Award Data

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 ...

The Barron Associates/Virginia Tech team believes that intelligent use of ambient riverine environmental factors together with novel drifter design and low-energy articulation is the key to enabling large non-overlapping river coverage. The proposed phase I research program focuses on (1) identifying key river characteristics which may be leveraged by riverine drifters, (2) fabricating a novel riv ...

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 ...

Micro gas turbine engines with state-of-the-art ultra-compact recuperators could be a real game-changer for small unmanned air vehicles and portable power generation. A key enabling technology for these engines is a low-cost, high speed bearing system that has long life, while operating without either a separate lubrication system, or oil in the fuel. For this Phase I STTR effort, Xdot Engineerin ...

Stealth is a primary consideration in design and operation of ships and submarines in the Navy fleet. Noise in hydraulic systems and piping is one source of unwanted noise. A method to measure and monitor this noise is essential to controlling and eliminating these noise sources. With the assistance of UMASS Dartmouth we will present a method to externally measure the fluidborne sound pressure lev ...

Aurora Flight Sciences and MIT propose to develop a model-based adaptive health estimation and real-time proactive control to identify gas turbine engine stability risks and avoid them through control action. In this concept, the engine control system actively monitors sensors and actuators, compares them against physical models, and infers which components may be performing poorly and may need to ...

Prognostics and health management (PHM) systems are critical for detecting impending faults and enabling a proactive decision process for maintenance or replacement of avionics systems before actual failures occur. A PHM system is essential to enhancing aircraft systems reliability and maintaining a high level of mission readiness and affordability. Current PHM advancements are focused on aircraft ...

The Phase I deliverable will be a physic-based model which represents a CMC gas turbine component concomitantly at the material level and the structural level. This model will be probabilistically analyzed to account for the uncertainties in material properties and the uncertainties in the size and impact velocities of possible foreign objects (FOD). A ceramic material must display sufficient capa ...

We propose to conduct a feasibility study for utilizing broadband sampling of the diffusive noise field in a dynamic environment. In ambient noise studies, the ability to resolve a wavefield is proportional to its time-bandwidth (TB) product. In a dynamic environment such as in the atmosphere or ocean, the nature of the impinging wave field is changing rapidly so that only short time segments can ...

The research objective is to develop a fully functional computational method for prediction of the after-burning effect of different fuels in a wide range of temperature, pressure, and turbulence regimes. Achievement of the objective requires understanding and modeling of key phenomena including (a) post-detonation response of the fuels, (b) near-field coupling of detonation products with particul ...