NASA STTR 2005 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (SBC):		RESEARCH INSTITUTION (RI):
NAME:	Luna Innovations Incorporated	NAME:	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
ADDRESS:	2851 Commerce Street	ADDRESS:	460 Turner Street, Suite 306
CITY:	Blacksburg	CITY:	Blacksburg
STATE/ZIP:	VA  24060-6657	STATE/ZIP:	VA  24060-3362
PHONE:	(540) 552-5128	PHONE:	(540) 231-5281

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name,Email)
Roger   Duncan
submissions@lunainnovations.com

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
In the future, exploration missions will benefit greatly from advanced metrology capabilities, particularly structural health monitoring systems that provide real time in situ diagnostics and evaluation of structural integrity. Safety- and mission-critical components and systems will be instrumented with embedded sensors to provide a real-time indication of health, helping to ensure that America's space exploration remains safe and cost efficient. One of the most promising technologies for accomplishing this is fiber-optic sensors. Due to their light-weight and multiplexing potential, fiber-optic sensors are highly desirable for employment in this fashion. However, most COTS devices are bench sized units and are too large and heavy to be overly attractive for space applications.

To address this shortcoming, Luna Innovations proposes to develop a compact, light-weight, low-power consumption, multi-parameter distributed sensor system based on the OFDR technique. The interrogator will incorporate optical ASIC technology, highly integrated tunable VCSEL technology, and state-of-the-art integrated processing technology to dramatically reduce the size, weight, and cost and to dramatically increase the performance and robustness relative to COTS OFDR interrogator units. This interrogator will interface with fiber-optic strain, temperature, and shape sensor arrays, enabling simultaneous interrogation of a multitude of sensors, dramatically reducing the per sensor cost of instrumentation.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 150 WORDS)
The interrogator as well as the sensors will be designed to perform in the high stress and hostile conditions expected on launch vehicles and space environments. The resulting miniaturized, ruggedized device will thus be capable of operation in high vibration environments, resulting in a high reliability device that will have great utility as a portable multi-parameter sensing unit. Such instrumentation could continuously provide distributed strain, temperature, and shape measurements in a space environment. Strain measurements, for example, could yield information on highly-stressed or fatigued structural members, enabling condition-based maintenance. Direct measurement of shape and position will be a unique capability enabled by the proposed device. Recently, Luna has demonstrated the ability to make accurate high-spatial resolution 3D shape and/or position measurements with a tri-core optical fiber containing FBG arrays in each core. Thus, the proposed instrumentation system will provide NASA a highly useful and unique tool in its metrology toolbox.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 150 WORDS)
The resulting miniaturized, ruggedized sensing unit will achieve a unique blend of reliability and reduced cost which will have great utility as a field-portable sensing unit. Such units could prove invaluable in many field monitoring applications. The long term monitoring of civil structures using distributed fiber-optic sensing arrays would be realized by a low-profile, permanently installed interrogator. It is anticipated that this technology will find use in many health monitoring applications as a sensing network in air-, land-, and sea-based military vehicles. In addition, the oil & gas industry, already employing distributed FBG sensing technology for long term monitoring of production wells, would be a natural market for the developed technology.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Aircraft Engines Airframe Airlocks/Environmental Interfaces Ceramics Composites Control Instrumentation Erectable Fluid Storage and Handling Human-Robotic Interfaces Inflatable Instrumentation Integrated Robotic Concepts and Systems Kinematic-Deployable Large Antennas and Telescopes Launch and Flight Vehicle Manipulation Metallics Modular Interconnects Multifunctional/Smart Materials Nuclear (Adv Fission, Fusion, Anti-Matter, Exotic Nuclear) Optical Perception/Sensing Portable Data Acquisition or Analysis Tools Sensor Webs/Distributed Sensors Solar Structural Modeling and Tools Tankage Teleoperation Tethers