Program Overview
Nonlinear science is one of the most promising new areas in active research today. The science of nonlinear dynamics transcends most fields of physics and many other genres of scientific disciplines. Chaos control and chaotic synchronization are two examples of surprising discoveries in this area. The field of nonlinear dynamical systems is poised for major growth in applications related directly to missions of particular interest to the U.S. Navy.

This is an applied research project, though many basic science questions are anticipated and addressed. The Nonlinear Sciences Team is most interested in developing technologies that show a strong potential for deployment in commercial or military systems within three to five years. WVHTC Foundation intends to play a role bridging basic research efforts between the federal labs and universities, and the transitional stage of commercial/military exploitation. This strategy addresses observed gaps in the military’s technology transfer efforts and provides strong incentives for research scientists in other organizations to collaborate with the WVHTC Foundation.

Advanced commercial designs leveraging intellectual property developed in this project may ultimately be fully exploited outside WVHTC Foundation’s incubation process, by means of licensing, manufacturing or marketing by other entities.

• Implementation of five damage detection algorithms developed by Naval Research Lab (NRL), for inclusion in a software package for NDE and validation of these algorithms on four data sets from laboratory experiments, provided by NRL;
• Validation of these algorithms on four data sets from laboratory experiments, provided by NRL;
• Data analysis of a chaotically-driven UAV wing, to assess the ability of the algorithms to detect interlaminar failure;
• Development of a plan to flight test a fiber-Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensor on an uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV);
• Establishment of a fiber-optics laboratory for fiber Bragg grating sensor design and evaluation;
• Assembly and testing of a fiber optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer that measures strain from fiber Bragg grating wavelength shifts;
• Theoretical/numerical proof-of-principle of chaotic technique for fault detection in MEMS devices;
• The development of a set of lumped element building blocks with which to model single device and synchronized array dynamics;
• Initial stages in the development of an analytical and numerical toolkit to explore arbitrary coupling geometries and the stability of array synchronization;
• Successful realization of two chip designs as fabricated devices using a complex CMOS MEMS fabrication method; and
• Successful data extraction from a chaotically excited MEMS device.