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Briefs Manufacturing & Prototyping
Advances in Fabrication of Nanoscale Devices
Some advances have recently been made on several fronts in a continuing effort to develop of means of fabricating electronic and magnetic devices having dimensions of the order of tens to hundreds of...
Briefs Manufacturing & Prototyping
Experiments in Vacuum Brazing of Titanium
An experimental study of vacuum brazing of titanium and of the effects of changes in brazing alloys and brazing process conditions has been performed. [As used here, “titanium” signifies both...
Briefs Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Simulations of Brush Contacts of Homopolar Motor/Generators
A computational- simulation study of distributions of electric current and temperature in brushes and slip rings in two model homopolar- motor/generator configurations was performed in...
Briefs Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Generic Miniature Airplane for Research and Development
The Air Force Research Laboratory has promulgated the geometrical design of a miniature airplane denoted the Generic Micro Aerial Vehicle (GENMAV). This design is intended to serve as a...
Briefs Physical Sciences
Measuring Skin Friction in Complex Flows That Include Shocks
A methodology for measuring skin friction (also known as wall shear) in complex flows typical of those inside supersonic-combustion ramjet (scramjet) engines has been developed. The...
Briefs Photonics/Optics
Miniaturized GPS Controlled-Reception-Pattern Antenna Array
A miniaturized Global Positioning System (GPS) antenna array is being developed for use on aircraft on which the room available for installation of this or any other equipment is...
Briefs Physical Sciences
Biologically Inspired Processing of Image and Sound Data
A report describes progress in a research program oriented toward developing artificial-intelligence capabilities for processing images and sounds in changing environments. This research focuses on extending the state of the art in mid-level processing of visual and auditory signals,...
Products
Silicone Cables
Cicoil Corp., Valencia, CA, offers Flexible Flat Cable assemblies for fighter and other military aircraft applications including targeting pods, fuel control systems, and missile gimbal and guidance systems. The silicone cables...
Products
Wireless Spread- Spectrum Radio
FreeWave Technologies, Boulder, CO, has released the MM2 small form factor 900-MHz radio. The MM2 measures 50.8 × 31.5 × 9.6 mm. The radio has a GAsFET RF front end with a combination of overload immunity and sensitivity. The radio is suited for advanced military equipment where space is at a premium, such as...
Products
FPGA-Based XMC Module
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Leesburg, VA, has released the XMC-442 Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA-based XMC module compute engine designed for signal and image processing applications, including radar, sonar, and...
Products
Rugged Electronic Enclosures
Carlo Gavazzi Computing Solutions, Brockton, MA, announces the 709 Series of air-cooled rugged electronic enclosures for computer cards in the harsh environments of shipboard and land-based military applications....
Products
Line Conditioning Module
The VPTPCM-12 Series pre-conditioning power module from VPT, Blacksburg, VA, works within a DC-DC power system to suppress transient voltages and create a reliable power output of up to 120W. The module offers a...
Products
FPGA Modules
Acromag, Wixom, MI, has released the PMC-CX series of user-configurable FPGA (field-programmable gate array) modules, which feature conduction cooling and differential digital I/O. The four new models feature XilinxÆ Virtex-II FPGAs with either 11k or 24k logic cells and a choice of 32 differential RS-422/485 lines or 24 RS-422/485...
Products
Hybrid Vehicle Test Systems
SAKOR Technologies, Okemos, MI, has released the HybriDyne™ Series of hybrid vehicle driveline test systems. The HybriDyne calibrates the performance, efficiency, and durability of hybrid drivetrain systems,...
Products
Outdoor Housing for Dome Cameras
Dotworkz, San Diego, CA, has launched the D2™ environmental housing that provides protection to PTZ dome cameras from the rigors of outdoor use and physical damage. The D2 is compatible with 99% of analog and...
Products
Digital Switch Matrices
The Electronics Group of Crane Aerospace & Electronics, Redmond, WA, has released its Model 1130 and Model 1120 digital switch matrices that are configured to accommodate up to 144 inputs and 144 outputs that can be...
Articles Energy
Energy Storage for Hybrid Military Vehicles
The benefits of hybrid electric vehicles have been recognized by the U.S. Army and other military services. As a consequence, hybrid vehicles are being considered as future combat and tactical...
Articles Aerospace
Update on NASA’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
In the August issue of Defense Tech Briefs, we highlighted NASA’s Altair/Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for Earth science missions. A lot has happened in the past two months, so we’re...
Articles Communications
SpaceWire: The Standard for Aerospace Communications
Developed in 1999 under the auspices of the European Space Agency, SpaceWire answered a longstanding spaceflight problem: no standard, high-speed communications protocol existed for flight...
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...
Briefs Information Technology
Error-Free Data Acquisition and Archival for High-Bandwidth Military Applications
Acquiring data from sensors, transporting the data, and then archiving it for future reference has changed dramatically over the last few years. The traditional...
Briefs Information Technology
The Dataflow Interchange Format for Designing DSPs
The dataflow interchange format (DIF) is a conceptual framework for helping designers of digital signal-processing (DSP) systems to integrate diverse dataflow models, dataflow techniques, DSP-design software tools, DSP software libraries, and embedded processing platforms. Somewhat more...
Briefs Physical Sciences
System for Imaging Turbulent Combustion Flows
Asystem of scientific instrumentation and data-processing equipment has been assembled for research and education in turbulence, mixing, and chemical reactions (especially combustion) in...
Briefs Electronics & Computers
Variable-Data-Rate Speech Encoder
Avariable-data-rate (VDR) speech encoder has been designed to be interoperable with, and eventually to supplant, the many different voice encoders now used in military communication systems. Because these older...
Briefs Photonics/Optics
Apparatus Generates CE-Phase-Stable Two-Cycle Optical Pulses
A n apparatus that includes two optical parametric chirped pulse amplification stages has been built as a means of generating few-cycle, common-envelope (CE)-phase-stable, high-energy...
Briefs Photonics/Optics
Terahertz Fiber-Optic Lasers for Detection of Explosives
Fiber-optic lasers of a proposed type would serve as sources of coherent radiation at frequencies between 0.5 and 4.0 THz and output power levels ≥100 mW. In the original application...
Briefs Photonics/Optics
Research on Quantum Communication Repeaters
A program of research during the years 2001 through 2006 was devoted to building theoretical and practical foundations for the development of quantum repeaters as means of overcoming losses of photons in long-distance quantum communication systems. The idea underlying this research was to investigate...
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...
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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