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When waves move a floating wind turbine, they drive fluid motion inside the MTLCD. This forces air in the vertical tanks through an orifice, increasing pressure much like a spring. As the air discharges, the fluid’s motion is damped and energy is dissipated. The MTLCD also incorporates added damping elements, such as an orifice or variable-aperture reciprocating reed valve, that create resistance to air flow, further controlling fluid motion and dissipating energy. By integrating these modifications, the MTLCD is easily tuned to the platform’s motions, reducing dependency on platform geometry. Eliminating damping elements from the fluid removes the need for marine-grade hardware, reducing system costs. The MTLCD can also be integrated into existing ballast tanks, maximizing space efficiency with minimal added parts. While initially developed for NASA’s Floating Wind Turbine Development project, this invention can support vibration mitigation applications across multiple industries, such as infrastructure, maritime systems, and aerospace. By enabling precise tuning of dynamic response characteristics, the MTLCD offers a compact solution for platforms requiring vibration suppression. The technology has completed preliminary design and simulation, is at a TRL 3 (proof-of-concept), and is available for patent licensing.

Prototype thermal control valves for the next generation spacesuit were challenged in maintaining precise thermal control, so engineers created a design that functions like a traditional ball valve but added tapered-valley contours to the ball that yields a variable orifice which is more predictable at controlling flow. The key differences between the TCBV and traditional v-channel ball valves are that this technology has one inlet and two outlets allowing the split-flow of fluids whereas traditional v-channel valves only have one inlet and one outlet. Additionally, traditional v-channel ball valves don’t enable the full flow rate of a given system while this technology does. The ball valve is held in place within the TCBV using two PTFE seats compressed by spring-loaded side plates. The hole in the middle of the ball valve and adjoining tapered valleys mate with the PTFE seats to create varying sized orifices depending on valve position. Specially designed O-ring seals surrounding the ball valve assembly allow the seats to move within the pocket while preventing internal leakage. In this technology’s spacesuit application, coolant is fed to the ported ball valve where the coolant is apportioned to each valve housing exit either primarily feeding the cooling and ventilation garment or the bypass circuit back to the spacesuit’s thermal cooling system. The apportionment is determined by the astronaut’s manual valve adjustment or automatically by the suit.