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Ft Bragg Airborne Troops Support R&D to Prevent Soldier Head Injuries

Monday, September 13th, 2021

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina – Airborne Soldiers here recently tested combat helmet sensors looking to help the Army lessen repetitive traumatic injuries to the head and neck while jumping from aircraft.

The 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division and the Airborne and Special Operations Test Directorate teamed up to do testing for the Army Research Laboratory’s (ARL) newest Head Impact Monitoring Sensors.

Ongoing research supported by the ARL over the last 10 years has developed improved monitoring devices and the implementation of many new protective gear developments.

“Ultimately our goal for the Rate Activated Tether (RAT) helmet suspension is to increase the blunt impact protection in all combat helmets for all Soldiers,” said Thomas Plaisted, the ARL Materials Engineer Research Lead.

He said whether Airborne or ground-based operations Soldiers, the goal is to achieve a comfortable and stable helmet fit with minimal added weight.

“The Impact Monitoring Mouthguard (IMM) is a ‘Check Engine’ sensor that provides understandable and objective head impact and blunt force data to line leaders regarding the readiness of their Service members,” said Dr. Adam Bartsch, Chief Science Officer for Prevent Biometrics.

For the past year, the IMM Team has been collaborating with the ARL to evaluate the RAT impact absorption system fitted into the Army Combat Helmet.

Testing of the IMM and RAT began mid-July with a day of ground training and familiarization, followed by combat-equipped jumps on Fort Bragg’s Holland Drop Zone.

“The findings from this test are vital in understanding the physical demands Soldiers encounter while conducting airborne operations,” said Capt. Tyler Miller, ABNSOTD Operations Officer.

“With this data, leaders and researchers can develop equipment and processes to better protect paratroopers.”

Ground training consisted of experts from ARL and Prevent Biometrics conducting training on proper wear and fitting of the RAT and IMM.

The test jumpers then tested the equipment on the ground with Sustained Airborne Training, Parachute Landing Falls on various surfaces, and then practicing jump commands and aircraft exits out of a mock door trainer.

That was followed by combat-equipped training jumps on Fort Bragg’s Holland Drop Zone from U.S. Air Force C-17 Aircraft, along with Paratroopers from 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, who were already jumping for training for mass tactical airfield seizure insertions.

“The ability to test and put these new and emerging technologies directly into the hands of our Soldiers goes far too rapidly evolve technology for the future of the Army,” said Miller.

Data collected from post jump surveys and the head impact sensors will lead to further development of protective equipment for Paratroopers.

Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division plan to assist medical researchers, by utilizing the IMM for further head impact data collection during training events over the coming months.

The data these Soldiers will gather will assist researchers in further development of protective equipment and techniques to prevent future mild traumatic brain injuries from combat and everyday training events.

By CPT Christopher Weber, Airborne and Special Operations Test Directorate, U.S. Army Operational Test Command

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Turning Thermal Energy into Electricity Could Help Soldiers

Sunday, September 5th, 2021

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — With the addition of sensors and enhanced communication tools, providing lightweight, portable power has become even more challenging. Army-funded research demonstrated a new approach to turning thermal energy into electricity that could provide compact and efficient power for Soldiers on future battlefields.

Hot objects radiate light in the form of photons into their surroundings. The emitted photons can be captured by a photovoltaic cell and converted to useful electric energy. This approach to energy conversion is called far-field thermophotovoltaics, or FF-TPVs, and has been under development for many years; however, it suffers from low power density and therefore requires high operating temperatures of the emitter.

The research, conducted at the University of Michigan and published in Nature Communications, demonstrates a new approach, where the separation between the emitter and the photovoltaic cell is reduced to the nanoscale, enabling much greater power output than what is possible with FF-TPVs for the same emitter temperature.

This approach, which enables capture of energy that is otherwise trapped in the near-field of the emitter is called near-field thermophotovoltaics or NF-TPV and uses custom-built photovoltaic cells and emitter designs ideal for near-field operating conditions.

This technique exhibited a power density almost an order of magnitude higher than that for the best-reported near-field-TPV systems, while also operating at six-times higher efficiency, paving the way for future near-field-TPV applications, according to Dr. Edgar Meyhofer, professor of mechanical engineering, University of Michigan.

“The Army uses large amounts of power during deployments and battlefield operations and must be carried by the Soldier or a weight constrained system,” said Dr. Mike Waits, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory. “If successful, in the future near-field-TPVs could serve as more compact and higher efficiency power sources for Soldiers as these devices can function at lower operating temperatures than conventional TPVs.”

The efficiency of a TPV device is characterized by how much of the total energy transfer between the emitter and the photovoltaic cell is used to excite the electron-hole pairs in the photovoltaic cell. While increasing the temperature of the emitter increases the number of photons above the band-gap of the cell, the number of sub band-gap photons that can heat up the photovoltaic cell need to be minimized.

“This was achieved by fabricating thin-film TPV cells with ultra-flat surfaces, and with a metal back reflector,” said Dr. Stephen Forrest, professor of electrical and computer engineering, University of Michigan. “The photons above the band-gap of the cell are efficiently absorbed in the micron-thick semiconductor, while those below the band-gap are reflected back to the silicon emitter and recycled.”

The team grew thin-film indium gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells on thick semiconductor substrates, and then peeled off the very thin semiconductor active region of the cell and transferred it to a silicon substrate.

All these innovations in device design and experimental approach resulted in a novel near-field TPV system.

“The team has achieved a record ~5 kW/m2 power output, which is an order of magnitude larger than systems previously reported in the literature,” said Dr. Pramod Reddy, professor of mechanical engineering, University of Michigan.

Researchers also performed state-of-the-art theoretical calculations to estimate the performance of the photovoltaic cell at each temperature and gap size and showed good agreement between the experiments and computational predictions.

“This current demonstration meets theoretical predictions of radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale, and directly shows the potential for developing future near-field TPV devices for Army applications in power and energy, communication and sensors,” said Dr. Pani Varanasi, program manager, DEVCOM ARL that funded this work.

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Guest Post, Power, Research | Comments Off on Turning Thermal Energy into Electricity Could Help Soldiers

US Army Lab Gets Green Light for Supercomputing Project

Tuesday, August 31st, 2021

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — The U.S. Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program announced its selection of an Army supercomputing project for fiscal 2022.

Since 2014, DOD has awarded what are known as Frontier Projects to enable research, development, test and evaluation outcomes that could not be achieved using typically available DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program resources.

Researchers from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory along with the Naval Air Warfare Center, submitted a winning proposal for a project to explore large-scale integrated simulations of gas turbine engines.

Drs. Luis Bravo from the laboratory and Russell Powers from the Naval Air Warfare Center are primary investigators for the research.

“The advanced design tools resulting from this project will lead to ?quantum leaps in the performance, efficiency and reliability of next-generation gas turbine engines,” Bravo wrote in the proposal. “We are now able to tackle such large problems due to the recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and advanced computational fluid dynamics.”

The researchers hope to create a digital twin of an actual gas turbine engine.

This will enable real-time engine health awareness and reduce lifecycle cost, Bravo said.

“This award will provide the supercomputing resources to make possible our collaboration between our laboratory, NAVAIR, Pratt & Whitney, the University of Cincinnati and Cascade Tech on digital twin models in propulsion,” Bravo said. “We are partnering across government, industry and academia to address a grand challenge in propulsion and we are all very excited about receiving this announcement.”

“The selection of our project shows a focus on advancing state of the art capabilities in numerical predictions for naval aviation engines,” Powers said.

The collaboration will help demonstrate increased capability and applications of predictive modeling and simulation tools, setting a new standard for the use of modeling and simulation in future engine and acquisition programs, he said.

“We are very grateful for the opportunity to use these resources, the support of our leadership, and excited to get started,” Powers said.

The award is one of four projects the DOD selected in its Foundational Research and Engineering category and the only one across the Army. The other awardees in this group include the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research.

DOD will allocate resources starting Oct. 1, 2021. While the project will get quarterly reviews, the effort is planned to cover up to four years of research.

“We have high expectations that all Frontier Projects will produce notable achievement and strong mission impacts,” said Dr. Will McMahon, DOD HPCMP director in a memo announcing the award.

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Guest Post, Research | Comments Off on US Army Lab Gets Green Light for Supercomputing Project

American Rheinmetall Vehicles Signs Master Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center

Saturday, August 28th, 2021

American Rheinmetall Vehicles has signed a Master Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center (DEVCOM AC). This CRADA allows the DEVCOM AC and American Rheinmetall Vehicles to collaborate on a regular basis to develop integrated combat vehicle weapon, fire control, and ammunition technologies.

Among other research and development tasks, the CRADA provides a conduit for the team to explore integration of the U.S. Army’s XM913 50mm cannon on platforms that are potential candidates for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) program. American Rheinmetall Vehicles has submitted a proposal in the Army’s Phase II of the OMFV program.
American Rheinmetall Vehicles and DEVCOM AC will leverage their respective expertise to develop armaments solutions which may also be applicable to future weapons systems for other military services, international military markets, and further spin-off applications. The effort may include, but is not limited to, digital engineering, modeling and simulation, and prototyping throughout the design, development, and testing of direct fire armaments systems, cannon mounts, vehicle/armament system interfacing, active/reactive protection systems, programmable munition lethality, ammunition handling, fire control, secondary armaments, robotics, logistics, power management, and manufacturing science.

“This Master CRADA creates a tremendous opportunity to research, develop, and integrate the newest technologies into a modern fire control system for combat vehicles,” said Mike Milner, American Rheinmetall Vehicles Director for Business Development and Strategy. “Specifically, efforts on integration of the XM913 50mm cannon will provide transformational capability and overmatch for our future Soldiers.”

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Leaping Squirrels Could Help Scientists Develop More Agile Robots

Friday, August 20th, 2021

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Understanding the split-second decisions squirrels make as they jump from tree branch to tree branch will help scientists develop more agile robots.

With funding from the U.S. Army, researchers at University of California, Berkeley studied how squirrels decide whether or not to take a leap and how they assess their biomechanical abilities to know whether they can land safely.

Understanding how squirrels learn the limits of their agility could help scientists design autonomous robots that can nimbly move through varied landscapes to help with military missions such as traveling through the rubble of a collapsed building to aid in search and rescue or to quickly access an environmental threat.

“The team at UC Berkeley is challenging the comfort zone of today’s robotic design in a very clever way, taking us one step closer to tomorrow’s truly autonomous and versatile robots,” said Dr. Dean Culver, program manager for Complex Dynamics and Systems at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. “Studying organisms’ behavior, like jumping squirrels, lets the engineering community ask fascinating questions about an autonomous agent trying to navigate an uncertain environment. For example, what stimuli cause learning? How does the interplay between structural compliance in a limb and surprises in an environment permit adjustments during a maneuver?”

To tackle these questions, Dr. Robert Full, professor at UC Berkeley and former doctoral student Dr. Nathanial Hunt, now an assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, joined forces with professor of psychology Dr. Lucia Jacobs and former UC Berkeley doctoral student Judy Jinn.

Jacobs and her students developed precise methods to study cognition in wild campus squirrels, and they proposed integrating these studies with biomechanics, extending Full’s laboratory models not only to mammals for the first time, but to a wild mammal–squirrels–that had experienced the full natural development of its agility.

In the journal Science, the researchers report on their experiments on free-ranging squirrels, quantifying how they learn to leap from different types of launching pads–some bendy, some not–in just a few attempts, how they change their body orientation in midair based on the quality of their launch, and how they alter their landing maneuvers in real-time, depending on the stability of the final perch.

“As a model organism to understand the biological limits of balance and agility, I would argue that squirrels are second to none,” said Hunt, now an assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. “If we try to understand how squirrels do this, then we may discover general principles of high-performance locomotion in the canopy and other complex terrains that apply to the movements of other animals and robots.”

Researchers conducted the experiments in a eucalyptus grove on the UC Berkeley campus, where the Berkeley team enticed fox squirrels that roam the campus into sketchy situations where they had to decide whether to leap for a peanut or let it go.

They found that, as expected, the flimsier or more compliant the branch from which squirrels have to leap, the more cautious they were. But, it took squirrels just a few attempts to adjust to different compliances.

“When they leap across a gap, they decide where to take off based on a tradeoff between branch flexibility and the size of the gap they must leap,” Hunt said. “And when they encounter a branch with novel mechanical properties, they learn to adjust their launching mechanics in just a few jumps. This behavioral flexibility that adapts to the mechanics and geometry of leaping and landing structures is important to accurately leaping across a gap to land on a small target.”

The squirrels don’t balance the bendiness of the launching branch and the gap distance equally. In fact, the compliance of the branch was six times more critical than the gap distance in deciding whether to jump.

This may be because squirrels know that their sharp claws will save them if they miscalculate. Their claws are so failproof, Hunt said, that none of the squirrels ever fell, despite wobbly leaps and over- or undershot landings.

“They’re not always going to have their best performance–they just have to be good enough,” he said. “They have redundancy. So, if they miss, they don’t hit their center of mass right on the landing perch, they’re amazing at being able to grab onto it. They’ll swing underneath, they’ll swing over the top. They just don’t fall.”

That’s where exploration and innovation come into play as squirrels search for the best leaping strategy.

“If they leap into the air with too much speed or too little speed, they can use a variety of landing maneuvers to compensate,” Hunt said. “If they jump too far, they roll forward around the branch. If they jump short, they will land with their front legs and swing underneath before pulling themselves up on top of the perch. This combination of adaptive planning behaviors, learning control and reactive stabilizing maneuvers helps them move quickly through the branches without falling.”

One unsuspected innovation was that during tricky jumps, squirrels would often reorient their bodies to push off a vertical surface, like in human parkour, to adjust their speed and insure a better landing. Parkour is a sport in which people leap, vault, swing or use other movements to quickly traverse obstacles without the use of equipment.

“Learning from squirrels the limitations of improvisation with a given controller architecture and compliant actuators will help engineers understand how to design a robot controller and actuators to maximize improvisational capabilities,” Dean said. “To get to that next step for more agile robots, we first have to observe and quantify the ideas of adjustment and improvisation, which this research provides.”

This research complements earlier Army-funded research at UC Berkeley that developed an agile robot, called Salto that looks like a Star Wars Imperial walker in miniature and may be able to aid in scouting and search-and-rescue operations.

In additional to the Army, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health supported this research.

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Guest Post, Research, Robotics | 1 Comment »

Bird’s-eye View Could be Key to Navigating Without GPS

Wednesday, July 28th, 2021

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — A bird’s-eye view may take on new meaning thanks to Army-funded research. Scientists found that a protein in bird’s retinas is sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field thus guiding its migratory patterns. That finding could be key to Army navigation of both autonomous and manned vehicles where GPS is unavailable.

For decades, scientists have been investigating how animals such as birds, sea turtles, fish and insects sense the Earth’s magnetic field and use it to find their way.

Researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Oldenburg, supported through a co-funded effort of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research Global, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research were the first to demonstrate that a protein in birds’ retinas is sensitive to magnetic fields and may be a long-sought sensor for biological navigation.

The team discovered that the magnetic sense of migratory birds such as European robins is based on a specific light-sensitive protein in the eye. The research, published in Nature, identified the protein that the scientists believe allows these songbirds to detect the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field and navigate their migration.

“This research not only demonstrated that cryptochrome 4 is sensitive to magnetic fields, but importantly also identified the molecular mechanism underlying this sensitivity,” Dr. Stephanie McElhinny, a program manager at the laboratory. “This fundamental knowledge is critical for informing future technology development efforts aimed at exploiting this mechanism for highly sensitive magnetic field sensors that could enable Army navigation where GPS is unavailable, compromised or denied.”

The researchers extracted the genetic code for the potentially magnetically sensitive cryptochrome 4 and produced the photoactive protein in large quantities using bacterial cell cultures. The team then used a wide range of magnetic resonance and novel optical spectroscopy techniques to study the protein and demonstrate its pronounced sensitivity to magnetic fields.

The team showed that the protein is sensitive to magnetic fields due to electron transfer reactions triggered by absorption of blue light. They believe that these highly-specialized chemical reactions give the birds information about the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field, which acts like a magnetic compass.

“While more research needs to be done to fully understand how cryptochrome 4 senses the weak magnetic field of Earth and how this is ultimately translated into signals that are understood by the migrating bird, this new knowledge is an exciting first step toward potential navigation systems that would rely only on the magnetic field of Earth, unaffected by weather or light levels,” McElhinny said.

Because the magnetic field modifies the cryptochrome protein in a measurable way, cryptochrome proteins or synthetic molecules that mimic the mechanism of cryptochrome’s magnetic sensing could be used in a future navigation device.

Detectable changes in the protein would be decoded to indicate the strength and direction of the magnetic field, and thus the navigational position on Earth.

Proteins like cryptochrome consist of chains of amino acids. Cyrptochrome 4 contains four tryptophan amino acids that are organized in series. According to the research team’s calculations, electrons hop from one tryptophan to the next through the series, generating so-called radical pairs which are magnetically sensitive.

To prove this experimentally, the team from Oldenburg University produced slightly modified versions of the robin cryptochrome, in which each of the tryptophans in turn was replaced by a different amino acid to block the movement of electrons.

Using these modified proteins, the Oxford University chemistry groups experimentally demonstrated that electrons move within the cryptochrome as predicted in the calculations and that the generated radical pairs are essential to explain the observed magnetic field effects.

The team also expressed cryptochrome 4 from chickens and pigeons, which do not migrate. The researchers found that the protein is more magnetically sensitive in the migratory birds than either the chickens or pigeons.

“We think these results are very important because they show for the first time that a molecule from the visual apparatus of a migratory bird is sensitive to magnetic fields,” said Professor Henrik Mouritsen, Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences at Oldenburg University.

But, he adds, this is not definitive proof that cryptochrome 4 is the magnetic sensor the team is looking for. In all experiments, the researchers examined isolated proteins in the laboratory and the magnetic fields used were also stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.

“It therefore still needs to be shown that this is happening in the eyes of birds,” Mouritsen said.

Such studies are not yet technically possible; however, the authors think the proteins involved could be significantly more sensitive in their native environment.

In cells in the retina, the proteins are probably fixed and aligned, increasing their sensitivity to the direction of the magnetic field. Moreover, they are also likely to be associated with other proteins that could amplify the sensory signals. The team is currently searching for these as yet unknown interaction partners.

“If we can prove that cryptochrome 4 is the magnetic sensor we will have demonstrated a fundamentally quantum mechanism that makes animals sensitive to environmental stimuli a million times weaker than previously thought possible,” said Peter Hore, professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

Operation in a GPS-denied environment is a U.S. Army goal.

The Army has to be prepared to operate in environments where the technology has been degraded or denied by enemy action, officials said.

In additional to the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the European Research Council also supported this research. The collaboration is also a key part of a Collaborative Research Center funded by the German Research Foundation.

Posted in Army, Guest Post, Research | 2 Comments »

New Material Could Mean Lightweight Armor, Protective Coatings

Wednesday, July 21st, 2021

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Army-funded research identified a new material that may lead to lightweight armor, protective coatings, blast shields and other impact-resistant structures.

Researchers at the U.S. Army’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Caltech and ETH Zürich found that materials formed from precisely patterned nanoscale trusses are tougher than Kevlar and steel.

In experiments, the ultralight structures, called nanoarchitectured materials, absorbed the impact of microscopic projectiles accelerated to supersonic speeds.

“Increasing protection while simultaneously decreasing the weight that soldiers carry is an overreaching theme in our research,” said Dr. James Burgess, ISN program manager for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. “This project is a really good example of such efforts where projectile energy absorption is nanostructured mechanism based.”

The research, published in Nature Materials, found that the material prevented the projectiles from tearing through it.

“The same amount of mass of our material would be much more efficient at stopping a projectile than the same amount of mass of Kevlar,” said Dr. Carlos Portela, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, the study’s lead author.

The researchers calculate that the new material absorbs impacts more efficiently than steel, Kevlar, aluminum and other impact-resistant materials of comparable weight.

“The knowledge from this work…could provide design principles for ultra-lightweight impact resistant materials [for use in] efficient armor materials, protective coatings, and blast-resistant shields desirable in defense and space applications,” said co-author Dr. Julia R. Greer, a professor of materials science, mechanics, and medical engineering at Caltech, whose lab fabricated the material.

Nanoarchitected materials are known to feature impressive properties like exceptional lightness and resilience; however, until now, the potential for additional applications has largely been untested.

“We only know about its response in a slow-deformation regime, whereas a lot of their practical use is hypothesized to be in real-world applications where nothing deforms slowly,” Portela said.

To help fill this vital knowledge gap, the research team set out to study nanoarchitected materials undergoing fast deformation, such as that caused by high-velocity impacts. At Caltech, researchers first fabricated a repeating pattern known as a tetrakaidecahedron—a lattice configuration composed of microscopic struts—using two-photo lithography, a technique that uses a high-powered laser to solidify microscopic structures in photosensitive resin.

To test the tetrakaidecahedron’s resilience to extreme, rapid deformation, the team performed experiments at MIT using the ISN-developed laser-induced particle impact array. This device aims an ultrafast laser through a glass slide.. As the laser passes through the slide, it generates a plasma, an immediate expansion of gas that launches the particles toward the target.

By adjusting the laser’s power to control the speed of the microparticle projectiles, the researchers tested microparticle velocities within the supersonic range.

“Some experiments achieved twice the speed of sound, easily,” Portela said.

Using a high-speed camera, the researchers captured videos of the microparticles impacting the nanoarchitected material. They had fabricated material of two different densities. A comparison of the two materials’ impact response, found the denser one to be more resilient, and microparticles tended to embed in the material rather than tear through it.

To get a closer look, the researchers carefully sliced through the embedded microparticles and nanarchitectured target. They found that the struts below the embedded particle had crumpled and compacted in response to the impact, but the surrounding struts remained intact.

“We show the material can absorb a lot of energy because of this shock compaction mechanism of struts at the nanoscale, versus something that’s fully dense and monolithic, not nanoarchitected,” Portela said.

Going forward, Portela plans to explore various nanostructured configurations other than carbon, and ways to scale up the production of these nanostructures, all with the goal of designing tougher, lighter materials.

“Nanoarchitected materials truly are promising as impact-mitigating materials,” Portela said. “There’s a lot we don’t know about them yet, and we’re starting this path to answering these questions and opening the door to their widespread applications.”

The U.S. Army established the MIT Institute for Nanotechnologies in 2002 as an interdisciplinary research center to dramatically improve the protection, survivability and mission capabilities of the Soldier and of Soldier-supporting platforms and systems.

In addition to Army funding through the institute, the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship supported the research.

By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs

Posted in Armor, Army, Guest Post, Materials, Research | 5 Comments »

US Army Test Facility Recreates Space on Earth

Thursday, July 15th, 2021

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. — Just exactly how cold is it in space?

The unofficial answer: really cold. The official answer: typically -460 degrees Fahrenheit. So how exactly would you operate a space-based sensor, which needs to detect and track very faint infrared signatures when operating in the cold vacuum of space?

That is where the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center’s space-based sensor test facility comes into play. Its two independent space chambers, which operate under the center’s Software, Simulation, Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate, utilize cryogenic refrigeration systems to achieve the required low temperature and pressure environment. The sensor under test is installed within the space chamber, allowing it to observe a multi-spectral target generation source, with all other elements within the chamber conditioned to space-like temperatures and pressures.

“This is the closest you get to a flight test without actually being in space,” said Space Chamber team member David Riesland.

But how exactly would a sensor’s projection system survive and operate within the chamber’s lower temperature/pressure environment? A high-fidelity scene generation system provides radiometrically precise dynamic scenes to the projectors, depicting the threat engagement from the perspective of the sensor field of view. The system presents a TV-like image to the sensor under test, which changes based upon the sensor viewpoint within the simulated battlespace. This allows evaluation of the optical, photon collection, and image processing functions of the sensor under test.

Just because the facility is only two years old doesn’t mean the team gets to rest on its laurels. “We are constantly trying to keep up with the sensors,” said Space Chamber’s Daniel Saylor.

These types of chambers are very rare, which is why it is highly unusual that another space chamber exists down the road at Air Force facilities on Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma, Tennessee. But there are significant differences.

AvMC’s chambers were specifically designed for Missile Defense Agency testing, including features to extend the operational duration of test events with reduced operational costs. Their state-of-the-art technology allows AvMC’s chambers to heat and cool faster than previous capability increments. They are more limber and can operate for months at a time to allow extended duration testing for large-scale scenario studies.

Just how long of an extended duration?

“We haven’t found the limit yet,” Riesland said.

By Katie Davis Skelley, DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Guest Post, Research, Space | Comments Off on US Army Test Facility Recreates Space on Earth