Virtual AeroSurface Technologies, a company assisted by Georgia Tech's VentureLab program, has received a $750,000 Small Business Technology Transfer contract from the Air Force.

The Air Force contract brings total funding for VAST to $920,000, including other contracts from the Air Force and Army. The flow-control-technology company is the 10th VentureLab member to be formed and win financing.

"VAST is commercializing technologies coming out of professor Ari Glezer's flow-control work in the School of Mechanical Engineering," said Tom Crittenden, the company's vice president of research and development and a part-time member of the research faculty in mechanical engineering. "We believe these technologies are going to have several important real-world applications."

Among those potential uses are allowing aircraft to fly without wing flaps; enabling helicopters to fly faster and more efficiently; steering military munitions in flight; altering air flow over tractor-trailer trucks; and regulating the speed of wind turbines.

Flow-control technology involves the use of tiny jets embedded in a smooth surface such as an airplane wing or a projectile. The jets are of two types: those that use an electronically driven piezoceramic element to blow out minute puffs of air and those that use combustion actuators — small explosive charges — to create tiny but powerful jets that can reach supersonic speeds.

Crittenden believes the first application of VAST technology could involve flap-less flight control in full-scale unmanned aerial combat vehicles such as the experimental Boeing UCAV. He envisions applying such flight-control technology to other military aircraft eventually and even to passenger planes someday.

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