Self-Powered Temperature Sensors for Hypersonic Vehicle Safety Systems

ABSTRACT:Electronic safety and arming devices (ESADs) are critical for safe operation of missiles and bombs. These devices use environmental sensors to ensure that warheads are not armed until after the vehicle is launched and has reached a safe flight condition. Existing vehicles use intrusive airspeed sensors (turbines, Pitot tubes) that are not suitable for proposed high-speed missiles due to drag and cooling problems. New, non-intrusive environmental sensors are needed for future vehicles with sustained flight above Mach 3. We propose to develop a non-intrusive sensor that is powered by the flight environment above Mach 3. This sensor will be simple and fail-safe with an extremely low probability of providing false positive signals. It will also be small, lightweight, and easy to integrate on a wide range of hypersonic vehicles.BENEFIT:Our environmental sensors will decrease the drag and cooling requirements on hypersonic cruise missiles compared to existing intrusive sensors. The sensors will also improve missile safety through being self powered and inherently fail-safe. The core technology of our sensor also has significant applications for energy scavenging on hypersonic vehicles, military and commercial aircraft, and ground vehicles.