SPECTRAL SCIENCES, INC — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: N23A-T026
SPECTRAL SCIENCES, INC — STTR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
Phase I STTR feasibility signal
- Phase I awards fund proof-of-concept work. For capture teams, they mark early interest from Department of Defense in a technical approach.
- Watch for Phase II follow-ons from the same firm/topic family — that conversion path is where budgets and transition pressure rise.
- Obligated amount $139,999. Cross-check similar awards in the same agency and technology tags for going-rate context.
- Topic code N23A-T026 links this award to a solicitation family — search the same topic stem for incumbents and recompete timing.
- Amount
- $139,999
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Navy
- Program / Phase
- STTR · Phase I
- Topic
- N23A-T026
- Solicitation
- 23.A
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- MA
- Period
- 2023-07-17 → 2024-01-16
Description
Hypersonic vehicles require thermal protection systems (TPS) for protection from high temperature, strongly shocked air. Carbon-based ablative TPS have received particular attention for Navy applications. Physics-based models of gas–material interactions are needed for hypersonic vehicle design, since ground-based testing at flight-like conditions is limited and costly. In the proposed effort, Spectral Sciences, Inc., with academic partner University of Colorado, will develop innovative software to model carbon ablation with finite-rate chemistry and mesoscale material physics in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) workflows. The new software, called FARSITE (Feature-aware Ablation and Reaction SImulator for Thermal Extremes), will be a plugin for the US3D hypersonic CFD code. The Phase I effort will demonstrate feasibility of extensions to a state-of-the-art finite-rate ablation model that are informed by new experimental data and integrated into the CFD solver. Later-Phase efforts will implement additional, advanced models of molecular and mesoscale ablation processes, guided by comprehensive experimental validation campaigns on Navy-relevant materials such as 2D and 3D carbon–carbon. FARSITE will meet critical Government and commercial needs to understand and manage gas–material interactions in extreme thermal environments.