Pin Fin Heat Sinks

Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) (Norwood, MA) has a family of Pin Fin heat sinks designed as cost-effective solutions for systems with adequate airflow. The high aspect ratio design enables ATS Pin Fin heat sinks to provide low thermal resistance from base to fins in systems where the airflow measures 200-plus LFM (linear feet per minute). The cross-cut design also allows the Pin Fin heat sinks to be effective in systems where airflow is ambiguous.

The development of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) will require technological advancements in many areas, including lethality, protection, autonomy, human–agent teaming, and electromagnetic capabilities. What ties all of these future capabilities together is the need for vast computational resources to support the artificial intelligence (AI) implicit in bringing these advancements to the battlefield. The operating environment of the NGCV will be such that communications will be severely limited, if available at all; systems will be under constant cyber-attack; and adversarial AI may be actively attempting to deceive all sensors — all occurring under severe size, weight, power, and time-available constraints. These factors, and more, are the motivation for developing a strategy of mobile High-Performance Computing (HPC) for the NGCV.

The venerable MIL-STD-1553B bus has survived remarkably well even as other more advanced solutions gained wide acceptance in the last few years. However, the fact remains that its maximum data rate of 1 Mb/s is orders of magnitude too slow for today’s data-intensive systems, so logic dictates that it will soon fade away. That may be a logical assumption, but it’s likely to prove wrong, for several reasons.

There have been several news headlines lately about offenders pointing commercial lasers at helicopters or police personnel, temporarily blinding and distracting them. An increasing number of “laser assault” incidents have led to tougher penalties with fines and jail time in various countries. The lasers typically used in these attacks operate in the visible light spectrum; therefore, these lasers can be blocked by special absorbing optical dyes contained in special laser defense eyewear.

AeroVironment, Inc.
Monrovia, CA
626-357-9983
www.avinc.com

AeroVironment, Inc., a specialist in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for both defense and commercial applications, and ESG Elektroniksystem- und Logistik-GmbH, a system and software house in Germany for development and service, recently announced that the German Navy has acquired the AeroVironment Puma™ maritime unmanned aircraft system. The Puma systems will include the Mantis i45 sensor and pocket Remote Video Terminal (p/RVT). AeroVironment partnered with ESG to satisfy the requirement of the Bundesamt fur Ausrustung, Informationstechnik und Nutzung der Bundeswehr (BAAINBw) for an urgent operational requirement.

As the medical community learns more about brain injury, the importance of blunt impact mitigation becomes more apparent. As such, it is critical to make sure that research labs are not only capable of performing testing in this field, but also show inter-laboratory consistency and reproducibility. This study is a comparison between the two validated blunt impact testing labs (Aberdeen Test Center (ATC) and National Technical Systems (NTS) Chesapeake Testing Services (CTS)), and Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC).

In August 2017, Qantas Airlines laid down the challenge to both Boeing and Airbus to offer an aircraft that can cross one of aviation's “last frontiers.” That “last frontier” was an aircraft capable of flying an economical passenger load non-stop for over 20 hours. This would allow Qantas to offer direct service from Sydney to London or New York. Weight reduction through the use of thermoplastics and other technologies would be the key to any chance of success in this endeavor.

Barometric Pressure Sensor

Bosch Sensortec (Reutlingen, Germany) has introduced a new high performance barometric pressure MEMS sensor, the BMP388. The BMP388 delivers outstanding altitude stabilization in drones, where accurate measurement of barometric pressure provides the essential altitude data for improving flight stability and landing accuracy. The new barometric pressure sensor is part of Bosch Sensortec's comprehensive sensor solution for drones, which includes the BMI088 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for accurate steering and the BMM150 geomagnetic sensor for the provision of heading data.

Turbine flow meters have long been a preferred technology for obtaining precise measurements of fluid flow in the aerospace industry. In addition to their high accuracy, they are recognized for exceptional turndown, repeatability and speed of response.

Avionics is a very restricting domain for obvious safety reasons. Along with miniaturization comes the idea of integration. More functionality on one spot requires a good management of privacy and congestion on shared platforms. This is why determinism is one of the keywords of avionics works. This led to protocols like ARINC653^[1] assuring that multitask embedded programs respect a predictable policy applied by the operating system (OS). Another key protocol is ARINC664, which guarantees that multiple communicating systems efficiently share the network. These two protocols are pillars of the Integrated Modular Architecture (IMA) concept^[2].