SPECTRAL ENERGIES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF211-CSO1

Description

As our nation begins to develop and deploy new hypersonic weapon systems, there will be a need to qualify future hypersonic stores. Part of this will be ensuring that the aerodynamic forces and moments created when a hypersonic vehicle releases a store do not cause the store to have an unwanted trajectory (e.g., striking the launching vehicle). In order to accomplish this, extensive wind tunnel testing is needed. Spectral Energies (SE) and its partners at Florida State University (FSU) have developed a store release mechanism to reliably and repetitively launch stores in a hypersonic environment and used SE’s tracking software to capture the trajectory of the store. We propose to modify the mechanism to allow for high-volume testing that will allow for multiple stores to be released during a single wind tunnel run. Such an accomplishment would allow for faster qualification of future hypersonic weapon systems. Ultimately, this would get capability in the hands of the war fighter in a quicker and more cost effective fashion.