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Briefs
Materials

Making Ultra-Hydrophobic Textured Silicone-Rubber Surfaces

Silicone-rubber surfaces microscopically textured in such a manner as to render them ultra-hydrophobic have been fabricated by a method in which breath figures are utilized. Originally,...

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Briefs
Materials

High-Temperature Resins for Composite Materials

Improved, readily processable thermosetting polymer resins are being developed for use as matrix materials in composite-material structures in applications in which there are requirements for...

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Briefs
Materials

High-Strain-Rate Tests of Epoxy/Aluminum-Powder Composites

Initial tests have been performed in a continuing experimental study to determine selected mechanical properties, at high strain rates, of an epoxy and of composite materials consisting...

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Briefs
Materials

Continuous Carbon Nanofibers for Structural Composites

A program of research has addressed key issues in the production of continuous carbon nanofibers and the utilization of carbon nanofibers as the reinforcing components in matrix/fiber...

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Articles
Defense

Data-Centric Distributed Application Architecture for Shipboard Systems

System architects design distributed applications leveraging computer resources connected by a network infrastructure: CPU-intensive tasks may be located on powerful core...

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Products
Information Technology

Military Training Simulation Software

Aptima, Inc., Woburn, MA, has announced the DDD 4.0 desktop simulation software for training military and civilian teams. DDD can model a range of environments, including AWACS air battle management,...

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Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Establishment of a Center for Defense Robotics

A document presents an overview of the recently established Joint Center for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (JC-UGV), located at the Army's Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Michigan. The JC-UGV is intended to become the central facility for managing all phases of the life cycles of military robotic ground...

Briefs
Materials

Castable, Relatively Stiff Acoustic-Damping Materials

A recently invented family of acoustic-damping materials offers advantages over prior acoustic-damping materials:

Briefs
Nanotechnology

Low-Water-Permeability Encapsulants for Acoustic Sensors

Afamily of improved encapsulating materials for protecting underwater acoustic sensors has been invented. These materials could also be used for encapsulation or protective coating of...

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Briefs
Materials

Improved Dielectric-Breakdown Property of POSS-Filled Epoxy

A n experimental study has shown that the AC short-term dielectric breakdown potential of material specimens consisting of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) nanoparticles...

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Briefs
Materials

Alloys for Nozzles of Hypersonic Wind Tunnels

Alloys are being developed for nozzles of hypersonic wind tunnels to be used in testing components of future hypersonic missiles, aircraft, and space transportation systems. The nozzle components...

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Tech Transfer Reports
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Piezoelectric Actuator Amplifies Small Motions

Engineers at Dynamic Structures and Materials, LLC (DSM, Franklin, TN) have used funding from a Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant to squeeze an...

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Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Fabrication of Lightweight Armored Doors for HMMWVs

A document describes a concept for fabricating lightweight armored doors for the Army’s high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs). Essentially, the concept is to reinforce high-hard (HH) steel armored doors used on some HMMWVs with a laminated, woven, high-tensile-strength glassfiber/...

Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Small-Scale Combustion-Chamber Testing Facility

A small-scale combustion-chamber testing facility has been designed and partly built for use in evaluating advanced combustor designs for future gas turbine engines. The specific model combustor...

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Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Some Advances in Reducing Drag and Suppressing Convection

Theoretical and computational research has yielded some advances in the art of designing active feedforward and feedback controllers to suppress thermal convection and reduce drag (by...

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Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Hybrid Three-Axis Vibration Reducers

Hybrid (passive/active) devices have been developed to reduce the magnitudes of possibly threedimensional vibrations coupled from vibrating equipment on platforms to bases that support the platforms. These...

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Briefs
Materials

Self-Lubrication of Hot YSZ-Ag-Mo Nanocomposite Coatings

An experimental study has been performed to learn about the physical and chemical mechanisms of self-lubrication of coatings that comprise nanostructured composites of yttria-stabilized...

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converters

Early steps have been taken toward the development of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that would incorporate photonic quantizers based on the technology of InP semiconductors. These photonic ADCs are...

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Briefs
Materials

Solid-State Viscosity Sensors For Military and Aerospace Applications

Embedded OEM application markets such as the military and aerospace industries are experiencing a growing demand for sensors that provide instantaneous and continuous process...

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Briefs
Materials

Nanoparticle AlxMoyOz/Al Thermites

Research on the microstructures, chemical compositions, and reactivities of thermites that consist of or contain mixtures of MoO3 and Al particles has led to development of a process for making thermites that...

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Briefs
Materials

Polymeric “Smart” Skin Materials

"Smart” skin materials based, variously, on polymers, dendrimers, carbon nanotubes, and/or other tailored molecular components are being developed for use as conformal coating surfaces of mechanical structures, including those of aircraft, to impart enhanced functionality to the coated surfaces. As used here,...

Briefs
Materials

Innovations Pertaining to Carbon-Based Materials

Some notable innovations in the design and manufacture of carbonbased materials have been made in a continuing program of basic research on carbon- based materials for use in propulsion systems of aircraft and spacecraft. The research has ranged over diverse topics that have included fabrication of...

Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Simulations of Stall and Stall Control in Turbocompressors

Anumerical-simulation study of stall and stall control in radial and axial compressor stages of gas turbine engines has been performed. This and other similar studies are needed because...

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Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Thermal Design and Analysis of a Rocket-Engine TAN Injector

A subscale thrust-augmented-nozzle (TAN) rocket engine was designed, built, and hot-fire tested to demonstrate the validity of the TAN concept. As described in more detail in the...

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Briefs
Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Thrust-Augmented Nozzles for Rocket Engines

The thrust-augmented nozzle (TAN) has been invented as a means of obtaining high performance from a rocket engine both during liftoff at sea-level atmospheric pressure and later during flight under...

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Briefs
Materials

Measuring Glucose Using pH-Sensitive Hydrogels

Sensors that exploit pH-sensitive hydrogels for measuring concentrations of glucose in aqueous solutions are undergoing development. Because the underlying chemical and physical principles are also...

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Briefs
Materials

Plasma-Spray Coating as an Alternative to Chromium Plating

Plasma-spray application of coating materials that include tungsten carbide has been investigated as an alternative to electroplating of hard chromium onto internal metal surfaces that...

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Briefs
Materials

Accelerated Evaluation of Properties of Polyphase Alloys

A methodology for accelerated evaluation of mechanical properties of polyphase alloys is based on digital representations of the alloys. For a given alloy material system, this...

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Briefs
Materials

Metamaterials for Advanced Microwave Antennas

A report discusses a research and development project that has made contributions to the art of metamaterials for directing electromagnetic radiation at frequencies of the order of several gigahertz. The next-generation metamaterials expected to emerge from this and related projects could enormously...