Award Data

BMDO seeks development of novel low-to-no outgassing joining/bonding techniques for advanced composites. Explosive welding, employing actual chemical explosives, is a versatile process that can be used, in principle, with any two materials. In some situations involving difficult materials, explosive bonding is the only practical joining method. Typically, a layer of explosive is carefully coated o ...

Strait pointing accuracy for the antenna and reflector of spacecraft requires structural materials with excellent stiffness and dimensional stability. Carbon-carbon (C/C) composites are prime materials for space applications because of their unique properties. Current C/C processing techniques are very expensive and time consuming. This Phase I research proposes a new class, low-cost graphitic mic ...

Reconfigurable computing architectures based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer extaordinary real time processing rates in inexpensive programmable hardware. The key to using FPGAs for reconfigurable computing is to reformulate algorithms in terms of parallel operations that are easily implemented with chains of simple processing elements. Currently available commercial integrated cir ...

Rocket motors that develop greater thrust with lower weight and volume require-ments are an ever present goal of the BMDO. One method of providing this is through formulation of higher energy propellant mixtures. TPL proposes to develop a new method of effectively producing new high perfor-mance propellant constituents for launch, orbit-orbit transfer and station keeping propulsion systems. The p ...

Aluminum nitride is as an ideal thermal management material since it has a very high thermal conductivity and its electrical resistivity is comparable to that of ceramic insulators. Aluminum nitride has thermal conductivity five times greater than alumina and has mechanical strength twice that of alumina and beryllium oxide. The current methods of synthesizing and consolidating aluminum nitride re ...

Adaptive spatio-temporal filtering methods are proposed which are inherently suitable to utilizing many sensors and actuators to achieve superior control and monitoring of structures for vibration and shape control and damage detection. When utilizing large numbers of sensors and actuators, failure detection and failure recovery become important issues. The adaptive spatio-temporal filtering metho ...

The objective of this research is to demonstrate the feasibility of spray forming aluminum Metal Matrix Composites (MMC) in the solid-state physical form as a light weight structural material. It is anticipated that this innovative manufacturing process will provide opportunities to fabricate near-net-shape spacecraft and interceptor structures with unique material properties. The process called S ...

Phase I proposes to demonstrate an easy-to-operate, inexpensive room temperature neutron detector based on boron-doped diamond. The detector would produce an immediate signal related to low-level neutron irradiation. The concept exploits the high neutron absorption cross section of B-10, which results in excellent sensitivity. The charge carriers generated in the diamond by a neutron absorption ev ...

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InP based heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) exhibit proven potential for use in high performance digital integrated circuits and discrete microwave components. For high speed applications, it is desirable to utilize structures that have been designed to promote high levels of nonequilibrium electron transport as this allows realization of higher electron velocities than possible for diffus ...