Directed Energy Target Failure Sensors

One of the most promising technologies to provide weapons suitable for ballistic missile defense is directed energy weapons systems such as high-energy lasers (HELs), mounted on aircraft as in the airborne laser (ABL) system, or on satellites. As HELs areweaponized, there is a need to characterize the effects that these newly-developed weapons have on realistic targets. Currently, there exists no technology capable of providing quantitative data essential to the development of directed energy weapons.Luna Innovations proposes to solve the challenge of characterizing the damage to directed energy weapon targets during simulated attacks. Luna will leverage its experience in extreme harsh environment, ceramic / fiber optic-based sensors to accomplishthis task. Sensors will be designed and constructed to include co-located temperature and strain transducers in a media-isolated probe that will be mounted on the inside surface of the target fuel tank. A high-speed, highly-multiplexed fiber opticreadout system will be developed that will read 64 strain sensors and 64 temperature sensors sampling at 1kHz and 10kHz respectively. During the Phase I, Luna Innovations demonstrated fiber optic-based strain and temperature sensors at over 1000¿C. Afiber optic sensor readout system was designed that will meet the specifications described above.