Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer

Frustration and Need Lead to Calibrating the Calibration Tool
How do you calibrate the calibration tool? The answer is with difficulty. This was the problem facing NASA Kennedy Space Center innovators Richard Deyoe and Stephen Stout, both of whom were frustrated with the multiple components needed for calibration and the shoddy results they were producing. The innovators' solution was to design and build their own calibration unit, known as the Low Differential Pressure Generator. The Low Differential Pressure Generator filled the innovators' unmet need for calibrating and certifying high accuracy, low differential pressure (DP) transducers with full-scale pressure ranges below 1-inch water column (WC).

The Future Is Now for Air Transportation
The NextGeneration Integration and Evaluation Capability (NIEC) laboratory, located at the William J. Hughes Technical Center, is the FAA's research platform to explore, integrate, and evaluate NextGeneration Air Transportation System (NextGen) concepts through simulation activities, resulting in concept maturation and requirements definition. The NIEC can provide a futuristic NextGen gate-to-gate visualization environment with advanced data collection capabilities to support integration and evaluation of new technologies and concepts. The ability to provide a combined environment of legacy systems with future technologies and capabilities also enables the NIEC to support the transition to NextGen.

NASA Reduces Impact of Corrosion
Scientists at the Kennedy Space Center's (KSC) Corrosion Technology Laboratory are working to reduce the impact of corrosion and even develop new corrosion-prevention technologies as NASA prepares KSC for the Constellation Program. The Corrosion Technology Laboratory is actually a series of labs, including an electrochemistry lab, a general corrosion lab, a concrete corrosion lab, a coatings application lab, and an accelerated corrosion lab. A beachside corrosion facility includes a full weather data area, an atmospheric exposure site with hundreds of samples of coatings exposed to the elements, a seawater immersion site, and an onsite laboratory.

The cracking associated with the corrosion of steel reinforced concrete is a major concern in areas with marine environments like KSC. The Corrosion Technology Laboratory has researched technology to protect concrete and the steel rebar contained within. KSC's two Shuttle launch sites each consist of 68,000 cubic yards of concrete weighing 1.3 million pounds. Recently, a sacrificial galvanic coating was developed to prevent the corrosion of steel rebar in concrete. NASA licensed the patented technology to two companies, and it is currently being reformulated and tested on structures throughout the world.

NASA developed this technology and conducted proof-of-concept demonstrations. The coatings reduce the corrosion of embedded metal structures by providing galvanic protection. The coatings are applied as liquids to the external surface of a concrete substrate in which the metal structures are embedded. The coatings are allowed to dry and are connected to the internal structure by metal mesh and electrical wiring. Continued protection can be maintained with periodic reapplication of the coating compositions, as necessary, to maintain electrical continuity. Because the coatings are applied to external surfaces of the concrete substrates in which the metal structures are embedded, the corresponding corrosion protection may be easily renewed. The coating compositions are particularly useful in the protection of metal-reinforced concrete. NASA has nonexclusively licensed this technology to two companies-Cortec Corporation and Surtreat Holdings, LLC.