Award Data

Aluminum as a structural material for naval applications has a number of advantages over steel, owing mainly to significant weight reductions which translate to higher speed and range attainable by aluminum vessels. A comprehensive study of research needs for aluminum structures conducted under the ONR program identified the key research areas, which included material behavior and fracture evaluat ...

Software is rarely written entirely from scratch. Typically, third-party commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components are integrated into larger software systems used both in the commercial sector and in critical infrastructure. Third-party components often come in binary form, e.g., as dynamically linked libraries, Active X controls, or plain executables. That is, the source code for those componen ...

We will demonstrate the feasibility of detecting tactically meaningful complex events in sensor input streams using an efficient pattern matching technology embodied in the Soar cognitive architecture. Our focus in Phase I will be on video streams, such as those that might be produced by unattended ground sensors or unmanned aerial systems. To reduce risk, we propose devoting a portion of our effo ...

Thermo-mechanical processes of turbine disks have been progressively improved to meet microstructural requirements tailored for advanced, sustainable high temperature performances. However, the chemistry of typical Ni-base turbine disk alloys is very complex, and yields a variety of phases and microstructural anomalies under different thermo-mechanical heat treatments. These microstructural hetero ...

Analysts are faced with the challenge of sifting through enormous quantities of documents, blog posts, communications, etc. to find deceptive behaviors. We propose novel techniques for efficiently and automatically detecting deception on large data with high accuracy by using methodologies from both stylometry and topic modeling. This combined approach will learn models of authors and will detect ...

Advances in electronically controlled injection technologies for diesel engines have provided a method to improve medium- to heavy-duty engine performance through increased injection pressures, multiple injections, and injection rate shaping. Although these injection systems have been primarily limited to larger engines, the ability to rapidly and precisely meter fuel for smaller engines is partic ...

In miniature gas turbines for UAV applications, traditional bearings exhibit a typical lifetime of only 25 hours due to excessive axial loading. Mainstream proposes to use a passive, permanent magnet thrust bearing to alleviate this problem and increase service life to over 1000 hours. Since this type of bearing is non-contacting, it can operate at very high rotational speeds with minimal heat gen ...

Electromagnetic launchers or rail guns are a key component of the Navy’s all-electric ship of the future, but they lack the durability required for repeated firings. TDA Research and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) are developing a tough, durable and conductive refractory metal coating that will protect the copper alloy conductors (rails) from the extreme heat and wear conditions inside the ...

The proposed project will develop three actively configurable metamaterial of relevance to both i) MDA’s high-priority and near-term need for stray light testing and diagnosis and ii) the interceptor functions of THAAD, Ascent Phase Interceptors, MKV and Space Systems. Phoebus’s configurable metamaterials aperture arrays will consist of single-layer metallic thin films patterned with light-cha ...

The ever-decreasing size of the electronic microchips and the ever-increasing density of electronic components required to support future Air Force platforms are creating the problem of substantial localized heat generation that can impair component operation. State of the art thermal interface materials (TIMs), that are used to dissipate heat from the source to the spreader in a microchip, are se ...