Award Data

Nalas Engineering and Johns Hopkins University collaborated in a Phase I STTR program to study reactive mixtures of HI3O8 and nanocomposite fuels previously developed by the Weihs Group. These fuel/oxidizer mixtures are uniquely able to simultaneously produce heat and biocidal iodine gas, a combination designed to destroy biological weapons. The team at Nalas focused on evaluating conditions for p ...

This Phase II effort aims to deliver robust, reliable software that instantiates state-of-the-art feedback pseudospectral optimal control algorithms for flight trajectory optimization. The computation and real-time implementation of controls in nonlinear systems remains one of the great challenges for applying optimal control theory in demanding aerospace and industrial systems. From proportional ...

The pseudospectral optimal control (PSOC) problem is used for rapid trajectory optimization and provides the ability to re-optimize during flight. This technology was implemented on a Navy-relevant mission, and pseudo-real-time operation was demonstrated. The technical readiness level at the end of the Phase I program is a concept that has been shown to be feasible using analysis and simulation. T ...

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a very promising technique for rapid, low-cost production of aircraft parts directly from a CAD file. AM is especially appealing for complex parts that would be costly or impossible to fabricate by machining or casting. At the current time there are no reliable, cost-effective techniques to qualify the finished parts. Several government studies have noted this gap an ...

SA Photonics has developed a concept for our Multiple Optical Beam Landing System (MOBLS) to provide autonomous landing of aircraft in RF denied environments. MOBLS utilizes multiple, redundant methods to determine the real-time location and bearing of the aircraft relative to the carrier-based landing strip. By having built in redundant modalities, MOBLS provides highly reliable landing informati ...

We propose development of a software capability which, based on use of accurate and efficient exact-physics computational electromagnetics (CEM) solvers together with CAD-import (Computer Aided Design) and direct CAD-to-EM capabilities, will enable optimization of the properties of on-platform pRFID tag/reader antenna systems. For accuracy and modeling flexibility the proposed codes are based on M ...

An advanced Li-Ion Battery Management System for DOD mission and safety critical platforms. The majority of Li-Ion Battery Management Systems (BMS) for DoD aircraft, helicopter, and directed energy weapons are custom designs for the individual Aerospace platform. This leads to increased cost over the battery life cycle due to the requirement to maintain the production facilities which produce repl ...

Systems that operate in constrained environments depend on the acoustics in several ways. Harbor defense systems detect intruders (people and/or vessels) by either listening for their noises (passively) or by pinging on them and detecting their echoes (actively). Furthermore, such systems may also form the equivalent of an underwater cell phone network using sound to carry the information. The aco ...

The Department of the Navy has a need for the development of an additive manufacturing (AM) process for key vacuum electronic device components to meet on-demand, flexible, and affordable manufacturing requirements. The developed manufacturing method has a potential to reduce cost of vacuum electronics by as much as 70% as well as simplify and hence expedite production process of these devices by ...

Differential equations are widely used to analyze and simulate the dynamics of complex systems in the physical, biological and social sciences. Inferences with such models are challenging due to both statistical and computational complexity. Stan is a widely used, open-source, probabilistic programming language and Bayesian inference engine. We propose to extend Stan by incorporating solvers for o ...