National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research 2001 Program Solicitation

TOPIC A8 Revolutionary Concepts in Aeronautics (RevCon)

[ back to Solicitation ] [ back to Chapter 8.1.1 ] [ back to Chapter 8.1 ] [ back to Chapter 8 ] [ back to table of contents ]

A8.01 Revolutionary Aerospace Vehicle Systems Concepts
A8.02 Revolutionary Technologies and Components for Propulsion Systems
A8.03 Revolutionary Flight Concepts

RevCon, or Revolutionary Concepts in Aeronautics, was conceived to provide NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise means to accelerate the exploration of high-risk, breakthrough technologies and enable revolutionary departures from traditional approaches to air vehicle design. The focus of the RevCon is to develop robust flight projects that are responsive to civil, commercial, and Department of Defense (DoD) needs. RevCon focuses solely on aeronautics vehicles and technology. The technology-driven RevCon research may consist of either government-led or industry-led efforts to assure a broad coverage of technologies and applications. Flight research will be focused on technology demonstrations with short development times and must demonstrate high-payoff technologies that significantly advance the state-of-the-art. RevCon projects may include new research vehicles and/or advanced technology experiments on new or existing flight-test platforms. Innovative research partnerships with NASA, utilizing a range of contractual vehicles, are highly encouraged. The intent of soliciting these subtopic elements within the SBIR is to extend potential opportunities to small businesses by providing an incubator type access to future partnering in flight research projects. The RevCon project is an established NASA endeavor which, for successful proposers, may allow opportunities beyond completion of the two-phase SBIR effort.

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/

A8.01 Revolutionary Aerospace Vehicle Systems Concepts
Lead Center: LaRC
Participating Center(s): ARC

The emphasis in this subtopic is on advanced aerospace vehicle concepts for both military and civil applications that accelerate the introduction of high risk, breakthrough technologies in order to enable revolutionary departures from traditional approaches to air vehicle design. These technologies must contribute to improving safety, performance, capacity, reduced emissions and/or noise, and development, production, or operations cost of future air vehicles. The scope includes advanced aerospace vehicle concepts and airframe systems such as wing, fuselage, propulsion/ airframe integration, and technologies applicable to these. Specific technical areas of interest include the following:

• Advanced aerospace vehicle concepts and configurations of subsonic to supersonic air-breathing vehicles and unique propulsion/airframe integration concepts that offer revolutionary increases in performance over conventional aircraft designs.
• Innovative system-oriented research to support, develop, and/or enable advanced airframe technologies and concepts that could impact the design and optimization of any future class of aircraft.
• Efficient, design-oriented application software embodying the mathematical and algorithmic aspects of both multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) and systems analysis methods for aerospace vehicles.
• Adaptation of newly emerging technologies, such as biomimetics and carbon nanotubes to aerospace vehicle concepts.
  

A8.02 Revolutionary Technologies and Components for Propulsion Systems
Lead Center: GRC
Participating Center(s): None

NASA seeks highly innovative technologies for propulsion systems and components for advanced high speed aerospace vehicles, to support missions, such as access to space, global cruise, and high-speed transports. The main emphasis in this subtopic is on high-risk, breakthrough technologies in order to revolutionize present-day gas turbine engines to operate over a flight spectrum of up to Mach 8. Specific technical areas include the following:

• Advanced cooling concepts that minimize coolant penalties. This can include innovative cooling systems, materials, fuel cooling of combustor, and endothermic fuels and/or fuel additives to increase the heat-sink capacity or cooling capacity of fuels.
• Innovative technologies relating to combustion process, including fuel injectors, piloting, flame holding techniques for increased performance and decreased emissions, techniques to identify the onset of combustion instability in lean-burn and/or rich-burn, low NOx combustor, ramjet combustion and active and passive combustion controls in order to extend the operability of the combustion components to a wider range of operating conditions.
• New inlet designs to meet functional airflow needs of high Mach number propulsion. For instance, a variable geometry, supersonic, mixed compression inlet. Compatibility with turbomachinery and mode transition across the speed range should be addressed. Special attention should be given to combustor demands along a realistic flight corridor. This flight corridor must be compatible with turbine engine thermal-structure limits.
• New techniques to improve the aerodynamic performance and operability of the inlet, including highly offset subsonic diffusers and designs for boundary layer control, minimizing engine unstart susceptibility, and techniques to identify and control the onset of mode transition between different propulsion concepts within the same internal flowpath or dual flowpaths.
• New controllable and reliable nozzle technologies with optimum expansion efficiency and thrust vectoring capability, including a computational nozzle design methodology to study various geometries and chemistry effects.
• Enabling technologies of components and subsystems that allow turbomachinery to operate at high-speed flight conditions. Specific examples include (1) a lightweight, high pressure ratio compressor which must be protected or removed from the extremely high temperature primary air stream; (2) applications of advanced ceramic/ composite materials or micro-electrical-mechanical systems to enhance the performance and reduce the cost and weight; and (3) innovative inlet flow conditioning.
• New designs for combined/combination cycles, in particular those including turbine propulsion. Alternate engine cycles that meet a unique mission requirement (e.g., global reach, access to space, etc.), including pulse detonation, ramjets, scramjets, and rockets. Proposals can also include development of unique components required for the maturation of alternate propulsion cycles, such as inlets, diffusers, nozzles, air-valves, fuel injectors, combustors, etc.
  

A8.03 Revolutionary Flight Concepts
Lead Center: DFRC
Participating Center(s): None

This subtopic solicits innovative flight test experiments that demonstrate breakthrough vehicle or system concepts, technologies, and operations in the real flight environment. The emphasis of this subtopic is the feasibility, development, and maturation of advanced flight experiments that demonstrate advanced or revolutionary methodologies, technologies, and concepts. It seeks advanced flight techniques, operations, and experiments that promise significant leaps in vehicle performance, operation, safety, cost, and capability; and require a demonstration in the actual flight environment to fully characterize or validate.

The scope of this subtopic is broad and includes advanced flight experiments that accelerate the understanding and development of advanced technologies and unconventional operational concepts. It is intended to advance and demonstrate revolutionary concepts and is not intended to support evolutionary steps required in normal product development. Proposals should emphasize the need of flight-testing a concept or technology as a necessary means of verifying or proving its worth. The benefit of this effort will ultimately be more efficient aerospace vehicles, increased flight safety (particularly during flight tests), and an increased understanding of the complex interactions between the vehicle or technology concept and the flight environment.

[Back to top]

[back to top] [ back to Solicitation ] [ back to Chapter 8.1.1 ] [ back to Chapter 8.1 ] [ back to Chapter 8 ] [ back to table of contents ]