Award Data

The Air Force Phase I STTR program would develop and demonstrate high temperature version of ‘sensor skins’ capable of multi-axis flow characterization on air breathing hypersonic engines. This would build upon NanoSonic’s successful demonstration of Metal Rubber™ transducer materials for the measurement of flow-induced skin friction and pressure at low temperatures and transonic and super ...

Accurate and timely surveillance of objects in the near-Earth space environment is becoming increasingly critical to US national security. One of the main difficulties in this domain is efficiently and accurately modeling trajectories of the vast number of objects in orbit around the Earth. The orbital trajectory of a single object is typically modeled as a second-order system of equations which ...

Space surveillance is the component of space situational awareness focused on the detection of resident space objects (RSOs) and the use of multisource data to track and identify space objects. While the propagation of the states of RSOs has been investigated extensively over the last fifty years, the correct propagation of their covariance or the more general (non-Gaussian) probability distribut ...

A mathematical framework for detection and classification of weak, distributed patterns on computer networks is proposed. The framework will provide rigorous methods for understanding performance bounds and optimality of intrusion detection methods, while also providing concrete and implementable algorithms. The algorithms will find immediate application in cyber-security efforts, as well as mor ...

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are critical elements in electrical, water, oil/gas, and manufacturing services involving supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), distributed control systems (DCS), and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). These systems allow operators to monitor sensor data and remotely control field devices. Initially, these devices were designed for closed-network or ...

Prime Research and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte propose to devevelop space-variant nano-optical elements to integrate passive spectral and polarization filters directly into infrared focal plane arrays. This novel technology will enable multi-mode detection by allowing pixels to be uniquely tuned for wavelength and polarization across a focal plane array using a simple fabricatio ...

Conversion of sunlight to chemical fuels by artificial photosynthesis has been a long-sought goal. The major goal of the proposed effort is to develop a novel fuel-generating (e.g., hydrogen) photolytic device, which consists of a semiconductor nanowire decorated with metal nanoparticles. The project targets a low-cost technology by fabricating and utilizing the nanowire-nanoparticle conjugate de ...

We propose to develop a commercial weakly ionized plasma modeling capability based off of Tech-X’s high energy density plasma fluid code TxFluids. The new additions will be able to be used to model hypersonic vehicle physics including shock waves, plasma chemistry and innovative techniques for blackout mitigation and hypersonic vehicle control through the application of electric and/or magnetic ...

We will develop a new infrared (IR) radiation sensor technology, which will allow the development of arrays of a new class of multi-mode thermal microbolometer detector. This technology will allow radiation detection from the near-IR to long-wave IR, a capability that is absent in competing detectors. Amorphous silicon and vanadium dioxide has been the dominant materials used for infrared light ...

Quantitative predictions of reactive flow dynamics from large-scale simulations of Liquid Rocket Engines (LRE) appear to be model dependent. Relationships and coupling among the dominant mechanisms most responsible for destabilization are obscured by the complexities of the model and subtle consequences of inherent ad hoc approximations not supported by mathematical rationale. The reliability of ...