|
|
|
|
![1105 Media [valor]](/images/ds1_pntmlogo.gif "1105 Media [valor]") |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
home > May 26, 2008 issue > article
Self-healing aircraft
By Peter A. Buxbaum
Special to Defense Systems
Researchers develop a liquid healing agent for the skins of aircraft and missiles
In-flight damage to the skin of an aircraft or missile can
degrade its abilities or take it out. However, research under way at
the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign could make Air
Force aerospace vehicles and weapons systems self-healing.
Professors Scott White and
Nancy Sottos are developing a
synthetic material inspired by
human skin and plant leaves that
can repair itself by supplying a
liquid healing agent to damaged
areas through a network of structures
similar to blood vessels.
The project for the Air Force
Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR) is one of 34 approved
March 18 by the Defense
Department's Multidisciplinary
Research Initiative program. That
is a $200 million, five-year effort
that funds DOD technology
research.
The nature of the program
requires assembling teams from
multiple academic institutions
and academic departments. Sixty-four academic institutions are
expected to participate in the program’s 34 research efforts.
White and Sottos developed a new type of plastic to repair small
cracks that form deep inside polymeric materials, said Byung-Lip
Lee, an AFOSR program manager.
“The cracks are hard to detect and fix and can lead to mechanical
problems or electrical failure,” he said. “The study demonstrated
that the performance of self-healing materials can be improved
by incorporating a circulatory system and continuously transporting
a supply of healing agent. The material can heal a crack in the
same location up to seven times, significantly extending its life.”
White leads the project’s team of researchers from the
University of Illinois, Duke University and University of
California, Los Angeles.
Another project awardee, based at Carnegie Mellon University
seeks to develop an artificial-intelligence model that could predict
how terrorist networks will develop organizationally and
geographically.
Projecting the evolution of terrorist organizations is important
for management, command and control structures and intelligence
analysis research, said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer
science at Carnegie Mellon and principal investigator of the project.
Carley is joined by researchers at Rhode Island College and
East Carolina University.
“By knowing future social and spatial distributions, an analyst
can identify emergent leaders, hot spots and organizational vulnerabilities,”
she said. “Historically, such estimations have depended
heavily on qualitative data analyses by subject-matter experts.”
Carley’s project builds on earlier research that used artificial
intelligence and simulation to model organizational complexity
and near-term organizational changes. This project seeks to create
a model that can examine the interaction between physical and
social movements.
Another MURI project centered at Carnegie Mellon involves
incorporating intelligent software assistants into human teams.
“Our software assistants can anticipate the information needs of
their human team members, prepare and communicate task information,
and adapt to changes in situations and capabilities of other
team members,” said Katia Sycara, a research professor of robotics
at Carnegie Mellon.
“This research has implications for other types of planning teams
that comprise multidisciplinary experts, including civilian emergency
response, management, and single-service military teams,
she said.”
Other researchers on Sycara’s project are from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, George
Mason University and University of Pittsburgh.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
