Advanced Hemispherical Reflectance Measurement of Heated Materials

High Energy Lasers offer defense against a variety of threats, delivering significant amounts of laser energy to a specific location on a target at the speed of light. The effectiveness of the HEL system is directly related to the ability to transfer heat into the target material. The laser must dwell on the target for a period of time sufficient to deliver enough thermal energy to render it inoperable. There is a need for a measurement technique that can accurately characterize the thermal response of target materials exposed to representative HEL systems. AEgis will work closely with the customer to investigate concepts that can provide accurate measurement of the time evolution of the reflectivity of a sample exposed to a HEL system. The AEgis team has identified three innovative concepts with the potential to achieve the project goals: 1) Conformal Irradiance Sensor Array, 2) Scattered Reflection Imaging and 3) Laser Hardened Integrating Sphere. AEgis will investigate each of the three methods and provide an assessment of the applicability to the challenge. The AEgis team is uniquely positioned to leverage efforts from current DET S&T sensor projects, and to show a rapid development path to a fieldable device.