Integrated Structural Health Management, Phase I

Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) proposes to advance the state of the art in composite health management through refinement of an existing technology developed by CRG called Reflexive Composites. Reflexive Composites are the current state of the art in health management integrating piezoelectric structural health monitoring, healable polymer matrix composites, and intelligent controls delivering highly aware structures capable of identifying location and magnitude of damage with 1/16" spatial resolution. Reflexive Composites respond to damage with a healing cycle capable of restoring up to 90% of mechanical performance post failure. CRG proposes to advance the state of the art in health management through the development of a next generation control system capable of analyzing structural health monitoring (SHM) data and determining the appropriate healing cycle, identifying the type of failure in the composite, make predictions to the loss in mechanical performance, generating custom healing cycles based on failure type, healing, and making predictions of restored mechanical strength. The results of this analysis will allow the vehicle user to make any necessary mission adjustment to ensure vehicle survivability with the damaged structures on the vehicle.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.