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Non-Metallic, Thin-Film, Miniature Fiber-Optic Temperature Sensors for Small Scale Explosives Characterization

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Army
Contract: DACA42-03-C-002
Agency Tracking Number: A022-1342
Amount: $119,829.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: N/A
Solicitation Number: N/A
Timeline
Solicitation Year: N/A
Award Year: 2003
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): N/A
Award End Date (Contract End Date): N/A
Small Business Information
2851 Commerce Street
Blacksburg, VA 24060
United States
DUNS: N/A
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Matthew Palmer
 Principal Investigator
 (540) 961-4515
 palmerm@lunainnovations.com
Business Contact
 Garnett Linkous
Title: Chief Administrative Offi
Phone: (540) 953-4274
Email: linkousg@lunainnovations.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

For explosives characterization, fiber optic sensors offer many advantages over equivalent electrical sensors: extreme thermal capability, immunity to electro-magnetic interference and grounding issues, ability to transmit data kilometers with minutesignal degradation (less than 0.5dB/km), and only one connection per sensor. Luna Innovations proposes to research and develop technology to improve the performance of the Luna Innovations miniature fiber-optic temperature sensor for this application.The Luna sensor has already proven to be capable of measuring 400¿C temperature changes in 2 milliseconds before being destroyed at 800¿C, and has a theoretical response of less than 1 millisecond. The team members will apply linear and 2nd orderalgorithms developed from models of the transducer to remove the thermal inertia from the data. In addition, the team will define the manufacturing processes, materials, and configuration of the Luna sensor to achieve the design goals of 4000¿C and 1millisecond rise times. The Phase I R&D effort will concentrate on extensive modeling of the existing transducer as well as investigation of processes and materials to improve the sensor and instrumentation capabilities. Phase II will continue thedevelopment of the most promising technology(ies) to achieve the design goals. Thermal measurement is a vast market with a myriad of environments. Thermocouples are by far the most prevalent technology for thermal measurement but are also limited inapplication environment. Thermocouples cannot typically be utilized in reacting, corrosive, or electrically noisy environments above 1800¿C. Miniature, inert, intrinsically safe, EMI proof, remote temperature sensors rugged enough for explosions wouldopen the remaining markets not currently available to thermocouples such as gas turbine engine combustor monitoring, rocket engine combustion monitoring, and chemical process monitoring. Luna sees this technology rapidly taking the fringe markets ofthermal measurement as well as those in heat flux measurements.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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