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Engineered Surfaces, Materials & Coatings for Aircraft Drag Reduction

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The Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI) and its Engineered Surfaces, Materials and Coatings (ESMC) Team, under contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), is soliciting innovative cost effective ways to reduce drag on legacy Air Force aircraft. The Seeker is primarily searching for existing technologies or research studies, outside of the aircraft industry, that provide surface friction reduction in fluid mediums and have potential to be translated to the aircraft industry for skin friction reduction. Other sources of aircraft drag reduction are sought as well. Areas of particular interest include discovery of new materials or application processes to create engineered surfaces with drag effect of modifying streamwise airflow (e.g. riblets), or coatings to reduce skin friction drag.  These surfaces must be able to survive the environmental extremes of normal transport aircraft flight regimes. These ESMC should nominally last for several years and be easily applied to an existing aircraft to accomplish a reasonable Return on Investment (ROI) for applying to legacy transport aircraft.  Submissions must be received by September 21, 2015.  For more information, go to - https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933776