Stevens' Design and Manufacturing Institute (DMI), headed by Dr. Souran Manoochehri, will work closely with other consortium partners at the Small Arms Center to develop the sensors, lightweight materials and electronics that are the future of small-arms technology.
"It's our job to keep working at the future," said Mike Devine, technical director of the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny, quoted in The Newark Star-Ledger. "What will our enemies have 10 years from now? What will we need to defeat them?"
Stevens' Manoochehri, director of DMI and professor of mechanical engineering, said, "This model is the right model: industry, academia and government working together." Manoochehri explained that DMI has been working for some time on the use of composite materials for weapons systems, and that DMI's longstanding research involvement at Picatinny makes it a natural fit to participate actively in building the National Small Arms Center.
Stephen C. Small, the coordinator for the small-arms center, said that the rise in terrorism has brought the importance of small arms back to the forefront.
"For the sake of uniformed service personnel, superb small arms are essential," Small said, as quoted in the Star-Ledger.
Among the groups and institutions participating in the consortium are FN Manufacturing Inc., one of the federal government's biggest small-arms suppliers, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which has been active in researching "smart gun" technology.
ABOUT DMI
The Design & Manufacturing Institute (http://www.dmi.stevens-tech.edu) is an interdisciplinary center integrating materials processing, product design and manufacturing expertise with simulation and modeling utilizing state-of-the-art computer software technology. Located in the historic Carnegie Laboratory, DMI bridges the gap between academic- and application-oriented research and development. DMI partners with industry and government to create practical solutions to product-design challenges that address cost, performance and productibility across the product life cycle.
DMI's expertise spans processing studies and modeling, competitive product development, multi-component, multi-process system design and optimization, life cycle analysis, material characterization and testing, and rapid prototyping and manufacturing.
Building on more than a decade of experience in cutting-edge product design solutions, the Design & Manufacturing Institute continues to lead in developing "next generation" solutions to today's challenges to product development. DMI's expertise in manufacturing processes and knowledge-based software is epitomized in its Automated Concurrent Engineering Software (ACES) system and methodology development. The ACES system offers product designers performance and process modeling and life-cycle optimization for multi-component, multi-process systems. In its continuous refinement of "next generation" product development methodologies and tools, such as ACES, DMI is engineering the future of polymer and metals-based products.
DMI has particular expertise with polymers and composites, and maintains extensive modeling capabilities and databases on materials, processing, tooling and machinery. The Learning Factory at DMI provides a computer-controlled, state-of-the-art manufacturing environment. It offers industry representatives and students the research, testing and training for product design and testing, materials characterization, rapid prototyping and production. Part of DMI is the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory, which contains industrial scale NC machines with CAD/CAM software.
Established in 1870, Stevens offers baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science, management and technology management, as well as a baccalaureate in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university, located directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, has a total enrollment of about 1,740 undergraduates and 2,600 graduate students. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at http://www.stevens.edu.
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