Engineered Surfaces, Materials and Coatings for Aircraft Drag Reduction

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 Engineered Surfaces, Materials and Coatings (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.

This Challenge requires only a written proposal.

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 Engineered Surfaces, Materials and Coatings (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.

This Challenge requires white paper submittals describing the technology and, if possible, the potential of transitioning the technology to aerospace applications for skin friction drag reduction.  Challenge Awards will be contingent upon evaluation of the proposal by the ESMC Team.  The ESMC Team intends to make multiple awards depending on viability of the proposed solution(s). Each award will be $10K up to a total of $100K.

Award Winners will be invited (at their expense) to a Technical Interchange Meeting in Dayton, Ohio, on 20 October 2015, to present their approach in greater detail and explore the ROI of their approach to the USAF legacy transport aircraft. Promising approaches will be further invited to submit a full proposal with selected winners receiving subcontracts to further mature and validate their technologies.

To receive an award, the Solvers will not have to transfer their exclusive IP rights to the Seeker. Instead, they will grant to the Seeker non-exclusive license to practice their solutions. Note: it is the Seekers intention that the awarded Solver be involved in moving their proposal forward; however if the Solver cannot or chooses not to participate, the Seeker may find others to bring the project forward. Other arrangements might be considered, if a license cannot be granted.

Collider Event

Amended August 21, 2015 - The Collider event was recorded along with the presentation slides which can be viewed in the following link:  Collider Event Video and Presentation

On Monday 17 August from 1:00 - 3:00 pm EDT, the ESMC team will hold a Collider (connecting/collaborating) event at Wright Brothers Institute in Dayton, OH. Attendees at this event will have the opportunity to ask questions directly to the ESMC team. See ESMC Collider Link to RSVP. For those that cannot attend in person they can join via WebEx (meeting number: 737 977 339, Password: challenge) or join by phone +1-415-655-0003 US TOLL, Access code: 737 977 339. It will also give individuals that have ideas on how to solve part of this problem the chance to meet with others to explore potential joint collaboration. A virtual platform (on LinkedIn) will be made available for participants to meet offline to team on the Challenge. However this is a public platform to make connections for teaming participants. InnoCentive and OAI are not responsible for the Solvers intellectual property if exposed through this platform.  All submissions for this Challenge must be made through the InnoCentive website.