ROCKLEDGE, FL — July 7th, 2017 — Mainstream Engineering Corporation, a 31-year-old Brevard County manufacturer with a history of leading-edge research and development that has resulted in advanced, lean-manufacturing, cost-competitive products, which are all Made in the USA, has been awarded a contract from the Air Force for development of a robust, scalable packaging and cooling solution for next generation infrared emitter arrays.
The ability to stimulate advanced infrared weapon and aircraft sensors and seekers with high radiance, high resolution IR imagery of targets, backgrounds, and countermeasures in dynamic hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HITL) and installed systems test facilities (ISTF) is critical in the development, test, and evaluation of those systems. Current IR scene projectors are based on resistive emitter array technology that is approaching physical limits on radiance output, size, frame rates, and pixel density and will likely not provide adequate support for future test and evaluation (T&E) requirements. Next generation IR emitter arrays are required to provide higher resolutions, higher radiance output (apparent temperature), and higher frame rates to test these systems.
Mainstream will develop a common, flexible, scalable, and verified packaging concept to support continued development and use of advanced emitter arrays. The package design will have provisions for cooling the emitter array, keeping the array under vacuum, and providing power and command/control signals to the array.
About Mainstream Engineering Corporation
Mainstream Engineering Corporation is a solutions-oriented research, development and manufacturing small business with a history of leading-edge R&D that has resulted in advanced, American-made, cost-competitive products. Founded in 1986, Mainstream’s mission is to transition thermal control, energy storage and energy conversion technology into high-quality, cost-effective, environmentally safe green, commercial products. Products include lightweight diesel engines, thermal control units, biomass conversion technologies, refrigerators/freezers for shipping containers and the QwikProduct™ line of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC/R) products. Areas of research include thermal control, energy conversion, power electronics, turbomachinery, chemical technology and materials science.
