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With shelter-in-place orders restricting workers from the office, innovators are still finding ways to develop ideas for readily maintaining fleet support even during these unusual times.
For example, members of the Regional Defense Partnership for the 21st Century (RDP 21), the Economic Development Collaboration (EDC), Matter Labs, Naval Facilities Engineering Command and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD) FATHOMWERX Lab held a Regional Innovation Discovery Event via teleconference, March 24, to discuss NSWC PHD’s efforts regarding Fiber Optic Sensing Systems (FOSS) and its potential use beyond naval applications.
FOSS monitors the integrity of fleet combat and weapon systems in real time using sensors to measure and record temperature effects, structural strain, corrosion and other wear and tear factors.
“We’re looking much further ahead than today,” said RDP-21 Co-Chair Gene Fisher. “We’re looking at ways to enrich the local community as well as the Navy.”
NSWC PHD’s Additive Manufacturing (AM) Lead Armen Kvryan and In-Service Engineering Agent of the Future (ISEAotF) Military Lead Lt. Cmdr. Todd Coursey presented an ISEAotF Pilots Roadmap during the panel training portion of the event.
“We’re trying to simulate what ISEA will look like in the future,” Coursey said. “And more than that, we’re looking at moving toward a condition-based maintenance aspect, where the sensors tell us when and where the repairs are needed.”
During the brief, the group discussed how warfare centers are considering using FOSS to aid in early corrosion detection, and FOSS’s potential for additional support applications.
“Assessing corrosion behavior is challenging without destructive analysis,” Kvryan said. “These small, extremely lightweight sensors are non-intrusive and form greater sensing systems.”
According to Kvryan, the biggest challenge with corrosion is that by the time you see it, the affected material has already corroded significantly. FOSS however can nondestructively evaluate corrosion growth.
“Metallic coating shields material corrosion beneath,” Kvryan said. “You can’t see the area between the coating and the material, which is exactly where corrosion occurs.”
Coursey said the usual restriction with traditional fiber optics does not exist with FOSS, allowing the system a greater capacity to detect corrosion.
“The number of sensing systems you can have on a fiber is limited only by processing power,” Coursey said.
Kvryan explained the immediate, short-term goal relating to FOSS is to continue pushing its boundaries by reducing the size of the interrogators, complexities and implementation cost, and ultimately make FOSS rigid enough for shipboard application. To achieve this, NSWC PHD is already working with NASA centers, government agencies and industry partners.
“It’s important to continue to interact with smart people on and off base to make sure technology transfer and transition is going both ways,” said Alan Jaeger, with NSWC PHD’s Office of Technology. “It’s in taxpayers’ interests to explore and share discoveries with academia and other institutions in order to accelerate capabilities to the fleet and warfighter.”
Following the presentation, panel members discussed additional ways to use FOSS beyond naval applications.
“How do we retrofit [FOSS] into existing commercial technology?” asked Bryan Went, director of Matter Labs, a startup studio and corporate innovation lab in Camarillo, Calif.
From government applications to industry and beyond, members of the group contributed ideas ranging from aiding firefighting, helping insurance companies evaluate home damage from water leaks and plumbing, gathering personal protective equipment user feedback for professional athletes and even gauging the stress, strain and damage in warfighter uniforms.
“You don’t have commercial value if you don’t have a customer,” said Michael Panesis, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Panesis proposed possibly utilizing entertainment avenues such as the music industry as a way to bolster more mainstream attention and support for FOSS outside of military, government and industry communities.
“The goal is to transition and help commercialize the technology being worked on so we can get solutions to the warfighter,” Jaeger said. “Patent it, protect it and share it.”
| Date Taken: | 04.08.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 04.08.2020 17:37 |
| Story ID: | 366906 |
| Location: | PORT HUENEME, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 164 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Innovation Discovery Event Brainstorms Commercial Applications for Fiber Optics Sensing Systems, by Mark Sashegyi, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
