NASA 2003 SBIR Phase 2 Solicitation

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Kurt J. Linden
klinden@spirecorp.com
One Patriots Park
Bedford, MA 01730-2396
(781)275-6000
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
This Phase II SBIR proposal is aimed at developing a non-invasive, optical method for monitoring crew member state of awareness in operational environments. All active devices used in this monitoring system will consist of commercially available components. Continuous monitoring of the mental state of personnel engaged in critical activities could provide a means of protection against human performance lapses resulting from unforeseen circumstances. If a deterioration of the state of awareness of an individual can be detected before that individual's performance is affected, serious accidents or lapses in operator performance could be avoided. A computer-controlled four-wavelength breadboard cerebral oxygen monitor was designed, fabricated, and demonstrated during Phase I. Using phantoms with controlled blood-oxygenation levels, high sensitivity and motion artifact rejection by proper algorithm use was demonstrated. Based on these successful Phase I results, Phase II will miniaturize the system size to a wearable format, and optimize the system performance. The new cerebral oxygen monitor performance will be evaluated, and more refined algorithms to eliminate motion artifacts will be developed. A portable, prototype version of this crew cerebral oxygen monitor will be designed, fabricated, evaluated, and delivered to NASA at the completion of the program.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The benefits of the proposed technology are expected to be of importance to the government, industry, transportation and medical sectors of the economy. For example, transportation crew members are often subject to stress, increasing the possibility of operator mistakes or oversight. It is important to monitor crew state of awareness so that accidents or lapses in operator performance can be avoided. The proposed crew cerebral oxygen monitor could be used by truck drivers, airline pilots, train operators, ship captains and respective crew members. Similar applications exist in other public and private sector industries where staff performance is critical.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
NASA applications specifically revolve around real-time, non-invasive monitoring of crew performance and state of mental awareness. This is of major importance to mission safety and performance. Brain activity measurements, as determined by direct measurement of cerebral blood oxygenation, are expected to directly monitor crew health, stress level, state of duress, and general performance. The proposed crew cerebral oxygen monitor holds the potential for providing a completely non-invasive, optical method for achieving reliable, low-cost, monitoring of crew health, providing data that supplements current methods of obtaining related crew health data.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Robert Shaw
fciassoc@aol.com
1 1/2 South Central Avenue
Fairborn, OH 45324-4716
(937)253-4110
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The objective of this proposed Phase II SBIR effort is to continue Phase I efforts to develop and assess the feasibility of an innovative new flight instrument proposed to replace the traditional Turn Coordinator (or Turn-and-Slip Indicator) currently found in most general aviation (GA) aircraft. The primary innovation is the inclusion of climb-dive information and gyroscopic heading, in addition to the turn-rate information now available, in one low-cost display. In essence, this new "r-Gamma" display concept will "fuse" flight information on one display that the pilot must now gather and correlate from among five separate indicators whenever the aircraft experiences loss of the Attitude Indicator (AI) and the Heading Indicator (HI) due to vacuum system or gauge failure. The innovative technology that makes this concept feasible and affordable, with a projected cost similar to that of today's Turn Coordinator, is derived from a technique recently developed and flight tested by our firm under an SBIR contract that involved tracking the flightpath of a small USAF sensor vehicle. We firmly believe this concept has the potential to improve significantly the safety of emergency "partial-panel" flight operations in GA aircraft.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The principal commercial application of the r-Gamma system is to serve as an improved substitute for the Turn Coordinator currently found in virtually all GA aircraft. The r-Gamma instrument will provide substantial additional functionality and greatly improved safety for GA aircraft, at price comparable to that of the Turn Coordinator and substantially below that of available alternatives. There are roughly 200,000 GA aircraft registered in the U.S. alone. Nearly 70% of those are light single-engine aircraft, probably equipped with conventional Turn Coordinators or equivalent. Virtually all these, plus additional international customers, will be potential candidates for the r-Gamma system.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Potential NASA applications for the r-Gamma concept are unknown, but this technology could conceivably be applied to any application in which a low-cost solution is required for the estimation of vehicle flightpath in atmospheric environments. The r-Gamma technology developed under this effort may also be applied to cost-reduction efforts associated with the Synthetic Vision System envisioned by the Aviation Safety Program.

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
TerraMetrics, Inc.
PO Box 270101
Littleton ,CO 80127 - 0002
(303) 979 - 5255

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Gregory   Baxes
gbaxes@terrametrics.com
PO Box 270101
Littleton ,CO  80127 -0002
(303) 979 - 5255
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The TerraBlocks^TM 3D terrain data format and terrain-block-rendering methodology provides an enabling basis for successful commercial deployment of flight-appropriate and certifiable Synthetic Vision (SV) systems. The methodology focuses on mission-critical, real-time, embedded terrain rendering with emphasis on 1) efficient and compact terrain/texture dataset storage, 2) rendering accuracy, 3) rendering determinacy, and 4) a lightweight embedded computer and data storage platform.

The innovation exploits the use of an encoded terrain data storage format coupled with real-time, terrain-block-based 3D rendering. The compact and efficient TerraBlocks encoded terrain data format inherently provides zero-error full-mesh near-field terrain data, powers-of-2 levels of detail, and data compression of full-mesh source terrain datasets. The TerraBlocks terrain block-based rendering provides deterministic render rates bounded by worst-case processing requirements, an on-the-sphere rendering model, and spatially-filtered, smoothly continuous, level-of-detail rendering.

TerraBlocks technology closes the gap between existing visualization/simulation (VisSim) terrain-rendering approaches and the accuracy, performance, and platform demands of flight-deployable SV systems. The Phase I project conclusively showed the technical merit and feasibility of the TerraBlocks methodology.

The Phase II project objective is to provide a flight-appropriate, research SV 3D terrain-rendering toolkit for NASA's Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) and the solid basis for Phase III, flight-certifiable SV avionics embodiments.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
1) NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) Synthetic Vision (SV) systems research
2) Out-the-window displays for windowless spacecraft

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
1) Flight-based Synthetic Vision (SV) systems for
a) Military rotorcraft
b) Military fixed-wing aircraft -- transports, tankers, gunships
c) Business jet aircraft
d) General aviation aircraft
e) Commercial air transport
d) Special-purpose applications: Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and search and rescue rotorcraft
2) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) ground control stations
3) Ground-based, high-accuracy, lightweight Visualization/Simulation (VisSim) applications

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
William D Bachalo
wbachalo@aol.com
150 Iowa Street, Suite 202
Sunnyvale, CA 94086-6184
(408)737-2364
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Icing environments are of great concern in commercial and military aviation. An aircraft-based, imaging probe is being proposed for the reliable and accurate measurement of liquid water content (LWC) and droplet size distributions in environments variously referred to as freezing rain, freezing drizzle, supercooled drizzle drops, and supercooled large drops (SLD). The innovative aspect of the proposed probe is the use of multiple laser beams (of differing wavelengths) to create high quality shadows of individual particles (droplets and ice crystals) on a 2-d CCD array. Conventional aircraft-based probes such as the OAP suffer from measurement uncertainties arising from the detection of droplets that are out-of-focus. The use of multiple intersecting laser beams will also minimize the background noise created by other particles that may be present along the laser beam path but outside of the measurement volume. Finally, the incorporation of a means for differentiating between ice-crystals and droplets, while counting and measuring both, allows computation of water content in both liquid and solid phases. These innovations, and the other features of the probe to be discussed later, directly address the need for aircraft-based icing monitoring systems that NASA has identified in topic A1.02 of the 2003 SBIR solicitation. The Phase I study has clearly demonstrated the feasibility of the probe. A prototype system will be developed in Phase II.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
We have already been approached by NCAR, the US Air Force, UC Santa Cruz, Boeing, and Environment Canada for an imaging probe to meet their current applications. Besides icing cloud characterization, there are a wide ranges of applications for a particle imaging instrument. The obsolescence of the PMS probes has left a market opportunity for new probes based on this advanced technology. There are significant applications requiring an imaging probe for process evaluation and control. For example, in spray drying, the usual light scattering methods fail because the drops are not transparent or homogeneous. In such cases, an imaging system is the best method to use since it is not affected by the peculiarities of the droplet material. Another area deals with research in fire suppression systems used in commercial buildings. A system is needed to characterize sprays from sprinklers and to help develop these systems. No system exists for these applications whereas the number of spray drying processes including food processing, drug manufacturing, and other industrial processes is enormous. One of the complaints about the PDI method is that it cannot cover the entire drop size range in many sprays and that the larger nonspherical drops can produce significant measurement error. The integration of a second method, namely the imaging method, will expand the areas of application of this important diagnostic.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The goal of producing a probe for measuring icing clouds and other cloud drop size distributions is of immediate interest to NASA and other agencies involved in cloud physics and icing research. For example, the NASA Glenn Research Center's IRT tunnel will require at least one probe, and perhaps a couple more for mounting on aircraft. NASA Langley and NASA Ames and Research Centers may also be interested in this probe.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Richard C. Klein
Dickc123@earthlink.net
1801 East 9th Street #1111
Cleveland, OH 44114-3103
(216)696-5157
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
It is proposed to develop an accurate, in-service transmission life-use estimation system for the prediction of remaining component and system life for a helicopter transmission system. Once proven in the helicopter environment, this life- use estimation system will be of use to a wide variety of transmission systems.
The transmission-life estimating system will include three separate algorithms: an in-flight service monitoring algorithm, a pre-flight and post-flight transmission analysis algorithm, and a component-life tallying algorithm. The in-flight service monitor will treat the transmission as a whole. The transmission analysis algorithm will determine the transmission's operating parameters from those of its components. It also will determine the life and reliability of the individual components. The component-life algorithm will accumulate life and reliability tables.
The Phase I effort developed the algorithms. In the Phase II effort, the life-use monitor algorithm will be placed in its appropriate hardware and flown in a commercial helicopter to provide an improvement in that aircraft's safety.
Maintenance record comparisons will be made between the predicted maintenance intervals and the present maintenance pattern for the aircraft. Any increase in flight safety will be documented.
The deliverable product of the Phase II effort will be the on-board life-use monitor.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The cost-effective, reliable use of expensive aerospace and land-based power-transmission systems can be extended with more accurate knowledge of the remaining component and system fatigue lives. By improving the in-service life estimation associated with these devices, longer reliable service lives can be obtained. The high costs associated with surprise failures and unscheduled emergency maintenance procedures can be reduced substantially with the use of an in-service life estimator such as the one proposed herein.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The work is in support of NASA's long-range goals. It impacts every aspect of mechanical drive systems operation and development. The successful completion of this project can improve aviation safety, reliability, and mitigation of failures. It will affect cost-effective design and manufacturing for new production engines and can reduce life cycle and maintenance costs.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Kisholoy Goswami
kisholoy.goswami@innosense.us
2531 West 237th Street, Suite 127
Torrance, CA 90505-5245
(310)530-2011
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Significant emphasis has been placed on aircraft fuel tank safety following the TWA Flight 800 accident in July 1996. Upon investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the explosion of the center wing tank (CWT) resulted most likely from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture. The growing concern of aircraft fuel tank safety has taken an added dimension in the post 9/11 world where both commercial and military aircrafts are vulnerable to terrorist attacks utilizing MANPADS (MAN-Portable Air Defense Systems), explosives in shoe/socks, and small arms fire. Fuel tanks also need protection from explosions caused by ballistic impact, lightning, and other sources of ignition. In Phase I, InnoSense LLC has demonstrated the feasibility of an all-optical oxygen sensor capable of detecting oxygen at 40,000 feet elevation down to the ambient level. This Phase II proposal discusses how InnoSense LLC would develop a prototype and perform field testing. The project team possesses seventy person-years of optical sensor related hardware and software expertise. InnoSense has attracted $300,000 in Phase III follow-on funding for further engineering. Innosense will deliver the prototype to NASA, complete with software, manuals, and schematics.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The upgrading of fuel tanks aboard commercial, freight, military, and corporate jets to avoid potential explosion from fuel vapor will require oxygen sensor. The current world market totals roughly 40,000 aircraft in service today growing to 60,000 aircraft by 2020. Other potential applications include monitoring storage tanks containing volatile chemicals (such as hydrogen gas) that can make explosive mixture with oxygen.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The oxygen sensor can be used across all NASA enterprises where measurements in air are needed. Innovations in the project will minimize calibration needs and reduce crew time during space exploration missions. The sensor platform is amenable to constructing devices for biomedical, materials processing, and environmental applications in space as well as on the surface of the moon and mars. The sensing device will find applications in lunar outposts and in the International Space Station for monitoring the environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) or for combustion studies under microgravity.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
David H Klyde
dklyde@systemstech.com
13766 S Hawthorne Blvd.
Hawthorne, CA 90250-7083
(310)679-2281
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The intent of this project is to develop and validate means to alert, constrain and thereby alleviate loss of control (LOC) associated with unfavorable pilot-vehicle systems (PVS) interactions present in high gain, closed-loop PVS operations. While the effective aircraft dynamic properties involved in these events have been extensively studied and understood, similar scrutiny has not been paid to the many aspects of the primary manual control system that converts the pilot control inputs to motions of the control surfaces. It has often been tacitly assumed that the adoption of fly-by-wire (FBW) systems has eliminated the primary manual control link as an important player in LOC situations. Consequently, the impact of static and dynamic control system effects that distort "ideal" pilot to surface relationships, the near absence of manipulator tactile cues for some FBW systems, as well as the total elimination in FBW systems of some favorable cues present in traditional hydro-mechanical systems have not received detailed attention. The purpose of the Smart-Cue developments proposed herein are to redress this neglect, to develop and, ultimately, to validate remedial manual control systems.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The same improvements to modern manual flight control systems will be available for commercial and military flight control systems. The continuing record of unfavorable pilot-vehicle coupling provides evidence of the need for improvements such as this. The patentable Smart-Cue concept based on dynamic distortion applies to any powered manual control system, including ground vehicle manual control systems. Power steering is a mature application, which works in part because direct links provide dynamic distortion cues, but new concepts in ground vehicle control are being developed that can benefit from this work as well.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Improved aviation safety is a major objective of NASA. This work will contribute towards this goal in two ways. First, improvements to modern manual flight control systems will be developed that will significantly reduce the likelihood of unfavorable pilot-vehicle interactions. These improvements will be available to NASA for their fleet of aircraft and for new NASA vehicles entering flight test. Second, this work will validate an important but largely unrecognized cause of decreased flight safety ? the lack of pilot cues that tell the pilot when the flight control system is acting in a deficient manner.

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Intelligent Inference Systems Corporation
NASA Research Park, MS: 566-109
Moffett Field ,CA 94035 - 0000
(650) 965 - 9365

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Hamid   Berenji
berenji@iiscorp.com
NASA Research Park, MS: 566-106C
Moffett Field ,CA  94035 -0000
(650) 965 - 9365
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The goal of Phase I study was to investigate advanced pattern recognition techniques for use in fault diagnosis. Three individual experts have been developed based on Auto Associative Neural Networks (E-AANN), Kohonen Self Organizing Maps (KSOM), and the Radial Basis Function based Clustering (RBFC) algorithms. We have used a Matlab Simulink model of a Chiller system to test our algorithms. The set of individual experts are later managed by a Gated Expert algorithm which assigns the experts based on their best performance regions.
In Phase II, we propose to implement our results on two dynamic systems. The first is a Chiller system at the Texas A&M University. The second is an engine under study in Pratt and Whitney under a contract to Professor George Vactsevanos from Georgia Tech. The end deliverable of Phase II will be a complete dynamic Case Based Reasoning (GED-CBR) system managed by a Gated Experts algorithm all coded in Matlab. GED-CBR will be highly applicable to dynamic systems that can benefit from the power of Dynamic Case Based Reasoning managed by a powerful Gated Experts architecture. It is expected that GED-CBR will find applications in prognostics of the nuclear reactor on board the JIMO spacecraft.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
We have established a collaborative R&D relationship with Professor John Bernard of the MIT Nuclear Power Plant. Professor Bernard is interested to work with us on the NASA's new initiatives on using nuclear power energy on its new space exploration spacecrafts such as the JIMO spacecraft. Also, after the terrible Challenger accident, the need for careful prognostics is more and more required. Our work will be of interest to the fault diagnostics and prognostics of the Space Station Freedom and the Space Shuttle systems.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
We expect that our chief non-NASA customer will come from DOD and in particular the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Other industries such as companies like Sigma Quest can use our technology to assist them in handling the huge amounts of data that they need to manage for the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM).

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Michael Tomsic
tomsic@voyager.net
110 E. Canal St.
Troy, OH 45373-3581
(937)332-0348
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The recent development of magnesium diboride superconducting wires makes possible the potential to have much lighter weight superconducting coils for heavy aircraft motors than with any other potential metal or ceramic superconductor. The magnesium diboride superconductor can be cooled to 20 K by the liquid hydrogen fuel. The lighter weight coils, especially in the rotor, will enable a lighter weight support structure so the motor weight will be reduced even more for the same horsepower motor. For this NASA SBIR Phase II our objective is to design, construct, test, and assembly MgB2 rotor coil packs to replace the copper rotor coil packs for the cryogenic motor test bed being built for NASA

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Manufacturers of large electrical systems desire to increase the efficiency, and decrease the size of their systems in order to reduce costs. Presently manufacturers' of transformers, motors, generators, fault current limiters, transmission cables, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems are pursuing superconductor wires to achieve these objectives. To make major cost improvements with superconducting systems, the barriers have been the higher cost of cooling at liquid helium temperature (4K) for traditional metallic superconductors and the high wire cost for ceramic high temperature superconductors at 20-30 K temperatures. Low cost MgB2 superconductor wires operating at 20-25K can lower the upfront and ongoing operational costs of superconducting systems.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Besides motors for large aircraft, magnesium diboride superconductors can benefit NASA applications for many applications were light weight power components are required such as transformers, inductors, power conditioning. Other magnet applications that magnesium diboride wires can be considered for are ADR coils, magnetic bearings, actuators, MHD magnets, and magnetic launch devices.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
David T. Wickham
wickham@tda.com
12345 W. 52nd Ave.
Wheat Ridge, CO 80033-1916
(303)940-2350
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
In February 2004 NASA released "The Vision for Space Exploration", which describes a strategy for exploring our solar system that builds upon the policy announced by President Bush earlier in the year. The goals of this strategy include extending human presence in the solar system culminating in the exploration of Mars. To accomplish this goal, affordable, new propulsion technologies must be developed. A key component to this goal will be the development of reusable launch vehicles that use single stage to orbit (SSTO) or two stage to orbit (TSTO) propulsion systems. These vehicles generate high heat loads and require additional cooling capacity from the fuel, which can get very hot in the process.

Unfortunately when hydrocarbon fuels are heated, carbonaceous deposits (coke) can form in the heat exchanger, reducing heat transfer and potentially inhibiting fuel flow. If vehicles are reused, then coke accumulation eventually will become a serious problem. However, if the coke could be removed periodically between missions, then the dangers associated with coke accumulation could be avoided. In this Phase I project, TDA developed a process to remove these deposits. The process is safe, inexpensive, and is conducted at low temperature and at ambient pressure.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
In addition to NASA applications, our process could have several important commercial uses. The process can be applied to any situation where oxidation at low temperatures is necessary. For example ozone can be used to clean hydrocarbons from semiconductors, magnetic disks, medical devices, flight hardware, etc. High temperature processes would damage these components, however at the moderate temperatures required with ozone, these components would not be harmed. Although ozone has been used, the goal of our project will be to optimize treatment conditions and If our project is successful, significant improvements in cleaning methods could be achieved.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The ability to clean carbon deposits effectively will be critical to the development of reusable, high speed aircraft that must utilize the heat sink capacity of fuel to meet high heat loads generated at high speed. We have shown that under these conditions coke deposition can be expected and under high heat flux conditions, very thin layers of carbon cause significant increases in the metal wall temperature, possibly reaching temperatures where the material may fail. Therefore, identifying an effective procedure to remove coke between missions represents enabling technology for the continued development of reusable high speed aircraft.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Todd R. Quackenbush
todd@continuum-dynamics.com
34 Lexington Avenue
Ewing, NJ 08618-2302
(609)538-0444
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Enabling a new generation of high-speed civil aircraft will require breakthrough developments in propulsion systems, including novel techniques to optimize inlet performance in multiple operating conditions. Maximizing propulsive performance while minimizing weight and mechanical complexity is a key goal, and rapidly maturing smart
materials technology can enable adaptive control of inlet geometry to allow in-flight optimization of engine flows. Phase I of this effort built on established device technology using high strength Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuators and initiated development of adaptive inlet concepts for application to Supersonic Business Jets (SSBJs). Leveraging this work as well as prior efforts in SMA device design and testing has permitted the first steps in the development a family of actuation and flow control devices for use in flight applications. Phase II will build on this work with mutually supporting design, analysis, and test activities including: detailed definition of the effectiveness of geometry adaptation in improving installed engine performance at low and high speeds; construction and test of a benchtop adaptive inlet component demonstrator using high temperature SMA alloy actuators; high-speed wind tunnel testing of sectional components with realistic thermal and aerodynamic loads; and construction of a model 3D adaptive inlet.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
A successful Phase I/Phase II effort will open the door to prototype testing and eventual implementation of flight-qualified SMA adaptive inlet hardware. The most direct beneficiary would be candidate SSBJs that could incorporate high-force, all-electric inlet control systems in dramatically more efficient power plants. Successful implementation in this application would also lead to spinoff developments in a number of actuation tasks, including aerodynamic controls and thrust vectoring as well as steering and outflow redirection for a wide range of aerospace and marine propulsion missions, with direct benefits for both civil and military systems.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
By providing highly innovative concepts for propulsion system components for advanced high-speed aerospace vehicles, the proposed effort will directly support a wide range of broad NASA goals including supporting high Mach point to point travel and global cruise capability for civil aircraft. The chief technical output of the effort will be enabling technology for a variable geometry, supersonic, mixed compression inlet to help meet functional airflow needs of high Mach number propulsion. In addition, the integrated aero/thermo/elastic models of actuator performance to be developed will assist the development of concurrent engineering tools for analysis and design of propulsion systems.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Essam F. Sheta
efs@cfdrc.com
215 Wynn Dr., 5th Floor
Huntsville, AL 35805-1926
(256)726-4869
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
We propose to develop a novel, high-accuracy, high-fidelity, multiresolution (MRES), wavelet-based framework for efficient prediction of airframe noise sources and acoustic propagation. In Phase I, 2D and 3D models of MRES methodology were developed. An acoustic analogy module based on Ffowcs Williams and Hawking technique was developed to accurately propagate the near-field acoustic signals to far field with minimal dissipation and dispersion. An innovative Runge-Kutta temporal update was developed to advance all grid levels independently. The feasibility and accuracy of the MRES technology was demonstrated by predicting noise sources and acoustic waves generated by vortex shedding. The Phase I results indicate that the proposed technology will provide up to two orders-of-magnitude reductions in CPU time over existing techniques.

In Phase II, we propose to improve the 3D MRES software to handle multi-block, curvilinear, viscous and massively parallel applications. An efficient data structure will be developed and implemented to store and update the multiresolution data to improve the cost-saving factor. Unsteady turbulence models based on DES and PANS will be implemented to better resolve the sources of noise. The acoustic module will be improved to account for surface motions and quadrupole source terms. The developed modules will then be coupled to a large-scale CFD code to expand the application base of the technology. The technology will be demonstrated and validated using typical aeroacoustic applications such as Energy Efficient Transport (EET) airfoils and landing gear models.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The proposed technology provides a viable tool for several commercial applications such as wing-trailing vortex dynamics, noise generated by landing gear, blade vortex interaction (BVI), and BVI induced noise. The multiresolution technology is needed in a wide range of applications that involve unsteady and embedded flow features requiring high resolutions. Such applications include combustion instabilities, chemical and biological plume dispersion, missile plume signatures, turbo-machinery, micro-fluidic systems, cavitations, biomedical, electronic cooling, and many others. The MRES technology has recently received the attention of several aerospace companies. In particular, Lockheed Martin has expressed its interest in utilizing the MRES capabilities in their computational aeroelasticity framework.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The proposed technology provides substantial reductions in computational time for complex, unsteady computations. This is extremely beneficial to several NASA multidisciplinary noise and vibrations applications such as noise source identification on Energy Efficient Transport (EET) high lift vehicles, landing gears, advanced rotor tip shapes, jet noise, rotorcraft and propellers. The framework could also be used for other NASA applications, such as flow control via jet blowing, suction, or synthetic jets, flutter and buffet analysis of helicopters and fighter aircraft, nonlinear lift systems, active twist rotors, missile plume signatures, and micro air-vehicles analysis.

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Comet Technology Corporation
1796 Stonebridge Drive North
Ann Arbor ,MI 48108 - 8593
(734) 998 - 0126

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Satha   Raveendra
raveendra@sbcglobal.net
1796 Stonebridge Drive North
Ann Arbor ,MI  48108 -8593
(734) 998 - 0126
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
It is proposed to develop and implement a computational technique based on Energy Finite Element Analysis (EFEA) for interior noise prediction of advanced aerospace vehicles that will expand NASA's noise prediction capability at the early stage of design process. In many situations, aerospace structures are subjected to high frequency mechanical and/or acoustic excitations. Presently, noise performances of these products are determined experimentally, which is not feasible at the early design stage or by using computational simulation technique based on Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA). SEA requires high level of analyst expertise and in some instances, testing of the product's components. An alternative computational simulation technique for high frequency vibration and noise prediction based on EFEA conceptually offers several unique features. EFEA can predict the spatial variation of the energy in structures and the acoustic cavities. Local power input and damping treatments can also be modeled in EFEA. More importantly, EFEA is based on extensively used and comprehensively developed finite element method. The use of finite element method for both low and high frequency noise and vibration problems will provide the users a unified framework for the resolution of problems where the frequency spans a wide range.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The software product developed under this proposed work will enable NASA to predict interior noise using a more versatile tool than currently exists for noise prediction. As an improved alternative to currently used modeling software, an EFEA modeling software will increase capability and reduce the cost of modeling for aerospace structures.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Reduction of noise is of major concern in many industries. For example, in automotive industry, the increased use of telematic devices require reduced interior noise environment. By integrating the EFEA software developed here with appropriate optimization algorithm, one can optimize the interior noise environment. Since EFEA is a general numerical tool for noise reduction, it can be easily adapted for noise control in other industries since the same features that are of interest to NASA will be of interest to aerospace, automotive, naval, trucking and consumer product industries.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Joel M Hensley
hensley@psicorp.com
20 New England Business Center
Andover, MA 01810-1077
(978)689-0003
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to design, build, test, and deliver to NASA a THz wavelength absorption sensor for continuous monitoring of atomic oxygen concentration in hypersonic flowfields. In a successful Phase I effort, PSI developed a THz wavelength Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) at 63.2 microns, corresponding to a strong fine-structure transition of atomic oxygen. Using an external cavity design, we showed that the laser wavelength could be coarsely tuned to the atomic oxygen transition. Rapid and repeatable injection current tuning at this wavelength was also demonstrated. In the proposed Phase II program, the external cavity QCL design will be refined to include a wider continuous tuning range, higher laser operating temperature, and improved output power. The laser operation will be automated and integrated into a computer-controlled atomic oxygen sensor, providing continuous, real-time measurements of atomic oxygen concentration with a sensitivity of 10^13 atoms per cubic centimeter in a 10 Hz bandwidth. PSI will deliver, install, and test the sensor at the NASA Ames Aerodynamic Heating Facility, an arc-jet heated high-enthalpy flow facility.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Compact, tunable terahertz lasers will be useful for container-penetrating detection of dangerous substances for homeland defense applications, detecting contraband substances for law enforcement applications, and detecting trace amounts of moisture for industrial process control.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The laser-based diagnostic developed during this project will increase the accuracy of test results at hypersonic wind tunnel facilities used to simulate atmospheric re-entry. Using these test results, NASA will be able to optimize the amount of thermal protection material used in the Space Shuttle and other vehicles, so that safety can be ensured without unnecessarily reducing the payload. The diagnostic will also provide more accurate results in facilities which simulate combustion at hypersonic speeds, thus facilitating the design of engines for future hypersonic aircraft.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
P. K. Menon
menon@optisyn.com
4966 El Camino Real, Suite 108
Los Altos, CA 94303-4622
(650)213-8585
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Research on next-generation air traffic management systems is being conducted at several laboratories using custom software. In order to provide a more uniform research platform for en route air traffic management research, NASA has recently developed the FACET software package. While FACET incorporates most of the features required for conducting research, it is sometimes necessary to extend its capabilities. However, this can demand a significant programming investment.
The Phase I SBIR project developed the prototype version of scriptable software that allows simpler access to FACET functionality. This software is termed CARAT# (Configurable Airspace Research and Analysis Tool ? Scriptable). The first version of CARAT# is built upon a commercial software platform, while a second version employs a freely available, scriptable environment as its foundation. The use of CARAT# was illustrated by formulating four research problems during the Phase I research. By making the capabilities of FACET accessible to a larger population of researchers, CARAT# can help accelerate the pace of air traffic management research.
The complete version of the CARAT# software will be developed during the Phase II work. Additional research problems will also be formulated. The software will be commercialized to the ATM research community towards the end of Phase II research.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Software developed under the present SBIR project can be used for rapid prototyping of next-generation en route air traffic management algorithms. This capability can help accelerate the research in the air traffic management area. Modified versions of the software can be used for investigating command and control architectures for multiple UAVs, spacecraft formations and groups of under water vehicles.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
NASA researchers working on advanced ATM concepts such as the operation of UAVs in the NAS and wind optimal trajectory computations can accelerate their research using the proposed software environment.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Donald Linton
lintond@infowaresystems.com
476 Highway A1A, Suite 7
Satellite Beach, FL 32937-2331
(321)773-5881
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Our innovation is a high-speed method for the prediction of aerodynamic debris fields that employs an extensive database of generalized empirical equations coupled with interpolation and localization techniques. An essential element of our innovation is the vehicle independence of the equations database which allows it to be generated once and applied to any vehicle. The large-scale operation of unpiloted aircraft within the National Airspace (NAS) will require a very high tempo of flight risk assessments, both for pre-mission planning and in the event of unplanned anomalies or deviations from the approved flight path. These risk assessments will require a large number of debris field predictions each of which will involve predicting the expected impact point and impact dispersion of many distinct representative debris pieces. Our innovation is aimed at making this volume of predictions feasible and cost-effective.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
? Improved National Airspace integration by integrating ground hazards into flight planning;
? Autonomous, on-board, ground hazard controls when integrated with UAV navigation and health monitoring systems; and
? Private experimental and commercial aerospace craft for both ascent and re-entry hazard assessments.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
? Preliminary mission planning and flight plan approvals using increased throughput to effect cost savings by eliminating the need for a multiple CPU cluster to perform mission analysis;
? Operational mission risk management by incorporation of the HDM into the JARSS Real-time element to effect cost savings by eliminating the need for a multiple CPU cluster to perform real-time probability contour generation;
? Autonomous, on-board, ground hazard controls when integrated with UAV navigation and health monitoring systems; and
? Space Shuttle re-entry risk assessment for both nominal and emergency re-entry ground tracks.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
David R Schleicher
drs@seagull.com
1700 Dell Avenue
Campbell, CA 95008-6902
(408)364-8200
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Aviation and Air Traffic Management researchers are increasingly utilizing complex regional or NAS-wide simulations to evaluate future concepts. These analyses require many thousands of flights (a flight schedule) that are each accurately defined for every stage of the flight (a flight plan). Current methods of generating these huge input datasets are costly and time-intensive. The largely manual nature of the current process and lack of existing automation tools leaves great potential for significant errors in the data sets. We propose to develop a powerful automated system for future demand generation. This tool will be able to input a variety of existing FAA and NASA flight data sets, provide the user with extensive options on defining the future demand data set, and output new flight data sets in formats compatible with major research simulation and analysis tools. This capability will provide NASA and FAA research programs with significantly better analysis conclusions through the new ability to perform extensive sensitivity studies on new concepts to ensure they are robust to alternate potential future demand scenarios. This is crucial to ensuring the decision to proceed with a multi-million dollar Decision Support Tool development is robust to alternate future demand possibilities.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The FAA or other international air traffic service providers and transportation consultants can use our product to create future demand for their airport and airspace demand, capacity, noise and emission analysis to support future airport and airspace planning and design efforts. Commercial airlines can combine their internal flight schedules with the future flight demand generated from our product to support flight schedule, terminal, airport gate, and fleet planning and optimization. Future extensions to the tool can support improved simulation and stress-testing to support operations planning and analysis of other transportation networks such as the nation's highways.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Within NASA aviation research, our demand generation application can be used to advance research efforts including advanced airspace system concept fast-time and/or human-in-the-loop evaluation and demonstrations, ATM decision support tool performance and benefit evaluation, human operator (e.g., pilot, controller, or dispatcher) stress testing, aerospace vehicle-NAS integration studies, and ATM concept environment impact studies. In general, NASA simulation capabilities exist for these areas but the capability for efficient generation of future flight demands is lacking. With such a demand generation capability, NASA will better understand the potential benefits of its future aviation technologies and their sensitivity to changes in future demand.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Dr. Stephen Atkins
atkins@metronaviation.com
131 Elden Street, Suite 200
Herndon, VA 20170-4758
(978)692-9484
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Airport configuration is a primary factor in various airport characteristics such as arrival and departure capacities and terminal area traffic patterns. These characteristics, in turn, are central to a variety of Air Traffic Management (ATM) decisions that in turn affect delays and efficiency in the National Airspace System (NAS). There is presently poor knowledge about the airport characteristics at each airport and even less information available about how those characteristics are expected to change in the future. This lack of knowledge about airports results in inefficient local and national traffic management decisions. Metron Aviation will develop and test a set of models that generate information about airport configuration and related airport characteristics. This information, which is not currently available or is of poor quality, will improve traffic management decisions, and automation to support those decisions, both at the airports and on a national scale. This work addresses existing gaps in air traffic management automation technologies. The proposed technology development promise immediate improvements to the NAS. Rather than requiring a new tool or system to be deployed, the information generated by this work could be absorbed into existing systems and information networks to transparently improve traffic management on a local and national scale.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Non-NASA applications can be grouped into Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) applications and non-Government applications. Automation that is capable of recognizing current airport characteristics and predicting what those characteristics will be in the future would likely be deployed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at a large number (e.g., 30-50) of airports. A variety of TFM decision support systems make assumptions about the airport characteristics studied in this SBIR. Availability of accurate current information and predictions could transparently improve those systems. NAS users, especially air carriers, are interested in much of the information the proposed work would generate. However, we believe that NAS users will be indirect customers ? lobbying the FAA to provide such a capability but not purchasing or maintaining the system themselves.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Metron Aviation will develop a set of models that generate information about airport configuration and related airport characteristics that will improve traffic management decisions. NASA is responsible for continuing to advance air traffic management automation and, therefore, this work is directly relevant to NASA's technology need. The proposed technology promises immediate improvements to the NAS. Rather than requiring a new tool to be deployed, the results of this work can be used by existing systems to transparently improve traffic management on a local and national scale. Existing SMS prediction algorithms that use airport configuration information will be refined or replaced as part of Phase 2 while NASA can use the technology as part of advanced surface automation research. The configuration recognition capability developed in Phase 2 can be used to provide necessary truth data for post-analysis of SMS performance. Finally, NASA can apply the knowledge gained in modeling airport characteristics to future research efforts.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Russell Kurtz
gdrew@poc.com
20600 Gramercy Place, Bldg 100
Torrance, CA 90501-1821
(310)320-3088
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
To meet the challenges of rapid prototyping, direct hardware fabrication, and on-the-spot repairs on the ground and on NASA space platforms, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposed a new Holographic Optical Element-Based Laser Diode Source (HOELDS) system for direct metal deposition (DMD). HOELDS uniquely combines multiple high-power laser diode bars with holographic optical elements, efficient thermal management and innovative focusing optics to achieve a 600 W, 100-micron focused spot for DMD materials processing. The 7-kilogram, 0.1 cubic meter HOELDS system will be ten times as energy efficient as current 1000 kilogram, 20 cubic meter DMD systems, making in-space DMD processing possible for the first time. HOELDS can process aluminum, which is extremely difficult for state-of-the art DMD systems. In Phase I, POC developed a preliminary HOELDS system, theoretical analysis, computer simulation, and component specifications leading to a proof-of-concept prototype. Melting of lead-tin solder with this prototype was demonstrated at NASA Marshall Space Center. The Phase II effort will optimize the system design, optimize fabrication of the holographic optical elements, and scale up the system into a compact high-power HOELDS system prototype capable of DMD. The prototype system will be performance tested for in-space DMD, and will be space qualified.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Potential non-NASA applications for HOELDS technology include U.S. Army rapid miniature part production and part repair on the battlefield, on-the-spot metal repair and rebuilding on U.S. Navy ships at sea. All research labs, government or private, have a use for rapid prototyping capability, and a portable, efficient, inexpensive system like HOELDS will be an attractive technology. Likewise, any manufacturer that needs rapid prototyping for models, testing, or replacement parts would want this type of system. Any aircraft company or shipping company could use the crack- and leak-repair capabilities of HOELDS.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
HOELDS NASA applications include rapid fabrication of parts on the ground as well as in space. The HOELDS system can be incorporated by NASA into existing rapid prototyping systems to reduce the size, weight, and power consumption of existing systems. Its portability makes HOELDS far more useful to NASA sites with several laboratories than a currently available DMD system. DMD technology could shorten time-to-market considerably and accomplish repairs by adding the same part material where needed without causing thermal stress or microcracking. By reducing the size and power consumption, HOELDS will make compact space-based DMD machines possible.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Stuart Schwab
stschwab@thortech.biz
2415 Princeton NE, Suite B
Albuquerque, NM 87107-1731
(505)830-6986
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The Phase I Project demonstrated the capability of the Pyrowave? manufacturing process to produce fiber-reinforced ceramics (FRCs) with integral metal features, such as attachment lugs or tubes. In addition, the Phase I Project demonstrated the utility of thermography as a simple, rapid, and inexpensive inspection tool.
With the increased emphasis on the exploration of space, technologies supporting fission-powered spacecraft, such as those under development through Project Prometheus, will become increasingly important. For the Phase II Project, Thor Technologies, Inc. will team with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a computational design firm, a small NDE firm, and a major spacecraft OEM to design, manufacture, and deliver a prototype lightweight, high performance thermal radiator component for fission powered spacecraft, such as the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter.
The project team has the experience and capability to execute the proposed development plan within the Phase II budget and schedule. The proposed technology will simplify the design and facilitate the utilization of fission-powered, which are essential to the exploration celestial bodies more distant from the Sun than Mars.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
A wide range of civilian applications exist for ceramic composites; however, difficulties inherent to attaching ceramic composites to supporting metal structures and the lack of a simple rapid inspection technique have hampered their adoption. Both issues are addressed in the proposed Phase II. Potential civilian applications for hybrid metal/ceramic composites include hot-section components in gas turbine engines and diesel engines, friction materials for aircraft, corrosion resistant chemical process equipment, and low-activation components for nuclear reactors.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
In addition to thermal radiators for fission-powered spacecraft, a variety of potential NASA applications exist, including in-space propulsion, satellite station keeping propulsion, and space launch propulsion. Other applications are certain to emerge as the technology needed for the Crew Transport Vehicle and other systems, as well as missions to the moon and Mars, become more clearly defined.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Mark Gruber
mgruber@accudyne.com
134 B Sandy Drive
Newark, DE 19713-1147
(302)369-5390
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Reduced-mass polymer composite materials are crucial to the success of aerospace systems for reducing vehicle weight. But, composite material adoption is inhibited because the autoclave consolidation required is prohibitively expensive for the large tanks and skins contemplated in the Next Generation Launch Technology (NGLT) Program. To remedy this, NASA-LaRC has been developing cost-effective, lightweight, high-performance thermoplastic composite materials for years. These materials have the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of large aerospace structures, because they allow processing without resorting to hugely expensive autoclaves. Unfortunately, NASA lacks a robust, cost-effective fabrication process to tape-place these emerging materials into laminates and to build contoured structure, and thus can't evaluate usefulness of NASA materials.

This SBIR II program fabricates for NASA-LaRC the automated deposition head successfully designed in the recent SBIR I to complete the tape placement process and in situ consolidation without an autoclave. The composite deposition head, creel, and associated machine and process control system Accudyne will build in Phase II is designed to operate on NASA-LaRC's tape layer.

Automated deposition heads can later be sold to industrial companies for existing tape layers and placement machines so that industry can benefit from NASA composite materials by using out-of-the-autoclave thermoplastic tape placement.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
There is nothing that could be done that would lower the cost of composites more than to eliminate the autoclave. The major applications are (1) the Next Generation Launch Technology (NGLT) Program, (2) large aerospace composites such as launch vehicles, launch vehicle tanks, and satellites, (3) wing and fuselage skins for commercial and military transport aircraft, (4) fighter aircraft structure, (5) helicopters, and (6) submarine structure. Other commercial applications include high-speed trains and electric-powered automobiles.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Accudyne Systems Inc. will construct a deposition head for NASA-LaRC so that NASA's emerging materials can be evaluated and promoted to all the major aerospace prime contractors for fabricating large composite structures without the need for an autoclave.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Daniel J. Gramer
gramerd@orbitec.com
1212 Fourier Drive
Madison, WI 53717-1961
(608)827-5000
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The product of the Phase II effort will be a Multi-Use Non-Intrusive Flow Characterization System (FCS) for densified, normal boiling point, and two-phase cryogenic flows, capable of accurately measuring several fluid parameters in real-time. Cryogenic fluids are ubiquitous in the aerospace industry; however, adequate flow instrumentation to support terrestrial, in-space, and planetary operations is currently unavailable. FCS was originated to address this issue and greatly enhance the quantification, reliability, and safety of propulsion test operations, as well as reduce operational expenses. FCS will also play a significant role in initiatives for the exploration of the Moon and Mars through supporting the design, development, and operation of gravity-dependant processes. FCS handles both transient and steady state flows, and can operate in the following five modes: (1) on-line analysis of fluid mixtures; (2) mass flow rate measurement; (3) temperature measurement; (4) fluid conditioning and health monitoring; and (5) model validation for a cryogenic or non-cryogenic fluid flow. The Phase II effort will develop an FCS system that has broad application throughout NASA and the rest of the aerospace community. A fully functional FCS system will be delivered to NASA/SSC upon completion of the program for use in the E1 or other facility.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
There is a large market for an accurate, non-intrusive cryogenic flow sensor capable of handling a wide variety of flows and installations. Commercial aerospace companies and DoD have similar FCS applications requirements to NASA, including: ground-based flow metering and control, fluid conditioning and health monitoring, analytical model validation, applied fluid physics and microgravity research, in-space cryogenic fluid management and in-space mass quantity gauging. Examples of FCS applications include: detecting and measuring flow contaminants, determining when a system has been sufficiently chilled down; measuring and diagnosing heat leaks into fluid flow networks; and accurate metering and controlled cryogen delivery.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Accurate, non-intrusive cryogenic flow sensors have been highly sought after for decades. There is a fundamental need for the characterization and health monitoring of densified, normal boiling point, and two-phase cyrogenic flows for ground based, space, and planetary operations. FCS is being developed to serve ground test operations at SSC. As NASA's primary center for testing and proving flight worthy rocket propulsion systems, SSC would significanlty benefit from the products generated by the proposed Phase II FCS program. There are also NASA facilities and applications at KSC, GRC, MSFC, JSC, and JPL that would benefit from successful development of FCS.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Ernest C Perry
eperry@optimalsolutions.us
926 W. 900 N.
Provo, UT 83402-0000
(801)400-0105
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used as an analysis tool to help the designer gain greater understanding of the fluid flow phenomena involved in the components being designed. The next step in the design process is to modify the design to improve the components performance, typically performed manually by the designer in a trial and error fashion. The innovations proposed herein will provide important advances in the state-of-the-art of automatic CFD shape deformation and optimization software. Optimal Solutions Software (OSS) has been developing a software program called Sculptor, which provides capabilities to perform shape deformation and optimization in CFD design. When the innovations proposed herein are included in Sculptor, and coupled with NASAs Stennis Space Centers (SSC) CFD codes, a truly innovative and significant design tool will be available to perform automatic shape optimization. Sculptor can find new geometric shapes, in a timely manner that likely would not have been discovered without its use. Therefore Sculptor can innovate when used by knowledgeable engineers.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The non-NASA commerical application are numerous indeed. Practically any sytem or component that involves fluid dynamics, heat transfer, mass transfer, chemically reacting flow, including combustion, can benefit by applying the innovations that will be developed in this Phase II effort. Applications can be found in aerospace, automotive, marine, biomedical, chemical, electronics, power generation, etc.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The innovative tools included into Sculptor will allow NASA engineers to perform shape optimization for computational fluid dynamic design efficiently in many areas including: - Rocket motors: nozzles, combustors, injectors, diffusers, etc., - Heat exchangers, - Aerodynamic shapes of aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, trucks, etc. - Valves, general pipefittings, elbows, T-fittings, etc. Practically any component's performance that involves fluid and/or heat flow or chemically reacting flow (including combustion) can be optimized with these tools. In the search for ever improved components for space travel, these tools could help with many projects in support of the newly planned Moon and Mars missions.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Siddharth Thakur
st@snumerics.com
3221 NW 13th Street, Suite A
Gainesville, FL 32609-2189
(352)271-8841
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Loci-STREAM is a CFD-based, multidisciplinary, high-fidelity design and analysis tool resulting from Phase I work whose objectives were: (a) to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a reacting-flow pressure-based algorithm in the Loci framework, and (b) to test the robustness of a real-fluid methodology in the pressure-based framework. Loci is a rule-based programming framework which automatically handles parallel computing and provides for easy integration of multidisciplinary physics. Key current capabilities of Loci-STREAM are: (i) all-speed formulation, (ii) generalized grids, (iii) distributed memory parallel computing capability, (iv) finite rate chemistry, and (v) steady and unsteady turbulent flow capability. Phase II work will enhance Loci-STREAM and make it a reliable and practical simulation tool by incorporating the following into it: (1) high-resolution discretization schemes, (2) conjugate heat transfer, (3) real-fluid modeling, (4) efficient operator-splitting for stiff chemistry, (5) robust time-stepping, (6) improved turbulence models for unsteady flows, and (7) coupling with solid stress analysis. It is anticipated that the above capabilities coupled with smaller memory requirements of the pressure-based methodology embedded in Loci-STREAM will make computations of complex problems encountered in thrust chamber assemblies of rocket engines such as multi-element injector flows requiring large grids (100 million nodes or more) a reality.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Potential commercial applications of Loci-STREAM are wide-ranging. The reacting flow capability can be used for simulating combusting flows in various industries, such as the gas turbine industry. The unsteady flow capability can be used in the oil & gas industry (e.g., vortex shedding past platform risers) and the turbomachinery industry (e.g., hydraulic turbines, fans, compressors). The real-fluids methodology can be used in a large number of industrial flow situations involving both chemically inert and reacting flows (e.g., cryogenic flows). With future additions of other combustion, cavitation and multi-phase models, the applicability of Loci-STREAM can be further broadened.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Near-term NASA applications include:
(a) multi-element injector flows along with fuel and oxidizer feedlines and manifolds, coupled with conjugate heat transfer and modeling of pressure and thermally induced stresses in the solid region of the regenerative circuits.
(b) lift-off debris transport for space shuttle launch problem, which involves range of flow speeds from quiescent to Mach 6 and grids with more than 75 million points.
(c) reacting rocket engine exhaust plumes and discharge and/or combustion of hot O2 or H2 from rocket engine components during ground testing.
(d) flow of supercritical fluids through valves and run tanks.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Zachary Gray
zg@WyomingSilicon.com
248 W Works Street
Sheridan, WY 82801-4213
(307)672-5443
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Two low-mass, linear throttling, high-efficiency, leak-proof cryogenic valves of diameters 1/2" and 4" will be built and tested. Based upon cryogenically-proven Venturi Off-Set Technology (VOST) the valve has no stem-actuator, few moving parts, and an overall cylindrical shape. The valve geometry will help reduce launch vehicle complexity and facilitate assembly and testing. Reliability and safety will be enhanced due to the inherent simplicity and leak-proof design of the VOST valve. Potential NASA uses include launch, descent, and extraterrestrial use. Ground-based embodiments will benefit from enhanced thermal performance which will reduce recurring costs. Non-NASA uses include military and civilian aircraft, chemically corrosive industrial environments, superconductivity and medical applications.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The potential Non-NASA commercial applications of the proposed technology are:

-in-flight refueling of military aircraft
-chemically corrosive environments
-process industries (foods, chemicals, semiconductors)
-low-temperature and/or high temperature superconductor research
-high-volume gas delivery systems such as LN2
-biological research applications (cryopreservation, cryobiology)
-medical applications (cryosurgery, MRI, tissue freezing)

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The potential NASA applications of the proposed technology are:

-launch, descent, and extraterrestrial use as combined on/off and throttling valve
-thermally efficient cryogenic fluid handling at fuel depots
-quick-disconnect applications (gantry and in-space)
-chemically corrosive environments

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Ashvin Hosangadi
hosangad@craft-tech.com
6210 Keller's Church Road
Pipersville, PA 18947-1020
(215)766-1520
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
There currently are no analytical or CFD tools that can reliably predict unsteady cavitation dynamics in liquid rocket turbopumps. Cavitation effects, particularly at low-flow, off-design conditions, generate large amplitude pressure fluctuations that result in performance loss, and may interact with other components to generate damaging system-wide instabilities. The innovation proposed here is the development of a numerical tool that can predict amplitudes and frequencies of dynamic pressure loads in cryogenic turbopumps. This innovation will address the inclusion of advanced unsteady cavitation models for cryogenic fluids, development of boundary conditions that include interactions with other system components, and unsteady turbulence models for off-design conditions. The resulting product, a specialized version of the multi-element unstructured CRUNCH CFD^REG code, will be a well-validated and reliable analysis tool that can be used to predict off-design performance of liquid rocket turbopumps. Furthermore, this tool can provide unsteady loading information necessary for stress and fatigue life modeling of inducer blades. It would also be able to quantify an inducer's mean head breakdown characteristics as a function of design variables. Thus this simulation software will be used for providing design support, as well as being an analysis tool for diagnosing cavitation related anomalies in operational systems.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The commercial applications for our product are broad and include critical high-energy pumps for power generation and the petrochemical market, as well as the marine propeller arena. Many of these commercial systems are designed for long-life operation (on the order of 5 years for boiler feed pumps, for example) and reduced system life due to cavitation damage can lead to severe financial loss and loss of market share. The ability to model the dynamics associated with transient start-ups as well as off-design operation would provide significant advantage to commercial companies by improving designs and reducing testing and repair costs.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Our product addresses a core need of NASA in its strive to design safer and more versatile liquid rocket engines for upcoming programs such as Project Constellation for a new Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as the Mission to the Moon. These systems will use liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and the ability to accurately model the turbopump performance over a wide range of off-design conditions will help reduce product development and testing costs. This tool will also enable simulations of instabilities in high-pressure, cryogenic test stands and support the design of more robust flow devices such as valves and venturis.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Changkun Dong
cdong@applied-nanotech.com
308 W. Rosemary Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2548
(919)619-3358
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Field emission electric propulsion (FEEP) thrusters have gained considerable attention for spacecrafts disturbance compensation because of excellent characteristics. The application of current FEEP has been slow in developing mainly caused by high specific power, which limit the milli-Newton thruster development due to insufficient onboard power. Dramatic field improvement from nanometer carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is a big advantage to increase the FEEP thrust more than 10 times under constant specific impulse (power). Phase I study showed a lower power consumption of 0.027 W/?YN from the CNT based ion source, comparing with the power consumption of 0.063 W/?YN from the traditional thruster. The CNT based FEEP ion source will be developed innovative in several aspects: integration of CNTs into the ion emission anode, buildup of the edge anode structure by the combination of the metal tip emitter and the slit emitter, and construction of a edge anode array capable of selective operation of different thrust unit. The power consumption of for ion thrust is expected to be reduced by a factor of 5 and more. The application of the room temperature carbon nanotube field emission electron neutralizer will further reduce the total power input to the ion engine.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Liquid metal ion source (LMIS) based focused ion beam (FIB) technique is used in different fields such as micro-fabrication and material analysis: secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), high resolution self-assembled Monolayers (SAM) by the high energy FIB. As our knowledge, there is very limited companies are able to produce milliNewton thrusters. The success of this project will benefit not only the NASA space applications, also a large ion source markets.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Typical space missions of FEEP include: stationkeeping in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), orbit repositioning, and orbital adjusting. For stationkeeping, FEEP can be used through the year with two firings per day. FEEP is presently baselined for several scientific missions, and has been proposed for attitude control and constellations. Applications of these thrusters as high-performance drag-free controllers for scientific spacecraft would result in considerable advantages from both weight and performance standpoints. Besides the space propulsion, elimination of electrostatic charge accumulation on spacecraft is another important task for electric ion source system.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Christopher H. Cooper
ccooper@seldontech.com
PO Box 710
Windsor, VT 05089-1429
(802)674-2444
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Seldon Laboratories, LLC, proposes a lightweight, low-pressure water purification device that harnesses the unique properties of carbon nanotubes and will operate for an extended period of time to remove microorganisms from large quantities of water. Seldon's proprietary production process results in a membrane composed largely of carbon nanotubes fused to one another. This project will build on the successful results of the Phase I testing to treat higher volumes of water by creating larger membranes and housings suitable for use in spacecraft. The very low pressure requirements will significantly reduce energy and other input requirements. The device will be sufficiently versatile so as to be incorporated into existing systems or used as a standalone system for water treatment.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Immediate applications for the device include industrial water purification systems such as where purified water is integral to the product (e.g., bottlers) or process (e.g., semiconductor manufacturers). Other applications include the household where it can be used in both point-of-entry and point-of-use systems. Finally, it will also be beneficial to municipal water treatment systems that are increasingly looking for alternatives to the health and safety risks of chemical disinfection.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The innovation should significantly reduce the power requirements of closed loop water treatment systems for spacecraft and eliminate the need for hazardous chemical treatments. It may also be used to treat fluids other than water on spacecraft. For ground-based applications, it can be used to replace or enhance exisiting drinking water purification systems and purification systems used for industrial processes or decontamination.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Gaurav Bajpai
bajpai@technosci.com
10001 Derekwood Ln
Lanham, MD 20706-4864
(301)577-6000
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The objective of the project is to develop an open architecture, computer aided analysis and control design toolbox for distributed parameter systems, in particular, this effort aims at creating computational tools for emerging applications in aerodynamic analysis and control of high performance aerial vehicles. For small-unmanned aerial vehicles a well-designed network of micro actuators can enable aggressive performance not possible using traditional control surfaces such as ailerons, elevators, rudder and flaps. Even for larger aircraft the emerging paradigm of control involves an array of actuators and distributed sensing and actuation. In addition to enhanced performance these control architectures can provide greater redundancy to confront actuator failures. In Phase I, various aspects of the model definition, control parameterization, model reduction, control design and simulation for verification were illustrated for a benchmark problem. In addition, a computational architecture leveraging commonly available tools to the scientists/engineers was defined. The proposed toolbox in conjunction with commonly used general purpose software will provide designers the ability to seamlessly test control design for aerodynamic applications by integrating and automating several key steps in design cycle. These tools will find commercial applications not only in the emerging unmanned aerial vehicle industry but other land, sea and air vehicles as well.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Design of air, land and sea vehicles involving aerodynamic and fluid flow has always been of interest to NASA. The proposed computational tools will help integrate the aerodynamic, structural and control features leading to vehicles capable of greater performance by enabling evaluation of these varied aspects at an early stage. With these tools specification, modeling, control design and simulation can help optimize the design process of aerial vehicle systems. This will enhance the designer's ability to bring recent advances in sensor/actuator technology and control design to engineering practice. The open architecture of the control toolbox and integration will well known tools helps easy extension of the toolbox to other important applications.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
With the continuing development of small scale, inexpensive, locally "intelligent" embedded actuators and "distributed" sensing, it is increasingly becoming possible to achieve truly distributed control of engineering systems. This ability to "distribute" control authority throughout the system enables the possibility of sophisticated control of distributed systems, such as those involving aerodynamic flow. Engineers/Scientists require computational tools to help analyze and design such systems. Although, the primary application is tailored towards small and micro air vehicles, these tools can be adapted and will find continuing use in industry including design of sea, air and land vehicles.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Jon A Greene
jgreene@lambdainc.com
807 B North Main Street
Blacksburg, VA 24060-3411
(540)953-1796
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The development and performance evaluation of new carbon/carbon (C/C) and carbon/silicon-carbide (SiC) composite structural components has been hampered by the lack of reliable strain sensors that can survive up to the exceedingly high temperatures (3000 F) up to which these materials must be tested. Existing off-the-shelf high-temperature strain sensors, including free filament electrical strain gages and optical fiber based strain sensors, currently do not have the necessary performance characteristics to tackle the next generation of C/C and SiC composite material testing programs. Free filament electrical strain gages cannot be used reliably over 1800 F (1000 C) and conventional optical fiber strain sensors with the appropriate protective metal coatings can operate reliably only up to close to the melting point of the silica (2000 F/1100 C). To meet the growing needs for strain sensors that can withstand future high temperature testing regimes, Lambda Instruments, Inc. proposes to develop sapphire optical fiber sensors. The 3600 F (1987 C) melting temperature of optical quality sapphire fibers, their low profile geometry, and the inherent immunity of optical fiber sensors to electromagnetic interference make sapphire fiber-based sensors particularly well suited for the proposed application.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Revenues for fiber optic sensors in 2008 is expected to reach $350 million. A large part of this market demand will come from the combustion engine and turbomachinery industry which is already the leading consumer of sensors on the worldwide market. Even though fiber optic sensors are uniquely capable making measurements under harsh environmental conditions, they still need to achieve large volumes, low unit prices, and long operational lifetimes before industries are willing to put them into widespread use. The proposed Phase II program will be a large step in validating the commercial viability of fiber sensors for harsh environments.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The primary NASA application for the proposed high temperature sapphire optical fiber strain gages is for structural performance monitoring of emerging C/SiC and C/C composite components that must be characterized up to 3000 F. Other potential NASA applications based on the proposed sapphire optical fiber sensor technology include strain, temperature, and pressure sensors for performance monitoring of ramjet/scramjets during research and operation as well as for continuous structural health monitoring of the next generation space vehicles to maintain performance and safety standards throughout all phases of the mission.

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Techno-Sciences, Inc.
10001 Derekwood Ln
Lanham ,MD 20706 - 4864
(301) 577 - 6000

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Gaurav   Bajpai
bajpai@technosci.com
10001 Derekwood Ln
Lanham ,MD  20706 -4864
(301) 577 - 6000
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The purpose of the project is the development of a computational package for bifurcation analysis and advanced flight control of aircraft. The development of relevant analytical and simulation-based technologies for the prediction and control for fail-safe adaptivity under adverse and upset conditions is an important step in advancing flight safety goals. Impaired aircraft operate much closer to bifurcation points than a fully functional vehicle. Thus, it is necessary to be able to evaluate aircraft and flight control system performance near stability boundaries. Understanding behavior near operational limits and developing control and recovery strategies for these circumstances is fundamental to achieving that goal. To that end TSi proposes an integrated set of computing tools involving symbolic, numerical and visualization environments. In phase I, the architecture was validated using a benchmark problem. Phase II proposes the extension of the results from Phase I into a commercial package to be made available to the analyst/designer of fault tolerant control algorithms.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The primary application area of the proposed work is to improve the safety and performance of commercial and military aircraft. However the developed tools based on modern nonlinear dynamical systems theory can be adapted to a broad range of engineering systems where nonlinear phenomena is of interest including other aerospace vehicles, ground and sea vehicles, hazardous chemical plants, nuclear power plant, robotic manipulators and others. Additionally, the design techniques will also provide a framework to conduct bifurcation analysis for various systems in an integrated package. Although, the primary market for the first commercial release of the software is in the aviation, the automobile industry represents a lucrative market for the tools with little modification as well.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
NASA created the Aviation Safety Program to develop technologies focused on the national goal of reducing the fatal aircraft accident rate by 80% by 2007. The objective of the work is the development of a rigorous and practical framework of bifurcation analysis and control design techniques to address fail safe adaptation in adverse and upset conditions. The successful completion of the project will deliver flight dynamic analysis, control design and visualization tools in a single package significantly enhancing the ability of the engineer to design fail safe and failure recovery systems for commercial aircraft.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Alec J.D. Bateman
bateman@bainet.com
1410 Sachem Place, Suite 202
Charlottesville, VA 22901-0807
(434)973-1215
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Next-generation aerospace systems will require increased autonomy to modify system behavior based on changing mission requirements, environmental factors, and system performance. For example, intelligent systems have been employed to improve safety by adaptively compensating for unexpected failures or damage. Despite many successful demonstrations of autonomous and intelligent control laws in simulations and flight tests, the difficulty associated with the verification, validation, and testing of adaptive and nondeterministic systems poses a significant barrier to their use in safety-critical systems. The proposed Phase II research addresses this challenge through the development of innovative V\&V algorithms and easy-to-use software tools that will provide intelligent, automated, and interactive test plan generation and execution. The tool will integrate state-of-the-art analysis and numerical methods to automatically generate test vector sets, execute high-fidelity simulations or monitor pilot-in-the-loop simulations, analyze simulation results, and adapt/modify future test vectors based on observations to date. The result will be a significant reduction in cost associated with system testing while simultaneously offering a significant increase in the probability that system problems are uncovered early in the development process. The tool will have broad applicability for aerospace as well as non-aerospace applications.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Non-NASA aerospace applications include V\&V of advanced systems for JSF, J-UCAS, retrofit reconfigurable controllers for F-18 and other aircraft, the Helicopter Advanced Control Technologies (HACT) system, and next-generation rotorcraft fuel and engine control systems. Barron Associates is currently providing advanced control and V\&V technology to all of these programs. Non-aerospace applications include V\&V of electrical power distribution systems, nuclear power plant control systems, autonomous surface and underwater vehicles, marine steering systems, and medical devices. Again, these are all areas in which Barron Associates is currently providing advanced control and V\&V technology.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The proposed software tool will be a key enabling technology for verification and validation of any advanced and autonomous system. Two key areas of application will be aviation safety and security and space exploration. For aviation safety and security, the Phase II product will enable the testing and verification of advanced fault-tolerant and damage-adaptive controllers (e.g., Lockheed's AIMSAFE as part of AvSP and Dryden's PCA and IFC systems). For space exploration, the Phase II product will enable safe incorporation of more sophisticated autonomy to allow remote operation in highly uncertain environments without a real-time remote operator.

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
KALSCOTT Enginering, Inc.
3266 S.W. Timberlake Ln.
Topeka ,KS 66614 - 0000
(785) 856 - 3222

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Tom   Sherwood
tom.sherwood@kalscott.com
3266 S.W. Timberlake Ln.
Topeka ,KS  66614 -0000
(785) 979 - 1113
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
A system for autonomous detection and exploitation of weather phenomena for endurance or range enhancement for loitering unmanned air vehicles is presented. The proposed system consists of hardware and software for coarse identification of geographical areas where advantageous weather phenomena (such as soaring conditions) are present. A custom autopilot and sensors enable the fine detection of the phenomena, and cause the UAV to adopt an optimal flight path that exploits the phenomena. The proposed system consists of custom hardware, software, and sensors. We have demonstrated a simulation of the system in Phase I, and we will render this in hardware in Phase II. We will also complete full flight test of the system on our 40 lb class UAV in Phase II.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The Phase II SBIR will result in high endurance schemes for loitering UAVs, innovative flight control systems for UAVs, optimal flight path determination and execution. These developments dovetail with current NASA efforts to develop more intelligent and autonomous air vehicles for use in science mission, military and homeland security missions. The concepts and systems can be ported to small manned aircraft as well.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The proposed system can be used to increase the endurance or range, and/or reduce the fuel consumption of loitering air vehicles operating at low-to-medium altitudes. The methods described here can be adopted for extending the endurance of small aircraft in emergency situations as well. The proposed autopilot can be used by sport glider and motorglider pilots. Unmanned air vehicles are increasingly being used for military, homeland security and science missions. In particular, we will investigate the use of this technology for small (<40 lb) and medium-sized (~ 600 lb) UAVs which we are developing for homeland security and science mission applications.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Dana G Andrews
dandrews@andrews-space.com
505 Fifth Avenue South, Suite 300
Seattle, WA 98104-3894
(206)438-0630
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Ballutes, or inflatable decelerators, offer significant advantages over rigid shells for aerocapture of planetary spacecraft and for earth reentry of cargo by providing mass savings and simplified packaging features. Traditional ballutes, however, have provided little or no trajectory control. For new platform functionality, high drag must be accompanied by some degree of control; also, incorporating thermal protection into the design provides additional weight savings. Ballutes are typically designed to create a low ballistic coefficient, reducing heating rates. However, a low ballistic coefficient also makes them inherently susceptible to insertion trajectory errors, atmospheric density variations, and winds. The use of a variable drag design allows for in-flight adjustment of ballistic coefficient. This significantly lowers downrange dispersions, resulting in a higher reliability recovery system. The specific innovation proposed is the design of a forward-attached, variable drag ballute for atmospheric entry. To demonstrate dispersion control in a forward-mounted ballute, Andrews proposes two flight tests of a subscale, pressure-supported, symmetric ballute that modulates drag by internal pressure control. The experiments are designed to demonstrate the ability to actively vary drag and prove transonic stability while avoiding an aeroheating environment requiring specialized thermal materials.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Ballutes can provide additional capability for near-earth orbit commercial space utilization. They allow development of recoverable capsules to support zero-g pharmaceutical, chemical, and materials research independent of Shuttle or other NASA capabilities.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The successful completion of the variable drag ballute transonic flight test in Phase II will significantly reduce the perceived technical risks associated with ballute development for both NASA and commercial markets. For example, a variable drag ballute will provide a lightweight, reliable deceleration system for cargo return from the International Space Station. It will increase ISS science utilization by increasing payload recovery capability. Variable drag ballutes will also be used to recover other spacecraft and as a method for planetary aerocapture and probe entry.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Joshua Paul
jbpaul@novawavetech.com
230A Twin Dolphin Drive
Redwood City, CA 94065-1411
(650)610-0956
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The Small Business Innovative Research Phase I proposal seeks to develop a compact, robust in situ spectrometer capable of detecting multiple gas-phase species in planetary atmospheres with ultra-high sensitivity and selectivity. This instrument will employ a novel room-temperature, widely tunable mid-infrared laser source in conjunction with cavity ringdown spectroscopy. During Phase I, both the novel laser and the cavity ringdown technology were demonstrated in the 3.3 micron spectral region. During Phase II, a flight-ready instrument will be constructed, enabling access to a variety of species, including methane, ethane, ammonia, and formaldehyde. The ultra-high sensitivity of the proposed system will enable these species to be detected at concentrations below 7*10^7/cm^3 per minute, which corresponds to a detection limit of <30 pptv in Earth's atmosphere. The unique laser source to be constructed in Phase II will also be capable of being integrated into other spectroscopic platforms, in many cases providing a direct replacement for cumbersome cryogenic diode lasers while at the same time significantly improving the spatial mode quality and increasing spectral coverage.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
The worldwide market for sensors with the capabilities of the proposed system is significant. Numerous applications exist in trace gas monitoring, pollution monitoring, industrial process control, and medical diagnostics. The novel laser system alone possesses significant commercial potential as a replacement for literally hundreds of cryogenic sources that are presently in use.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
NASA applications for the laser and sensor technology described in this proposal include the interrogation of terrestrial as well as potentially extraterrestrial atmospheres for trace species.. The ability to measure formaldehyde and ammonia, specifically, would be of great benefit to current atmospheric research efforts as well as air quality monitoring aboard the International Space Station. The sensor will have numerous applications in ongoing research missions, including chemical kinetics and transport phenomena studies.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Scott O'Dell
scottodell@plasmapros.com
4914 Moores Mill Road
Huntsville, AL 35811-1558
(256)851-7653
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
For materials processing experiments in microgravity, crucibles comprised of an internal ceramic liner in direct contact with a metal reinforcement are desired to maximize heat transfer. Previous work has demonstrated the advantages of reinforced crucibles for producing samples with enhanced microstructural features compared to samples processed in conventional ampoule/cartridge assemblies. However, incorporation of thermocouples is limited to either inside the crucible cavity or on the external surface of the metal reinforcement. The science requirements of several NASA investigators prevent the placement of thermocouples in these locations. In addition, a failure detection technique based on the use of krypton gas is required on some microgravity furnaces. During this investigation, "smart" crucibles are being developed that incorporate thermocouple grooves and a reservoir for krypton gas storage within the crucible wall, i.e., intimate contact between all layers is maintained. These same techniques can be used to fabricate refractory metal heat pipes where the wick/capillary structure is an integral part of the structure. Currently, a heat pipe cooled nuclear reactor concept (SAFE-400) is being considered for advanced space power and propulsion systems. Such an advanced reactor configuration would enable near-tern ambitious space exploration. During Phase II, smart crucibles and heat pipes will be fabricated.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Electronics and microchip manufacturing, high temperature furnace and retort components, rocket motor throat inserts, radiation shields, heat pipes, power generation equipment, nuclear components, beam and sputter targets, automotive and aerospace engine monitoring components.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
Safer, thermally enhanced containment cartridges for processing materials science experiments on earth and in microgravity will be developed. In addition, the fabrication techniques developed will enable the production of smart components containing internal features and sensors for other NASA applications such as refractory metal heat pipes for advanced space power and propulsion systems, rocket nozzles, high temperature furnace components, thermal and radiation shielding, nuclear and power generation components, and thermal stir weld tools.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Anthony A Ferrante
ferrante@psicorp.com
20 New England Business Center
Andover, MA 01810-1077
(978)689-0003
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
The proposed innovative technology addresses the need to understand and develop countermeasures for the skeletal and cardiovascular changes to astronauts during prolonged exposure to microgravity environments. During the proposed program we will apply our innovative functional imagery approach, developed in Phase I research, to the problem of microgravity-induced cellular changes in osteoblasts, cells that are responsible for bone growth and repair. As part of the program we will develop a 593-nm diode-pumped, solid-state (DPSS) laser that will be combined with a commercially available 473 nm DPSS laser to enable simultaneous visualization of three cellular proteins that are genetically fused to fluorescent reef coral proteins (RCFPs). The genetic constructs we will generate, integrin aV-ZsGreen, p130CAS-DsRed2 and HcRed-a-actin, will enable space biologists to monitor changes in cytoskeletal structure as well as changes at the focal adhesions in vivo and in real time with no manipulation or reagent addition. Those same genetic constructs could be expressed in different cell lines to examine the effects of microgravity environments on cardiovascular tissue. We expect that the improved understanding of cellular changes that our innovative model system will deliver will enable rapid development of countermeasures to microgravity-induced changes in humans.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
We anticipate that the successful completion of the Phase II program will have several non-NASA commercial implications. First, we expect that this work will increase the adoption of the RCFPs by terrestrial researchers in many fields. The RCFPs will provide enhanced ability for simultaneously monitoring expression of multiple genes. We also anticipate that the 593-nm laser that will be developed during the program will be adopted by manufacturers and sellers of confocal imaging systems. There is currently no commercially available, solid-state laser with an emission wavelength between 532-nm and 635-nm.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 100 WORDS)
We anticipate that space biology researchers at NASA will use the osteoblast cell culture model and associated confocal imaging system that will be developed during our Phase II program for flight experiments aimed at understanding changes at the cellular level that lead to the skeletal changes found in astronauts during long-term space travel. We further anticipate that the knowledge gained will enable rapid development of effective countermeasures for microgravity-induced bone loss. In addition, the genetic constructs and the confocal imaging system may also provide enhanced capabilities for understanding the cellular mechanisms of cardiovascular changes found in astronauts.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Mikhail A Gutin
gutin@appscience.com
1223 Peoples Avenue
Troy , NY 12180-3511
(518)276-3637
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
Applied Science Innovations, Inc. proposes a new tool of 3D optical coherence tomography (OCT) for cellular level imaging at video frame rates and dramatically reduced probe cross-section. Existing commercial OCT tools are focused in ophthalmology, where examination is external to the eye, the size of the probe is not important, and cellular level resolution is not required. The patent-pending 3D OCT will provide three-dimensional imaging in scattering media with improved resolution, depth of field, and minimal mechanical adjustment. The proposed approach is based on novel probe designs, original coherence scanning, and advanced signal processing. The flexible imaging probe will have dramatically reduced cross-section, compared to the existing systems, enabling the first "3D camera through a n