Award Data

The design of future hypersonic vehicles requires detailed understanding of flow regimes ranging from rarefied to continuum. Hypervelocity flows are characterized by high temperatures, real gas effects, nonequilibrium chemistry, and ionization. The goal of this project is to develop unified kinetic/continuum solution methods with automatic domain decomposition for a wide range of Air Force applic ...

The Phase II effort will be to clearly demonstrate the feasibility and build a prototype of a noncontact, high-quality holographic polarimetry system with pixel level depth and Mueller matrix information with a user-friendly interface to image and display this data. The measurements of each data product will be validated with trusted truth samples. The system will be reproducible and will have a d ...

ABSTRACT: For this Phase II STTR effort, Prime Photonics and Virginia Tech propose to demonstrate a fully packaged hybrid photovoltaic/magneto-thermoelectric (PV/MTG) panel with improved energy conversion efficiency designed for solar powered air vehicles. In addition to acting as an active thermal backplane for the PV, the MTG is designed to maximize thermal to electrical conversion from the av ...

Aurora and Georgia Tech’s Phase I efforts demonstrated the feasibility of a partially distributed control scheme with separate controllers on the engine core and fan, where the controllers are linked by a supervisory controller. This scheme is representative of the situation encountered in VTOL UAV design and the design of new turbo-props and variable pitch turbofans by the large commercial gas ...

Aurora and Georgia Tech"s Phase I efforts demonstrated the feasibility of a partially distributed control scheme with separate controllers on the engine core and fan, where the controllers are linked by a supervisory controller. This scheme is representative of the situation encountered in VTOL UAV design and the design of new turbo-props and variable pitch turbofans by the large commercial gas t ...

Structural reactive materials (SRMs) or multifunctional energetic materials offer the ability to combine the high energy release rates of traditional high explosives with structural strength.When successfully formulated they can lead to light-weight, high-performance and hitherto inaccessible designs of munitions. The key feature of structural energetic materials (SEMs), perhaps even more so than ...

Jet engine disk components are increasingly subjected to higher operating temperatures. To meet the demands of increasing thrust and higher operating temperatures, a newer generation of nickel based superalloys such as LSHR, Alloy 10, Rene104 and RR1000 are being processed with dual microstructure distributions. Fine grain, high strength, fatigue resistant bore properties are contrasted with co ...

Nanoscale infrared detectors are emerging as a potentially powerful alternative to traditional infrared detector technologies. The University of New Mexico has developed dots in a double well (DDWELL) quantum dot infrared photodetectors which have a spectral responsivity that can be tuned by controlling the bias voltage applied. In this Phase II effort, Polaris Sensor and UNM would fabricate a g ...

EO/IR sensors can provide high spatial resolution images using multiple frequency bands ranging from the visible to mid-wave IR. EO/IR sensors have been very successful for terrain imaging from subsonic aircraft and from satellites. Imaging using these platforms has been studied extensively. EO/IR sensors can provide high spatial resolution images using multiple frequency bands ranging from the v ...

The goal of the proposed work is to demonstrate 100 kHz to MHz rate nonlinear spectroscopy for measurements of molecular energy distributions, energy transfer, major species, and temperature in transient combusting and nonequilibrium flows. This will be accomplished, in part, by extending burst-mode laser technology to the fs/ps regime for three-orders of magnitude higher probe-pulse energy at MHz ...