AFOSR: Providing the U.S. Air Force with Nearly 60 Years of Energy Innovation

  • Published
  • By Robert White, Ph.D.
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
ARLINGTON, Va. --  October is Energy Awareness Month. While many may give this once-a- year reminder a passing thought, the efficient use of energy has been part of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research portfolio since its founding in 1951.

AFOSR, responsible for the entire basic research effort of the United States Air Force, first engaged in energy related research with their first (very modest) budget. But by 1956, almost one-half of the organization's portfolio was dedicated to some aspect of energy research, including the very significant effort of advanced fuels for rocket propulsion. The need for Air Force bombers to travel long distances with limited refueling options prompted AFOSR to invest heavily in fuel combustion studies, more efficient jet engines and increasingly fuel efficient aerodynamic aircraft designs. Many of these efforts ultimately resulted in far better energy applications--not only for the Air Force, but for commercial carriers as well.

While AFOSR invested heavily in more energy efficient aerospace fuels and designs in the 1950s, the following decade witnessed a dramatic savings in the weight of its air and space systems due to the employment of integrated circuit technology. Beginning in 1960, AFOSR was a pioneer in this field, helping to bring this revolutionary technology to new Air Force weapons systems.

AFOSR chemical research in the 1970s concentrated on electrochemistry for more efficient fuel cells and batteries as well as an emphasis on increasing the longevity of aerospace systems by improving fatigue and fracture analysis, thus ensuring significant energy savings in system replacement costs. As part of this program, AFOSR-sponsored research in the 1970s and early 1980s looked for ways to increase the strength and fatigue resistance of all airframes, while at the same time saving on materiel and labor. The result was "superplastic" forming -- a technique by which metals exhibit plastic strain rates of over 1000% to form very complex shapes with a minimum of tooling and machining. This development resulted in dramatic reductions in raw material requirements and less production time of new aircraft with commensurate weight reductions as well. These efforts were also supported by an AFOSR program that achieved a high-efficiency swept shock compressor blade that increased jet engine performance resulting in more powerful jet engines with an accompanying 20 percent increase in range due to reduced fuel consumption. These successful aerospace design initiatives reaped huge energy and fuel savings over the long term.

A singularly successful energy related program funded by AFOSR at the turn of the century was the development of self-healing plastics. This research could lead to enormous payoffs for the Air Force--as well as many commercial applications--resulting in more durable and longer lasting aircraft structures.

Today, AFOSR continues to be heavily engaged in energy research but does so in many more areas and in far more sophisticated ways thanks to advances in computer analysis and nanotechnology which exploits our ability to better understand the building blocks of our universe.

As in the past, AFOSR funded programs are always looking towards the future. The following research programs demonstrate the promise for revolutionary energy savings in the years to come.

-- A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has developed a new method for using nanoscale silicon that could improve devices that convert thermal energy into electrical energy. Thermoelectric devices can use electricity to cool, or conversely, convert heat to electricity. 

-- A University of Rochester team has developed a laser process that doubles the brightness of regular incandescent light bulbs for the same amount of energy. This process could make a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb.

-- Progress on improving the efficiency of solar cells for aircraft might allow the Air Force to start using solar-powered drones. A scientific team led by the University of Washington is developing solar cells that use a flexible film and thin glass coating mounted on aircraft wings. These dye-sensitized solar cells power sensors and actuators in the wings to eliminate electric wires and lighten the drone's load.

-- Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle; moving academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

-- In a small step toward making electronics that can power themselves, researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Dayton in Ohio have discovered how to generate electricity just by bending tiny wires back and forth. By embedding the wires in a thin film covering, they could be sewn into the sole of a shoe or woven into clothing, generating juice with each step and every movement.

-- One AFOSR-funded researcher is looking for efficient oil producers, in particular, algae that can accumulate more than 30% of their body weight in oils. The aim is to develop algal jet fuel to supplement the 2.5 billion gallons of jet fuel used by the Air Force annually.

-- Tomorrow's fuel-cell vehicles may be powered by enzymes that consume cellulose from woodchips or grass and exhale hydrogen. Researchers at Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Georgia have produced hydrogen gas pure enough to power a fuel cell. Using cellulose instead of starch expands the renewable resource for producing hydrogen to include biomass.

-- According to engineers at Oregon State University, it should be possible to meet much of the world's energy needs with nothing more than the combination of water, sunlight and cyanobacteria. And an important advance has just been made toward that goal. OSU researchers successfully got one type of cyanobacteria - more commonly known as blue-green algae - to live, grow and produce hydrogen for fuel.

-- AFOSR is funding a project to integrate solar power cheaply and easily into the base materials used to build unmanned aerial vehicles. The University of Michigan team is investigating the energy harvesting potential of many different device applications, including thin film solar cells reshaped and coated onto long continuous filaments, or fibers. When such organic semi-conductor coated fibers are woven into a fabric system, the resulting textile can be used not only to form the structural make-up of the UAV, but also to generate the electricity to power it. To date, the team has demonstrated small, stand-alone prototypes that strongly suggest that this type of application is possible.

For sixty years AFOSR has contributed to energy breakthroughs via a wide variety of research endeavors. Fuel efficient aircraft designs, cost and energy saving manufacturing processes, more powerful yet lighter jet engines, and more energetic fuels are but a few of the many success stories related to this endeavor. Today, Energy, Power and Propulsion is one of AFOSR's basic research focus areas, and the research programs cited above are testament to our commitment to this strategically critical enterprise.