the proposed work is to increase the efficiency of the laser return of a Sodium Guide Star Laser (SGSL) reflected off the sodium layer for increased reliability and applicability of the artificial guide star technique. During Phase I, we will demonstrate the concept of maximizing the SGSL signal returns using numerical simulations that account for the effects of atmospher ...

The Air Force seeks three-dimensional bioprinted tissue that can accurately replicate complex multi-cell function and that can be integrated with biosensors. To address this need, Spectral Energies in collaboration with Prof. Khademhosseini of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) proposes to develop an organ-on-a-chip system. The organ-on-a-chip system will be capable of accurately mod ...

The imaging vibrometer development will be based on a representative Directed Energy (DE) aperture assumed to be 30 cm. This effort will provide both DE and Combat IDentification (CID), modes for relative short range DE operations, and an ISR Combat IDentification (CID) mode for operation at extended range. A combination of analytic derivations and wave optics simulations will be used to define a ...

Locating objects that vibrate is a way to discern potential threats and locate targets. However, current vibrometry technology typically measures only the global vibration of target and cannot create an extended spatial measurement of the vibration profile of the target. These solutions cannot identify what the target is, nor can they locate potential weak spots on the target, because they lack sp ...

New, innovative laser spectroscopy technology will be developed for performance quantification and combustion characterization in a Rotational Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE). The effort will push the state of the art in tunable laser absorption spectroscopy to enable fast time response diagnostics of the extreme pressure and temperature conditions of an RDRE.

Metamaterials and photonic crystals are engineered composites that exhibit novel and interesting properties not found using ordinary materials. They have been shown to allow extraordinary control over the electromagnetic field, including molding the flow of energy, amplitude profile of the field, phase of the waves, intermodal coupling, and more. To achieve such control, a set of tools and procedu ...