Gone are the days when the impact of products on the environment or human health were optional business concerns. Regulatory constraints on materials and chemicals are increasing, and many companies struggle to respond – and to do so quickly and efficiently. Restrictions on hexavalent chrome are one well-known example. Another is REACH – the European Union regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & restriction of Chemicals – which applies to products that are either manufactured in, or imported into, the EU. Companies are under obligations to report the use of restricted substances, and to limit or avoid their use.

DMG MORI manufactures a wide variety of conventional chip-cutting and ultrasonic machining centers for OEMs and production job shops serving the aerospace industry. Inherent in this industry are several factors that require great care and planning in the machining process.

Perimeter surveillance of forward operating locations, such as Forward Arming and Refueling Points (FARPs), is crucial to ensure the survivability of personnel and materiel. FARPs are frequently located well outside the protective cover of the main forward operating bases. Therefore, they must provide their own organic perimeter defenses. Such defenses are manpower intensive. Research shows how cheap, remote, unattended sensors using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components can help reduce the manpower requirement for this task and yet not compromise the security of the operating location.

A co-prime array uses two uniform linear subarrays to construct an effective difference coarray with certain desirable characteristics, such as a high number of degrees-of-freedom for DOA estimation. In this research, the co-prime array concept has been generalized with two operations.

In industries such as aerospace, characterized by extreme operating environments that push materials and components to the edge of their design capabilities, companies are challenged to continually seek economically viable ways to maintain and improve performance.

Deployability and life-cycle management of large and disparate collections of weapons, combat and C4ISR computing systems is one of the most critical challenges facing the Department of Defense today. Numerous defense programs, each defining separate, and oftentimes unique system architectures, configurations, and compositions, result in a wide range of processing and control systems that create complexity and drive excessive lifecycle costs.

Northrop Grumman Corporation
Falls Church, VA
703-280-2900
www.northropgrumman.com

Northrop Grumman Corporation recently received a $124.7 million award for production of AN/APR-39D(V)2 digital radar warning receiver and electronic warfare management systems. The award followed the successful completion of engineering and manufacturing development activities, including a series of rigorous tests that verified the system's readiness for production and the demands of combat operations.

Laser diodes and laser diode arrays (LDAs) are widely used throughout military systems, for sighting and range finding, but also at high power levels as offensive and defensive weapons. In companion with much higher-power chemical lasers, these high-power optical sources can generate kilowatts of optical power (as arrays) for use in neutralizing incoming missiles, rockets, and armaments and for long-distance offensive strikes. But laser diodes are also still inefficient, and a great deal of the energy supplied to a laser diode or an LDA is converted into heat, which must be safely dissipated to ensure a long operating lifetime for the solid-state devices.

After extensive review from the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Electrical Safety Office, it was determined that the existing firing system in Experimental Facility 167 (EF 167) was not adequate to safely perform pulsed-power experiments with gunpowder- or air-driven guns. This firing line used solid copper wire, which provided a continuous electrical conduction path between the high-voltage capacitor in the test chamber and the firing/control room, where personnel are stationed when experiments are performed (Figure 1). This poses a safety risk since high voltage can travel from the test chamber and potentially result in personnel injuries and damaged equipment.

Charles River Analytics
Cambridge, MA
617-491-3474
www.cra.com

Charles River Analytics Inc., a developer of intelligent systems solutions, has announced a two-year, $2 million Phase III contract to enhance the capabilities of its game-based maintenance training environment for the US Air Force. The Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Small Business Office recently praised Charles River's Maintenance Training based on an Adaptive Game-Based Environment using a Pedagogic Interpretation Engine (MAGPIE) as a “virtual solution that could revolutionize aircraft maintenance training.”