SBIR/STTR Research Award

Automated ICBM wall thickness measurements

Award identifier 027681f9b02daafa5e37b9954c29a9c10b95a2e222a2e1a5292877e3c1fcba1bAwarding agency Department of Defense · Air Force

Award amount

$149,998

Program and phase

SBIR · Phase I

Award year

2018

Explore This Research Award in CaptureIQ

Research the technology, evaluate the recipient and agency, identify related opportunities, and explore potential follow-on work with CaptureIQ.

Award details

Awarding agency
Department of Defense
Branch
Air Force
Recipient company
Custom Manufacturing & Engineering, Inc
Proposal award date
2018-09-19
Contract end date
2019-09-19
UEI
J137X5SJTEG9
Solicitation number
2018.1
Topic code
AF181-009

Research abstract

The Air Force needs to sustain critical ICBM launch silo steel liners for decades to come and seeks a significant improvement in NDT for corrosion mapping of entire surfaces. Our advanced, intuitive digital features (e.g., guided calibration, fully customizable touch-screen interfaces, operator-assisted interpretative data tools integrated with a unique, advanced silo robot) will provide productive, rapid, and effective corrosion/thickness loss situational awareness. By leveraging and integrating industry-proven Phased Array Ultrasonic NDT and new, customized robotic crawler approach ideal for silos, we will develop, integrate, test advanced, fully automated corrosion mapping NDT solution using best-of-class hardware/software.The user friendly system will be portable while being responsive to their silo or other large scale surface scanning needs to detect defect types, sizes, and spatially correlate to locations across these large inspection zones. This effort provides a high return on investment with new automated capabilities over existing inefficient methods used, delivers elegant scan path planning, and supports 3D scan modeling/simulations to enhance tools and inspection execution. The first silo scan setup/implementation will significantly accelerate the setup for all remaining silos.Custom, preinstalled inspection applications reduce training times and guide users through inspection procedures to improve productivity and minimize training costs.

Technology keywords

Not reported

Other awards by this recipient

Verified by the same UEI. These are other public SBIR/STTR award pages, not a merged company record.

Awards with the same topic code

Verified by an exact topic code match. This is not a text-similarity match.

Research funding history

30 SBIR/STTR records share this UEI (1999–2025). Reported award amounts total $7,523,121. Reported amounts are not federal obligations.

Phases: Phase I, Phase II

Agencies: Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Agency intelligence

Department of Defense

Back to SBIR/STTR Research Awards

Don't take our word for it. Ask AI about RFPCapture.

See what leading AI assistants have to say about RFPCapture and CaptureIQ.

Gemini opens without a prefilled question. The question is copied to your clipboard when the button works. You can also copy it here:

What is RFPCapture.com and its CaptureIQ platform from Smart Logic AI? How does it help federal contractors discover opportunities, evaluate bid/no-bid decisions, research government contracts, and prepare proposals? How does it compare with other federal capture platforms? Use independent sources where available.