Advanced Damage Criticality Analysis - SBIR Topic DON26BZ01-DV005

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This topic was temporarily posted by the Department of War SBIR Program on March 2nd 2026 and removed the following day.
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Funding Amount:

Est. $2 Million.

Deadline to Apply:

Est. April 29th, 2026.

Objective:

Develop a passive Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system to identify, locate, and characterize the severity of defects and cracks due to fatigue loading or impacts based on novel or advanced technologies with a basis in physics and avoiding qualitative assumptions.

Description:

The Navy seeks an effective passive Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system for Navy ship hulls and other structures that can monitor defects, such as crack growth from fatigue or impacts, and provide actionable information about the severity of the defect in an automated manner, i.e., in real time. Such fatigue cracks develop and grow in Navy ship hull welds and plating from cyclical life-cycle stresses and event-driven forces from severe sea states, collisions, and groundings.

The U.S. Navy and other navies around the world have installed SHM systems to monitor hull structural health but almost all are based on using strain gauges to monitor stresses on the hull and inferring crack growth based on fatigue life calculations. For example, the Military Sealift Command (MSC) has worked with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and installed SHM systems consisting of strain gauges and accelerometers on several ships in the T-EPF class, which monitor hull deflection and dynamic movement due to the ship’s loading and the sea states encountered. The data from these sensors is being fed into a digital twin model developed to calculate structural stresses for managing vessel survivability and to minimize operating risk.

There have been some attempts to develop fiber optics sensors to measure strain or Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors to monitor fatigue cracks directly. These approaches have seen varying levels of success, yet, better systems are needed. There may even be some applications for LiDAR use to improve success probability. The Navy is particularly interested in locating and characterizing the severity or criticality of a defect if one is detected. Currently there is not a system available on the commercial market.

The Navy’s need for such hull monitoring capability has become more important with the introduction of high-speed and catamaran vessels, which are more prone to hull cracking due to the designs of the ships, materials of the hull, and stresses experienced in high seas. An ideal system would be capable of monitoring large areas of the ship’s hull with sensing devices that provide cost effective coverage with the following capabilities:

Detect and identify the location of crack growth signals in the hull if they exist in the presence of ship’s background noise without producing false positives or negatives.

Produce results in an automated manner, i.e., real time, so they are immediately available to the operating crew.

Provide insight as to the severity of the crack growth considering the complex geometries found in hull structures with varying thicknesses and stiffeners.

The Navy would benefit from understanding structural risks in real time with the goal of minimizing the possibility of incurring structural damage at sea. The SHM system the Navy needs should provide meaningful information on ship structural health and reduce inspection and maintenance costs during repair availabilities by identifying areas of concern or damage in advance.

Who will win?

If you can achieve the objective above better than any other company on the market, you have a very high-likelihood of success and should apply.

Who is eligible to apply?

Any company that meets the following criteria:

• For-profit company

• U.S.-owned and controlled.

• 500 or fewer employees (including affiliates)

How Can BW&CO Help?

1) End-to-end support including, strategy, writing of the full proposal, and administrative & compliance support.

2) Proposal strategy and review.

3) Administrative & compliance support.

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