• AFRL Donates Advanced Materials Analysis System to Academia

    Under an Educational Partnership Agreement (EPA), AFRL donated a surplus advanced materials analysis system to the Howard University Nanoscale Science and Engineering Facility (HNF). Capable of analyzing the surface and in-depth composition of materials with precision accuracy, the Secondary Ion

  • AFRL Develops Additives to Improve Aircraft Engine Bearings

    AFRL fluids and lubricants experts managed three Small Business Innovation Research contracts to develop additives for the fully formulated gas turbine engine oils used with new aircraft engine bearings. These additives will improve the characteristics of the corrosion-resistant steel bearings to be

  • AFRL's Advanced Visualization Displays Enable Superior Operator Performance

    With the aid of Air Mobility Command's Tanker Airlift Control Center personnel, Air Force Research Laboratory researchers demonstrated and evaluated advanced visualization displays depicting global airlift missions and their associated resources. The researchers developed Spiral 1 of the timeline

  • AFRL Characterizes Airblast of Cased Weapons

    Airblast characterization is vital to fully understanding the performance capability of any existing or concept munitions. AFRL researchers use an instrumented blastpad to characterize airblast. The instrumented blastpad is unique in its design, with the capacity to measure airblast from cased or

  • Scramjet MHD System Generates Electrical Power

    An inherent limitation of scramjets [supersonic combustion ramjets] is their inability to provide air vehicle systems--especially future air vehicles that use high-power directed energy weapon systems--with electrical power using conventional generators.Conventional gas turbine engines produce

  • X-51A Achieves Successful Combustion on JP-7

    AFRL engineers began tests on the SJX61-1 engine using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley Research Center's 8-foot high-temperature tunnel. The Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne SJX61-1 (or X-1) is a hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet [supersonic combustion ramjet] engine featuring full

  • AFRL Develops High-Temperature Aircraft Camouflage Coating

    Working under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract, scientists from AFRL and the Texas Research Institute developed a high-temperature aircraft camouflage coating for use on the titanium slats of C-17 aircraft. This coating will significantly increase the survivability of operational