Award Data

Inflight icing of engines and airframe presents a significant hazard to air transport, especially at lower flight elevations during take-off or on approach. Ice accretions on the wings affect the smooth flow required for proper lift. A thin layer of coarse ice can reduce the lift by 30 percent and increase drag by up to 40 percent. In addition, accretions can also reduce the air intake in engine ...

Surface temperatures in atmospheric reentry simulations range from 1500-2300 K, while stagnation temperature on the leading edge of a Mach 6 flight vehicle at 25 km altitude is 1817 K. Sensors that can operate at temperatures well above 1273 K are needed to provide reliable validation data for TPS modeling and design tools.We propose to develop a low-intrusive fiber-optical pyrometer capable of m ...

A high performance, inexpensive, airborne simulator that will serve as the prototype for a small satellite based imaging system capable of mapping thermal anomalies on the surface of the earth with a high revisit rate and high spatial resolution is proposed. The Thermal Mapping Airborne Simulator for Small Satellite Sensor (TMAS) will be developed to a TRL 8 in the Phase II and the space-qualified ...

The presence of energetic ions, that appear under high cathode current operation, stand as a showstopper to the realization of high power electric propulsion. Physical barriers such as the use of carbon electrodes (e.g. NEXT) are no longer sufficient as ion energies measured greatly exceed the sputter threshold of even carbon. Unless this problem is addressed, the prospect of inadequate life lo ...

A significant challenge in scaling micro-propulsion devices up to 100s of Watts as well as scaling macro devices down to sub-kiloWatt level is the lack of a compatible neutralizer technology in the meso scale. Sub-kiloWatt EP systems require cathode technology that can produce sufficient current while consuming little or no gas or power. The most promising technology for meso-scale neutralizers ...

This SBIR Phase I project will deliver a breakthrough in particle-detection sensors, by integrating an amplifying junction as part of the detector topology. Focusing on energetic particle detection in the heliosphere, the resulting leap in the resolution with which the deposited charge is measured results in far more precise energy and position measurements, from which the certainty in the partic ...

Our overall goal is to enhance the overall behavior health and performance of personnel on (future potential) long-duration missions. We propose to use a local representation of the Second Life virtual world, along with our computer graphics and artificial intelligence background, to make a highly interactive and responsive environment between groups of people that are literally worlds apart in co ...

Vesitech, Inc. has developed a totally new class of water treatment technology utilizing novel carbon based electrodes that have been shown to electrochemically produce advanced oxidation (AO) species in-situ in contaminated water. Depending upon the electrode formulation and configuration, the species produced include ozone, hydrogen peroxide, superoxide, and hydroxyl radicals, all of which are ...

Michigan Aerospace Corporation proposes to develop an integrated LIDAR instrument capable of identifying icing conditions while also providing air data sensing capabilities. The resulting Raman Icing Detection System (RIDES) will be an integrated air data sensing and icing condition detection instrument, providing a backup to the Pitot tubes potentially affected by icing, thus providing redundancy ...

Aerospace structures are often subjected to a broad spectrum of mechanical and/or aerodynamic excitations and, therefore, there is a real need for the development of a modeling technique which can be used for the vibroacoustic analysis, with high fidelity and adequate spatial and spectral resolutions, of complex systems over the entire frequency range. A dynamic system typically exhibits distincti ...