Award Data

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) can be reliably used to perform on-line health monitoring of any type of structures with minimal human involvement. Current SHM systems can perform the functions required but are heavy, bulky and difficult to integrate with the structure to provide on-board real-time structural integrity assessment. Embedding of currently available sensors and electronics used by ...

To a large extent, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites have become the material of choice in modern aircraft design, due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion immunity and fatigue properties. Many primary structure components (e.g. bulkheads, stabilizers, wing boxes), where an aluminum skin was previously joined to a metallic airframe by fasteners, adhesives or welding, h ...

This project addresses the U.S. Air Force needs for single-piece, electronically dimmable eye protection device (EDEPD). Toward demonstrating the proof-of-principle, InnoSense LLC (ISL) in Phase I developed and evaluated individual layer components and their stacked structures. ISL also demonstrated the fabrication processes for individual-layer components, stacked structures and the scale-up pote ...

Palm-sized unmanned aerial systems (nano UAS) are emerging as a new tool for warfighters, first responders, and private industry. However, their small mass, fragility, and limited batteries still necessitate the use of emerging, low mass/power technologies to meet the full range of potential missions, including new autonomous flight control and collision avoidance strategies, structural improvemen ...

Exosonic develops supersonic commercial jets for airlines and proposes a USAF version. This aircraft flies at Mach 1.8 over 5000 nmi and carries 64-92 troops or 6 troops and 6 463L master pallets.

ATA Engineering, Inc. (ATA), partnered with a nonprofit research institution, CUBRC, Inc., (CUBRC), proposes a Phase II STTR project to further develop and continue validating a novel multiphysics simulation technology. The project team will implement the technology in a fluid-structure-material interaction (FSMI) software toolset that incorporates mutual interactions between aerodynamics and stru ...

Recent advances in the hypersonic system capabilities of adversary nations threaten the battlespace supremacy of US forces. Missile defense systems capable of extended high-g maneuvering at stratospheric altitudes and hypersonic Mach numbers will provide the MDA with additional flexibility in defending the US against emerging hypersonic threats. A key enabling technology for the deployment of such ...

ATA Engineering has developed a wavelet-based damage squeezing methodology for generating optimally compressed fatigue test signals that produce an equivalent amount of fatigue damage in a predictably reduced amount of time compared to the baseline (uncompressed) signals. Fatigue-critical signal characteristics (e.g., magnitude, phase, frequency, and sequencing relationships) are identified in the ...

Carbon-carbon (C-C) composites are used in the fabrication of aeroshells and thermal protection systems (TPS) in hypersonic and atmospheric reentry applications because they maintain their strength at elevated temperatures and have desirable thermal conductivity properties. Although these materials have been used in mission-critical components for decades, the effects of variations in processing m ...

Current scene projection hardware is challenged to simultaneously meet the requirements for high peak temperature (> 2000K), high resolution (2Kx2K), response time < 4 ms, cryogenic and temporally uniform photon flux. MEMS, Resistor arrays, liquid crystals, and photonic crystals all suffer in one or more areas. MEMS suffer from flicker and low dynamic range. Resistor arrays suffer from low frame r ...