LUNA INNOVATIONS INCORPORATED — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF161-105

Description

Luna will team with Dr. Russell Green of Virginia Tech to develop a system that rapidly, and with minimal acoustic emission, assesses the load bearing capability of candidate airfield ground. Based on Lunas distributed fiber optic sensing technology, and leveraging recent developments in data acquisition hardware miniaturization, the proposed system will be compact, easily portable, and battery-powered. Virginia Tech, led by Dr. Green, will work with Luna to ensure proper coupling of the optical fiber sensor to the ground being interrogated, optimize the system design, and conduct system testing. The resulting technique and system implementation will provide an attractive alternative to the dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP) test, which is mature and widely-implemented but has a prominent acoustic signature, is time-consuming to perform, and requires bulky apparatus. Phase I will focus on system development and demonstrating the feasibility of using this fiber optic sensing approach to assess the load bearing capability of representative ground. Phase II will optimize the system, demonstrate its use on additional ground types, and work with the U.S. Air Force to ensure results are presented in the desired format. During Phase III, Luna will perform final system calibrations and transition the technology to the Air Force.