UES INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF191-016

Description

In recent years, Department of Defense (DoD) readiness has been negatively impacted due to increased reports of unidentified physiological events (UPE’s) during and after fixed-wing flight missions and training. One potential cause of such UPE’s is chemical contamination in pilot breathing air. A gap remains in the development of a standardized and manufacturable investigative device to rapidly measure and quantify pilot breathing air constituents during engine ground runs. UES engineers seek to design a portable comprehensive air quality and chemical contamination assessment device capable of quantifying pilot breathing air constituents using a variety of techniques including: time-stamped thermal desorption tube sequencing, modular media for laboratory analysis, real-time gas and thermodynamic sensors arrays, and ultrafine particle characterization methods. Current prototypes were used in the field extensively by UES engineers to clear various F-35 and T-6 II aircraft from "grounded" status but were not optimized for manufacturability, ease-of-use, or reliability. An optimized and upgraded version of the prototype is required to enable widespread technology transition, thus providing the bandwidth for rapid chemical constituent investigation post-UPE and a rich data stream for epidemiological, toxicological, biological, and physiologic investigations. This Phase I work will culminate in designs for the aforementioned device.