2022 Assessment of the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (2024) / Chapter Skim
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4 Weapons Sciences
4 Weapons Sciences
Pages 43-62
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From page 43... ...
2 DEVCOM ARL, "Foundational Research Competencies and Core Competencies," document for the Army Research Laboratory Technical Assessment Board, received March 30, 2022.
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From page 44... ...
These efforts have been supported through the Army Research Office and are now being transitioned to closer ties with the Army Research Directorate (ARD) Core Competencies teams.
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From page 45... ...
The goals of the research are to extend range, identify and engage targets including moving targets, and evade enemy countermeasures. One opportunity would be to expand the Army research scope in this area to include control co-design or multidisciplinary design optimization with control as a method to further ARL objectives of range extension, enhanced target engagement, and evasion of enemy countermeasures.
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From page 46... ...
The gust performance study presented constitutes a very relevant topic because it addresses improvement of the maneuverability of UAVs to respond to changes in the angle of attack. The Actuated Recirculating Gust Generator (ARGGUS)
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From page 47... ...
If successful, integrating the tasks into the coupled framework would be a first-of-its-kind demonstration of such a capability and promises to offer the ability for analysis to reduce the risk of system failure across a broad range of mission profiles. There has been significant success in leveraging the scientific quality of ARL's research by establishing essential connections with the academic community to support experimental and computational activities.
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From page 48... ...
Discovery, Synthesis, and Formulation of Energetic Materials Core Competency Accomplishments and Advancements The discovery, synthesis, and formulation of energetic materials core competency focuses on research to propose, create, and validate compounds that can undergo rapid release of energy on demand. It also focuses on the formulation of novel energetic materials to optimize performance, manufacturing processes, and stability for explosive and propellant applications.7 The overall scientific quality in this competency area was very good.
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From page 49... ...
As it stands, this routine use of the available techniques for this project are expected to produce quick results. Speaking more broadly, the development of new formulations with properties tailored to specific applications is a critical component of any program on energetic materials.
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From page 50... ...
to future aid in the exploration of the large parameter space computationally. It is expected that this approach would benefit from deeper connections with those colleagues in the modeling, simulation, and experimental characterization of energetics core competency working on the modeling and simulation of energetic materials and ML efforts.
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From page 51... ...
As evidenced by the presentation "Midcourse Navigation and Terminal Guidance" and the laboratory tours, in the areas of precision delivery concepts and experimentation, midcourse navigation, and terminal and collaborative guidance, ARL researchers have demonstrated broad understanding of the underlying research conducted elsewhere by implementing both well established and relatively new approaches IMU calibration, aiding, and ranging. They have implemented hardware and software to employ state-of-the-art signal of opportunity tracking and vision-based navigation methods.
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From page 52... ...
For the three Collaborative Delivery projects (presentations "Collaborative Delivery of Networked Intelligent Munitions," "Collaborative Delivery Algorithms," and "Collaborative Ranging and Communications") , the high-level simulation for performing trade studies of investments in performance improvement for different system components; the network focused study, and the algorithm development look farther ahead at new capabilities to be implemented.
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From page 53... ...
Having determined covariance intersection methods to be too conservative, they are investigating a representation of the largest ellipsoid that fits inside the overlap region between ellipsoids. This is a timely research topic and of great relevance to the collaborative navigation objective.10 The presentation "Collaborative Delivery -- Multi-Agent Localization and Connectivity Maintenance" showed that ARL researchers have applied methods similar to multi-agent work in networked systems theory that has been done in academia for other applications for more than 15 years, however, the work at ARL is being applied to a new, more challenging scenario.
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From page 54... ...
An alternative or supplementary research effort to address that topic more directly would be warranted. In reference to the assessment criteria question on the overall balance of the core competency's research portfolio, the research within the guidance and navigation of weapons systems core competency as presented during the review essentially includes the development and testing of laboratory technology vehicles that are able to advance, integrate, and demonstrate key technologies under the unique requirements for long range distributed and collaborative engagements; with parallel development of multiple technologies and algorithms to enable midcourse navigation and terminal guidance in contested environments.
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From page 55... ...
. The scientific quality within this core competency area appeared to be good, but preliminary and primarily focused on addressing technical challenges associated with proper operation of the AM machines with energetic materials to achieve parts of desired tolerances and on concept development of AM that would enhance mission capability.
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From page 56... ...
The bulk of the research presented was performed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, but it is clear from their publication records that many of the researchers had significant collaborations and extramural interactions with the community. Modeling, Simulation, and Experimental Characterization of Energetics Core Competency Accomplishments and Advancements The modeling, simulation, and experimental characterization of energetics core competency focuses on the delivery of exploitable knowledge through the creation and application of physics-based theoretical models to design advanced energetic materials for increased lethality and extended range munitions and to predict their performance in system concepts.14 The overall scientific quality in this core competency area was very high and is considered cutting edge with respect to what is being done in other leading research institutions and funding agencies.
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From page 57... ...
The presentation "Modeling and Simulation of Energetic Materials" focused on modeling energetic material behavior at multiple scales, referred to as the atomistic scale, the mesoscale, and the continuum scale. Atomistic or molecular dynamics calculation methods are capable of modeling the evolution of many atoms over hundreds of nanoseconds.
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From page 58... ...
Data from these atomistic and mesoscale models are then used to set the parameters for a continuum scale model via a hierarchical multi-scale method, which allows an application-specific subject-matter expert to apply constraints to the continuum model, such that its bulk behavior response matches that predicted by the mesoscale. For both of the presentations "Modeling and Simulation of Energetic Materials" and "Reaction Mechanisms/Solid State" (where the study goal was to develop a methodology to model the decomposition of energetic materials using atomistic-scale modeling and then to extend the results to continuum-level, finite-rate chemistry)
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Within the discovery, synthesis, and formulation of energetic materials, gun and rocket propulsion, and modeling, simulation, and formulation of energetic materials core competencies the qualifications of the teams of ARL researchers were found to be excellent. The teams have strong academic backgrounds and are recruiting and have personnel with a range of experience and ages.
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The gust generator ARGGUS facility provides a very useful platform for testing UAS performance and developing predictive models to for rapid recovery. For the discovery, synthesis, and formulation of energetic materials the facilities, resources, and equipment available to the researchers was excellent.
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The researchers were aware of work done elsewhere; however, some benefits may come through stronger connection and collaboration with other core competencies. In particular, increased collaboration with experts in energetic materials in the discovery, synthesis, and formulation of energetic materials core competency and the modeling, simulation, and experimental characterization of energetics core competency would be beneficial.
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From page 62... ...
of novel grain geometries for improved capability. The modeling, simulation, and experimental characterization of energetics research is very high and stands at the leading edge with the best teams elsewhere (e.g., other leading institutions)
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