December 2020 - Physical Sciences Inc.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) in collaboration with Cascade Designs Inc (CDI) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) has been awarded a program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a new atmospheric water extraction (AWE) device that can recover clean drinking water from air. The developed technology is intended to supply water in remote areas, to forward deployed soldiers, and during emergency situations.

Water is a critical resource for survival. Many remote locations have limited or polluted water supplies. Existing methods of water purification, such as desalination, require large pieces of equipment and are energy intensive. Further, water is cumbersome to transport, presenting a logistical and economic challenge for supplying water to distant areas. The PSI team aims to overcome these challenges by creating a new class of water capturing materials incorporated into an ultra-lightweight and portable water harvesting system.

The centerpiece of the team’s technology is a novel Smart Moisture Absorbing Foam, or a SMAF. The SMAF will capture atmospheric water across a wide variety of environments, and over a range of temperatures and relative humidity. The SMAF also has very high water storage capacity, enabling daily operational cycles and minimizing frequency of user interaction. The key property of the SMAF is that water is released by compression. The material is ‘smart’ because it switches from hydrophilic (‘water loving’) to hydrophobic (‘water rejecting’) as it is compressed – thereby expelling any trapped water.

Typical state of the art water capture materials release water by energy-intensive heating. Releasing water by compression greatly reduces the amount of energy required to power the system, enabling ultimate portability.
As a part of the effort, the SMAF material will be incorporated into several prototype devices. The final device will be easily carried by an individual as a primary water supply. The team aims to create a lightweight, compact, durable and easy to operate water harvesting system that fits within the stringent DARPA size weight and power targets.

The goal of this new research is a portable and robust system capable of extracting potable drinking water from ambient air. To ensure portability, the system is designed to fit within a strict size, weight and power envelope. Such technology has game-changing implications for both military and humanitarian purposes.

For more information about PSI’s atmospheric water extraction technology, please contact Dr. Peter Warren, Vice President of PSI’s Materials Systems Division: warren@psicorp.com.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a program from the U.S. Air force to continue development of its Additive Manufacturing (AM) plus brazing process that allows duct segments and other components to be joined together into large-scale, highly complex scramjet assemblies.

The Air Force requires large scale scramjet engines but current fabrication methods have long lead times, high part rejection rate, and great expense due to hand-rework by skilled fabricators. PSI’s method makes it possible to combine many pieces of potentially differing materials together into a leak-free whole. Different metals can be used, as can dissimilar materials such as ceramic and metal. This method makes use of PSI’s previously developed heat exchanger geometry, which has resulted in four times reductions to the weight of airborne heat exchangers.

PSI’s technology is applicable to scramjets, ramjets, rotating detonation engines and rockets, and propulsion applications that have similar requirements. It applies to joints between other power and thermal components such as heat exchangers, hot structure, flow liners, and aeroshells. This technology has immediate application to military and space vehicles. Commercial markets include aerospace and ground engines of all types. It will reduce scramjet engine lead times by 50% and part production costs by 50% due to parts count reduction, and is an enabler for large scramjets.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Sean Torrez
Group Leader, Deployable Technologies
storrez@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Telephone: (978) 689-0003

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a research program from the U.S. Air force to develop a stretchable, conformable sensor net (smart skin) that can be wrapped around an aircraft, spacecraft, or other object to provide situational awareness of the local surroundings as well as vehicle status monitoring.

PSI’s conformal material will flex and stretch as needed to make a one-size-fits-most skin that can conform to arbitrary structures on a vehicle. Standardized power and data connections embedded in the conformal layer will make sensor nodes interchangeable to provide different functions for particular applications.

Initial efforts will focus on high-risk/high-reward systems for air and space. Once the system is mature enough to bring down cost, it will have broad applications for environmental monitoring of commercial vehicles and buildings as well as for providing battlespace sensing for mounted and unmounted warfighters.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Sean Torrez
Group Leader, Deployable Technologies
storrez@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Telephone: (978) 689-0003

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a program from the U.S. Army to develop a suite of artificial intelligence algorithms designed to discriminate airborne chemical/biological warfare agent plumes from battlefield clutter in standoff LIDAR data.

PSI’s AI-assisted LIDAR clutter mitigation (ALCM) system will track all plume-type objects within the LIDAR field of regard, and employ a two-stage classification algorithm to quantify the probabilistic threat level of each plume. The ALCM confidence refinement will be achieved through characterization of plume properties such as airborne mass and dissipation rate by performing temporal analysis of subsequent LIDAR scans with DisperseNET, PSI’s real-time dispersion modeling algorithm. The ALCM system is designed to quantify threat/non-threat confidences for each plume-like object, provide these outputs to the user in real-time, and achieve a greater than 90% threat classification probability.

The proposed technology will identify chemical/biological warfare agents in standoff LIDAR data and aligns with the Army’s NBCRV program, and may be applied for industrial autonomy and monitoring applications. Furthermore, the ALCM system would be applicable in automated CWA/BWA surveillance installations for base/force protection. The addition of LIDAR sensors to the DisperseNET software framework would also allow this capability to benefit the DARPA ChemSIGMA system for threat evaluation at large public outdoor gatherings, providing additional benefits to law enforcement officers.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Bogdan Cosofret
Vice President, Detection Systems
cosofret@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Telephone: (978) 689-0003

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a program from the U.S. Air Force to develop a lightweight fire-resistant composite containment system to improve aircraft safety for electronic Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) platforms.

High voltage Lithium-ion batteries increase power system efficiencies to meet eVTOL emerging demands, however, these battery systems are high risk for thermal runaway and propagation to neighboring cells, modules, and aircraft structures. Recent high-profile Li-ion battery fires/explosion incidents have driven new containment system designs. These designs rely on the use of steel alloys that still do not withstand all possible peak fire and peak temperature battery cook-off scenarios. PSI’s solution is based on a refractory composite material that is 4X lighter than steel, and capable of withstanding prolonged exposure to over 2000ºF.

Since PSI’s refractory composite solution will provide a far lighter and safer Li-ion battery containment system than current state-of-the-art steel-based designs, this new containment system would be applicable to both the military aircraft battery market and the commercial aviation market.

For more information, contact:

Dr. John Steinbeck
Product Manager, Advanced Composites
steinbeck@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Telephone: (978) 689-0003