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Inspired by Nature: Design for New Electrode Could Boost Supercapacitors’ Performance

Engineers from the University of California at Los Angeles ( UCLA), four other universities produce nanoscale device that mimics the structure of tree branches. Mechanical engineers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and four other institutions have designed a super-efficient and long-lasting electrode for supercapacitors. The device’s design was inspired

Work Begins on U.S. Air Force Research Into Flaw Formation in Powder Bed Fusion Processes

Work has begun on a $1.4 million project under the Maturation of Advanced Manufacturing for Low-Cost Sustainment (MAMLS) program funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) through America Makes. The project, which was announced at the 2018 RAPID + TCT event in Fort Worth, TX, commenced on June 13th. It will see a team

Long Range, Short Term – Improving Army Precision Fires

The Program Executive Office (PEO) for Ammunition, the Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center ( ARDEC) and the Army Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) have come together with near-term plans for improving long-range precision fires. Of the Army”s “big six” priorities driving its new modernization strategy, and long-range precision fires is at the top of the

DARPA Starts Work On “Glide Breaker” Hypersonic Weapons Defense Project

As the threat of hypersonic weapons continues to grow, one of the Pentagon’s top research and development arms is moving ahead with a new project to explore ways to guard against them. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Glide Breaker project will look into various “component technologies” needed for one or more defense systems,

3D Print Ceramics, Clay, Cookie Dough – or Solid Rocket Fuel

It”s now possible to 3D print extremely viscous materials, with the consistency of clay or cookie dough with fine precision, thanks to work done at Purdue University. This development may soon allow the creation of customized ceramics, solid rockets, pharmaceuticals, biomedical implants, foodstuffs, and more. “It’s very exciting that we can print materials with consistencies

Army Makes Inroads Toward Tripling the Energy of Explosives

A team of researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and Washington State University have discovered a new type of energetic material that could have triple the energy content of well-known explosives for the Army of 2050 and beyond. So, how exactly does one begin the process of tripling the energy content of explosives? Simple

Operational Energy Data is the New Weapon of the U.S. Air Force

Wait — flying faster actually saves fuel? That was my first reaction when my team presented the results of its fuel analysis for a transoceanic mission made up of six F-22 Raptors and two KC-10 Extenders. Our demonstration proved that fifth-generation fighters need to fly faster (about 10 percent faster than the legacy aerial refueling

U.S. Army Getting New Machine Gun Round, Special Ops Getting New Sniper Bullet

The new sniper bullet offers greater range than existing rounds, while the new machine gun round will be the foundation of a new, better weapon. U.S. Army and special forces units are set to introduce two new small arms rounds in the near future meant to improve the effectiveness of troops in the field. Special

System Draws Power From Daily Temperature Swings

Thermoelectric devices, which can generate power when one side of the device is a different temperature from the other, have been the subject of much research in recent years. Now, a team at MIT has come up with a novel way to convert temperature fluctuations into electrical power. Instead of requiring two different temperature inputs

Three”s Company: New Alloy Sets Magnetism Benchmark

Preliminary atomic moment results for new iron-cobalt-manganese thin film blow past decades-old record by potentially 50 percent. Spintronics leverages electron spins to enhance solid-state devices by prolonging battery life. Spintronic developments, however, are increasingly running up against the Slater-Pauling limit, the maximum for how tightly a material can pack its magnetization. Now, a new thin

The Pintle That Will Change the World

“The ability of this pintle to simply and efficiently inject a multitude of hypergolic fuels and throttle them from five…

Study Shows Ceramics Can Deform Like Metals if Sintered Under an Electric Field

Purdue researchers have observed a way that the brittle nature of ceramics can be overcome as they sustain heavy loads, leading to more resilient structures such as aircraft engine blade coatings and dental implants. While inherently strong, most ceramics tend to fracture suddenly when just slightly strained under a load unless exposed to high temperatures.