Award Data

Large aerospace composite structures currently require autoclaves and ovens to achieve desired performance which are expensive to purchase, costly to operate, and often limit part size and production rate. Ovens and autoclaves rely on convective heating which is inefficient, consumes large amounts of energy, and can be difficult to predict. Alternative cure processes using external heaters or hot ...

For this research program, Mainstream will collaborate with Colorado State University (CSU) to develop a nanostructured heater capable of curing aerospace grade composites out-of-autoclave (OOA). The use of autoclaves is the primary cost driver in composite manufacturing due to size limitations, long processing times, and inefficient energy usage. Therefore, the Navy is looking to develop a nanost ...

Manufacturing of structural composites traditionally employs autoclaves to achieve high quality parts, including high fiber-volume-fractions and low porosity. A laminate comprised of stacked prepreg plies are cured under a vacuum in addition to ~7 bar of pressure to prevent formation of voids, particulalry in interlaminar (inter-sheet/ply) regions. However, manufacturing composites within an autoc ...

Traditional approaches to accelerated fatigue testing rely on heuristic methods with thresholds based mostly on experience and engineering judgment. These methods generally do not apply to the multiaxial dynamic loading situations characteristic of most aerospace applications and often result in uncharacteristic fatigue damage and failure modes during testing. To overcome the limitations of tradit ...

In this project, Citrine Informatics and the ADAPT Center at the Colorado School of Mines propose to build an informatics-driven system to understand the effects of defects in additive manufactured parts. The entire history of each sample will be captured on this system; from specific printing parameters and details of precursor materials through to part characterizations and performance measureme ...

Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) are currently limited in the type of missions they can perform. Limited available power limits which sensors can be run or for how long, and also limits the duration and range of the mission. More efficient propulsion systems would increase the power available to the UUV payload. Improved power distribution systems and control systems would also increase the ava ...

In this proposal, a meta model-based scaling law will be used to represent each system component. A components meta model-based scaling law describes the tradeoffs between performance metrics for that component or subsystem as a function of its ratings in relation to the system. This greatly reduces the number of degrees of freedom for each component, and at the same time, retains the information ...

The Thermoelectric coolers (TECs) are solid-state devices with no moving parts that provide reliable cooling power compared to traditional cooling systems such as vacuum compressors. However, their relatively high cost and low coefficient of performance (~ 0.5) have relegated them to niche applications such as small-scale portable coolers and, have yet, to be competitive from an efficiency standpo ...

We propose to utilize a laser 3D printing manufacturing technique to realize an ultra high efficiency micro-channel laser head cooling system with high thermal load capacity in a small volume package. The new approach incorporates key technical innovations that drastically increase the forced water flow interaction surface area and the metal thermal conductivity. The approach enables conformal geo ...

The use of laser technologies and high-power electronics is rapidly being incorporated into tactical platforms for imaging, target designation, and range finding. Electronic equipment including lasers demand power from a tactical aircraft and produce large amounts of thermal energy as a waste product. Current thermal management technologies will not be sufficient for future aircraft as thermal man ...