Rain repellant coatings
Bryan Koene, Ph.D.Director of Advanced Materials Group Imagine attempting to land a multimillion dollar aircraft on a landing strip barely wider than the wingspan of the plane. Now try to do this while the landing strip is moving – not only forward at 35 knots, but pitching back and forth at ever changing angles. This is part of the job description for our highly trained…Read More
Installing Fiber Strain Sensors
Eric E. Sanborn, P.E.Director, Engineering and ProductionLightwave Division In this first part of a two part post we will describe how a fiber optic strain sensor compares physically to a conventional foil gage sensor and how it can be bonded to a simple coupon. In the second part we will explore instrumenting complex parts and structures. Luna’s ODiSI sensing solution can replace hundreds or even…Read More
Rust Busters: Corrosion Monitoring Systems and Anti-Corrosion Coatings
Mara SheddSenior Materials Research EngineerIntelligent Systems Group With an estimated cost of $22.9 billion annually, corrosion of defense structures continues to be one of the top maintenance cost drivers for the Department of Defense.  This month, the Intelligent Systems and Materials groups at Luna will present corrosion control and monitoring strategies for naval applications at the Mega Rust Conference, being held June 24-26, in Newport…Read More
4 new ways the ODiSI has gotten even better!
Dawn K. Gifford, Ph.D.Director of Product R&D, Lightwave Division In the first half of 2012 we introduced our ODiSI B distributed fiber sensing system. With this system, simple, off-the-shelf, unaltered optical fiber can be used to measure strain or temperature at every point along the fiber. The system as introduced provides data over 10 m of fiber length with 5 mm spatial resolution and a…Read More
Sensing in Pressure Vessels: Fiber Optics Open Doors for an Industry
Matt ReavesOptical ScientistLightwave Division We’ve already shown you some of the benefits of fiber optic sensors in our previous blog post “So, what is so compelling about distributed fiber optic sensing?!â€. In that article, we showed that fiber optic sensors show excellent agreement with traditional foil strain gages while also exhibiting superior fatigue performance, as demonstrated in a fatigue test of a 9-meter wind turbine…Read More
Water not required: self-cleaning clothing
Jessica Green Senior Research ScientistAdvanced Materials Group Ever wish your laundry would magically clean itself? That dream might become a reality sooner than you think. At Luna we have been developing a self-cleaning technology for textiles over the past several years. Our work began by trying to solve a problem posed by the Army to make a self-cleaning uniform for soldiers. We approached the problem…Read More
So, what is so compelling about distributed fiber optic sensing?!
Sandra M. Klute, Ph.D.Director of Research, Contract ServicesLightwave Division We recently presented our distributed fiber optic sensing technology at the October 2012 meeting of SAMPE TECH (The Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering). The topic of the presentation, “Fiber Optic Distributed Strain Sensing used to Investigate The Strain Fields in a Wind Turbine Blade and in a Test Coupon with Open Holes, Read More
Smart Sensors for Aircraft Corrosion Monitoring
Fritz Friedersdorf, Ph.D.Director Intelligent Systems Group This month, we are pleased to present our most current, in-service test results and development progress from our embedded, wireless health monitoring system, the Luna Sensor Suite (LS2). We are continuing to test and demonstrate units, developed under two Navy Phase II SBIR contracts (N68335-09-C-0107 and N68335-09-C-0099), with the goal of installing this platform on existing aircraft structures to…Read More
Enabling Optical Communication from Avionics to Social Media
Joe BosLead Optical EngineerProduct Development, R&D Q. What do the F-35 JSF, Netflix, cloud computing and Facebook all have in common (besides counting their net worth in billions of dollars)? A. They all rely on high-bandwidth, fast data communication realized through optical fiber technology Our voracious appetite for high-speed data and increasing bandwidth is seemingly insatiable and will continue to drive telecommunications innovation.  It…Read More
Welcome to Luna’s new blog
Today we’re introducing our new blog. So why should you care? Although we’re starting simply, our ultimate objective is to develop a blog that is a compelling resource of information for you; presenting interesting applications, case studies, and industry insights that we hope will be of value to you. Our plan is to address the topics about which you want to hear; to provide…Read More
