USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Peter J Sarman

Eugene C Fischer

Dale A Sowell

Richard D Bardo

A configuration of grooves provided in a nonskid coating on an aircraft carrier flight deck promotes the lateral and backward drainage of slippery liquids. A straight longitudinal middle groove extending fore and aft intersects multiple &ldquo;W&rdquo;-shaped grooves each extending athwartship. Each W-shaped groove includes a pair of &ldquo;V&rdquo;-shaped groove sections located on opposite sides of the middle groove. Each V-shaped groove section aims vertex-forward and includes a pair of straight groove segments defining an interior angle in the approximate range between 60&deg; and 120&deg;. Abrasive entities may be included in the coating for nonskid purposes. The coating's inclusion of metal-polymer nanolaminate entities along with other pigment entities may serve to reduce or minimize solar heat absorption, particularly in terms of increasing solar reflectance and decreasing thermal emittance. The provision of pyramidal texturing in the coating may provide additional nonskid and/or solar heat absorptive benefits.

Low solar absorbing nonskid composition and applied configuration for a flight deck

Incident infrared radiation of a particular polarity is sensed by a set of Niobium Trisulfide (NbS ) crystal fibers which are fixed in parallel upon a substrate. In order to detect unpolarized or variously polarized infrared radiation, plural substrates, each having associated therewith its own such set of parallel fibers, can be coplanarly arrayed whereby different angles are described by different sets of parallel fibers; for instance, 0-degree, 45-degree, 90-degree and 135-degree angles can each be described by one or more sets of parallel fibers within a given array. The crystalline fibrous Niobium Trisulfide material is not a semiconductor material but rather is a &ldquo;charge density wave&rdquo; material having special attributes. The invention thus offers more economical operability at much higher temperatures when compared with conventional infrared-photosensitive materials, and is especially suitable for detecting midwavelength infrared radiation.

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Ashburn, VA, United States of America

Peter J Sarman