Fiscal Year 2011 Materials and Processes far from Equilibrium

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The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) manages the basic research investment for the U.S. Air Force (USAF). As a part of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), AFOSR’s technical experts foster and fund research within the Air Force Research Laboratory, universities, and industry laboratories to ensure the transition of research results to support USAF needs.AFOSR announces a fiscal year 2011 competition for research to promote and sustain university research and education focused on small molecule activation chemistry and related technologies. The program description follows this announcement. It is expected that multiple awards will be made.AFOSR is seeking unclassified, fundamental research proposals that do not contain proprietary information. It is anticipated that the awards will be made in the form of grants. AFOSR reserves the right to select and fund for award all, some, or none of the proposals in response to this announcement.AFOSR will not issue paper copies of this announcement. AFOSR reserves the right to select and fund for award all, some, or none of the proposals in response to this announcement. AFOSR provides no funding for direct reimbursement of proposal development costs. Any material submitted in response to this BAA will not be returned.The objective of this topic includes physics and chemistry of materials in highly stressed environments where system performance depends on, and limited by, the evolution and/or degradation of materials in the presence of high chemical, electrical, thermal, radiative, or other stresses. This area includes a wide range of activities characterized by processes that are sufficiently energetic to require the understanding and managing of plasma phenomenology and the non-linear response of materials to combined loads of high electric and magnetic fields; high energy density non-equilibrium processes. The program seeks innovative and high risk proposals that advance the field of high temperature materials, space propulsion and electro-energetic physics research through the discovery and characterization of new materials and/or propulsion systems that exhibit superior performance at conditions of space propulsion or directed energy. The aim is to discovery and development of fundamental and integrated science among materials science, electric and chemical propulsion, and electro energetic physics that advances future space power and propulsion concepts.Research would be in area that pursues advances in the understanding of materials response to combined loads of aforementioned external fields, and requires the design of techniques and experimental measurement of surface phenomena from the atomic scale up through the macro scale; study of physical and chemical processes by which such materials modified, and their response can be predicted with multi-scale modeling efforts. It is expected that molecular dynamics models, meso- and micro-scale modeling of complex surface phenomena and subsurface regimes of material would be utilized to understand and predict processes at the different time and length-scales corresponding to non-equilibrium conditions. In addition to research into underlying materials and fundamental chemical and physical processes, this area considers how they might be integrated into new classes of materials, seeking breakthroughs in electric propulsion, secure revolutionary advances of electro-energetic physics, and multi-modal diagnostics that validates the fidelity of simulations. The propellant portion of this program is devoted to the understanding electrically conductive flowing propellants (plasmas or charged particles) that serve to convert beamed or electrical energy into kinetic form such that process can be coupled with radiation-mass-transfer model that connects plasma activity and output with the deposition of energy in the materials surface, by specifying the flow of mass, momentum, and energy through the interplay between plasma and material, and by forecasting the degradation and providing scientific pathways to minimize the degradation and thus provide quantum leap in energy saving and/or increased efficiency.Theoretical and experimental investigations focus on the phenomenon of energy coupling and the transfer of plasma flows in electrode and electrodeless systems under dynamic environments. This focus area will require the development of new experimental and computational tools to address the complexity of thermal, acoustic, chemistry, plasma, shear or pressure loads as they relate back to the performance of the space propulsion systems, power sources, directed energy weapons, sensors and radar, electronic warfare, communications, by understanding and modeling the combined behavior of physics, chemistry and mechanics of materials, surfaces and their interfaces. This topic supports transformative, basic research in materials, plasma, design and processing to enable radical reductions in degradation, erosion, system weight with concurrent enhancements in performance. One route to achieving game-changing achievements in propulsion and plasma physics field is through the creation of hierarchical architectures that combine materials of different classes, scales, and properties to provide optimized, synergistic and tailorable performance.

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