SBIR/STTR
Mixed-Phase Ice Crystal and Droplet Characterization and Thermometry, Phase I
Project Introduction
This effort proposes to design, build, and demonstrate a new instrument for icing research and flight safety capable of discriminating liquid water from ice while simultaneously measuring the diameter, velocity, and temperature of droplets or the velocity and size for ice crystals. From these individual particle characteristics the total liquid water content (LWC) and the total water content (TWC) of the flow may be found.
More »
Anticipated Benefits
NASA's research into flight safety and aircraft propulsion would benefit from the successful commercialization of this instrument. Other governmental, academic, and industrial research groups in the areas of aircraft and flight safety, air-breathing and rocket propulsion, transportation, spray, drying, and other industrial processes would all stand to benefit from a diagnostic capable of exceptional phase discrimination and/or remote droplet temperature measurement. There are several possible paths to commercialization of this work either as improvements on our current commercial products or as entirely new products. The present SBIR Phase 1 will lead to a fully-developed instrument capable of simultaneously and redundantly measuring multiple physical properties of droplets and ice crystals. However, we do not believe that an instrument as described herein would be economically viable on its own. There are only a handful of ground-based icing research facilities that would be willin Within the meteorology and icing research markets there is potential to create two separate product lines. Some researchers will prefer an in situ device that can be placed in a large wind tunnel flow or mounted to an aircraft exterior. Others may prefer an ex situ instrument that can be placed outside of the flow – the solicitation specifically mentions the profiling across the span of an engine duct. The proposed diagnostic methods are all suitable for both styles of measurement. Furthermore, since the proposed layout involves the use of backscatter collection, such an instrument could be deployed from within an aircraft's fuselage and pointed out a window with no impact on the flow or external mounting requirements. Such an instrument configuration could move beyond a research tool and be used as a real-time flight safety instrument to characterize the icing threat to the airframe. Moreover, there are a wide range of food processing applications using spray drying. The capab
More »
Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
Glenn Research Center
(GRC)
|
Lead Organization | NASA Center | Cleveland, OH |
| Artium Technologies | Supporting Organization | Industry | Sunnyvale, CA |
Project Library
Share this Project
Organizational Responsibility
Responsible Mission Directorate:
- Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD)
Lead Center / Facility:
- Glenn Research Center (GRC)
Responsible Program:
- SBIR/STTR
Project Management
Program Director:
Program Manager:
Principal Investigator:
- William Bachalo
Project Duration
Start: Feb 2012
End: Aug 2012
Technology Maturity (TRL)
| Start: | 4 |
| Current: | 4 |
| Estimated End: | 7 |
Applied Research
Development
Demo & Test
Technology Areas
Primary:
Suggest an Edit
Recommend changes and additions to this project record.
This is a historic project that was completed before the creation of TechPort on October 1, 2012. Available data has been included. This record may contain less data than currently active projects.