NASA SBIR 2009 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Impact Technologies, LLC
200 Canal View Blvd.
Rochester, NY 14623 - 2893
(585) 627-1923

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Antonio Ginart
antonio.ginart@impact-tek.com
200 Canal View Blvd
Rochester, NY 14623 - 2893
(404) 526-6188

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 3
End: 7

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
Impact Technologies has proposed development of an effective prognostic and fault accommodation system for critical DC power systems including PV systems. Overall goal for this program is development of techniques that enable power system fault tolerance based on diagnostic features from the solar cells, power bus, and power transistors. After completion of Phase I efforts towards this goal, Impact has achieved substantial and promising results in several technical areas that provide opportunities for maturing PHM tools. The technical areas covered include: 1) solar cell modeling and characterization, 2) power system monitoring, 3) semiconductor device modeling and aging characterization, and 4) application of the leakage current sensing to DC systems. During Phase II, impact will apply and maturing phase I accomplishments to incorporate and embed effective PHM techniques and fault tolerance for power system reliability and extended operation. Impact also plans development of a prototype low cost dynamic leakage current sensor for solar cell and DC power system application. The long-term implications of a successful completion of this program will provide reliability and health management tools for the state-of-the-art technologies, such as advanced power systems based on solar power generation, contributing directly to NASA's ISHM efforts.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The development of the proposed prognostics and fault tolerant reconfiguration strategies will directly contribute to NASA's ISHM efforts, particularly for several components of the Constellation program. Although the Constellation program and its scope are uncertain at the moment, the techniques Impact is developing will be leveraged into systems that are a mainstay in space exploration such as satellites and solar power systems. The proposed technologies are generic in nature and are applicable to future generation aviation platforms, leading to benefits in the form of improved reliability, maintainability, and survivability of safety-critical electrical power and electro-mechanical systems. The long-term implications of a successful completion of this program will provide reliability tools for the state-of-the-art technologies in power generation, management, and intelligent control. Several of NASA's NextGen and current activities can take immediate advantage of these technologies. In the short term, the device level modeling and reconfigurable strategies to be developed in this program can be directly transitioned to ongoing research at the NASA research centers. The adaptable nature of modules presented in this program will allow them to act as design and development tools for a wide variety of NASA applications.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The potential benefits from the successful completion of this program are enormous and will significantly impact the way critical aerospace, power devices, controllers, and other systems are designed, particularly in the alternative power generation and management domains. Examples of key customers that could benefit through use of the developed technologies include power system manufacturers, commercial airlines, power semiconductor device and drive manufacturers, commercial power utilities, land and marine propulsion systems, unmanned air vehicles, Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), future combat systems (FCS), industrial actuation systems, and robotic applications. Particularly, the reliance on solar power generation and DC system in commercial applications specific requirements on health management performance for which these technologies can provide value by increasing reliability and safety for critical components. Impact has existing contracts with all these potential customers and has an excellent commercialization record.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.)

Highly-Reconfigurable On-Board Computing and Data Management Photovoltaic Conversion Power Management and Distribution Radiation-Hard/Resistant Electronics Renewable Energy