Engineering topics

Kenny, Sean

Publications and source records attributed to Kenny, Sean.

6 records

NASA NTRS2017

Early Results from the Advanced Radiation Protection Thick GCR Shielding Project

The Advanced Radiation Protection Thick Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) Shielding Project leverages experimental and modeling approaches to validate a predicted minimum in the radiation exposure versus shielding depth curve. Preliminary results of space radiation models indicate that a minimum in the dose equivalent versus aluminum shielding thickness may exist in the 20-30 g/cm2 region. For greater shield thickness, dose equivalent increases due to secondary neutron and light particle production. This result goes against the long held belief in the space radiation shielding community that increasing shielding thickness will decrease risk to crew health. A comprehensive modeling effort was undertaken to verify the preliminary modeling results using multiple Monte Carlo and deterministic space radiation transport codes. These results verified the preliminary findings of a minimum and helped drive the design of the experimental component of the project. In first-of-their-kind experiments performed at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, neutrons and light ions were measured between large thicknesses of aluminum shielding. Both an upstream and a downstream shield were incorporated into the experiment to represent the radiation environment inside a spacecraft. These measurements are used to validate the Monte Carlo codes and derive uncertainty distributions for exposure estimates behind thick shielding similar to that provided by spacecraft on a Mars mission. Preliminary results for all aspects of the project will be presented.

Norman, Ryan B.↗

NASA NTRS2011

MASCOT - MATLAB Stability and Control Toolbox

MASCOT software was created to provide the conceptual aircraft designer accurate predictions of air vehicle stability and control characteristics. The code takes as input mass property data in the form of an inertia tensor, aerodynamic loading data, and propulsion (i.e. thrust) loading data. Using fundamental non-linear equations of motion, MASCOT then calculates vehicle trim and static stability data for any desired flight condition. Common predefined flight conditions are included. The predefined flight conditions include six horizontal and six landing rotation conditions with varying options for engine out, crosswind and sideslip, plus three takeoff rotation conditions. Results are displayed through a unique graphical interface developed to provide stability and control information to the conceptual design engineers using a qualitative scale indicating whether the vehicle has acceptable, marginal, or unacceptable static stability characteristics. This software allows the user to prescribe the vehicle s CG location, mass, and inertia tensor so that any loading configuration between empty weight and maximum take-off weight can be analyzed. The required geometric and aerodynamic data as well as mass and inertia properties may be entered directly, passed through data files, or come from external programs such as Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP). The current version of MASCOT has been tested with VSP used to compute the required data, which is then passed directly into the program. In VSP, the vehicle geometry is created and manipulated. The aerodynamic coefficients, stability and control derivatives, are calculated using VorLax, which is now available directly within VSP. MASCOT has been written exclusively using the technical computing language MATLAB . This innovation is able to bridge the gap between low-fidelity conceptual design and higher-fidelity stability and control analysis. This new tool enables the conceptual design engineer to include detailed static stability and trim constraints in the conceptual design loop. The unique graphical interface developed for this tool presents the stability data in a format that is understandable by the conceptual designer, yet also provides the detailed quantitative results if desired.

Kenny, Sean↗

NASA NTRS2002

Reliability and Productivity Modeling for the Optimization of Separated Spacecraft Interferometers

As technological systems grow in capability, they also grow in complexity. Due to this complexity, it is no longer possible for a designer to use engineering judgement to identify the components that have the largest impact on system life cycle metrics, such as reliability, productivity, cost, and cost effectiveness. One way of identifying these key components is to build quantitative models and analysis tools that can be used to aid the designer in making high level architecture decisions. Once these key components have been identified, two main approaches to improving a system using these components exist: add redundancy or improve the reliability of the component. In reality, the most effective approach to almost any system will be some combination of these two approaches, in varying orders of magnitude for each component. Therefore, this research tries to answer the question of how to divide funds, between adding redundancy and improving the reliability of components, to most cost effectively improve the life cycle metrics of a system. While this question is relevant to any complex system, this research focuses on one type of system in particular: Separate Spacecraft Interferometers (SSI). Quantitative models are developed to analyze the key life cycle metrics of different SSI system architectures. Next, tools are developed to compare a given set of architectures in terms of total performance, by coupling different life cycle metrics together into one performance metric. Optimization tools, such as simulated annealing and genetic algorithms, are then used to search the entire design space to find the "optimal" architecture design. Sensitivity analysis tools have been developed to determine how sensitive the results of these analyses are to uncertain user defined parameters. Finally, several possibilities for the future work that could be done in this area of research are presented.

Kenny, Sean↗

NASA NTRS1993

Evaluation of CSI enhancements for jitter reduction on the EOS AM-1 observatory

A collaborative study between the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Langley Research Center is now underway to investigate the application of Control-Structure Integration (CSI) technologies to the EOS AM-1 spacecraft. Preliminary GN&C pointing studies of EOS AM-1, performed in 1991 and 1992, have indicated the potential for low pointing jitter and stability margins. Hence, a detailed baseline and CSI enhanced jitter assessment has been undertaken. This paper describes the spacecraft jitter pointing requirements, finite element models, and on-board disturbances. The jitter assessment approach being used by the NASA LaRC and various tools developed for efficient simulation and analysis of jitter are presented. In addition, preliminary results are given to show the potential need of CSI technologies for improving pointing performance of the spacecraft.

Belvin, W. K.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Evaluation of inertial devices for the control of large, flexible, space-based telerobotic arms

Batch simulation studies which show that torque-wheels can reduce the overshoot in abrupt stop commands by 82 percent for a two-link arm are presented. For man-in-the-loop evaluation, a real-time simulator has been developed that samples a hand-controller, solves the nonlinear equations of motion, and graphically displays the resulting motion on a computer workstation. It is shown that, for a single-link arm, a reaction-mass/torque-wheel combination at the payload end can yield a settling time of 3 s for disturbances in the first flexible mode as opposed to 10 s utilizing only a hub motor.

Montgomery, Raymond C.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Analytic and simulation studies on the use of torque-wheel actuators for the control of flexible robotic arms

This paper presents results of analytic and simulation studies to determine the effectiveness of torque-wheel actuators in suppressing the vibrations of two-link telerobotic arms with attached payloads. The simulations use a planar generic model of a two-link arm with a torque wheel at the free end. Parameters of the arm model are selected to be representative of a large space-based robotic arm of the same class as the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator, whereas parameters of the torque wheel are selected to be similar to those of the Mini-Mast facility at the Langley Research Center. Results show that this class of torque-wheel can produce an oscillation of 2.5 cm peak-to-peak in the end point of the arm and that the wheel produces significantly less overshoot when the arm is issued an abrupt stop command from the telerobotic input station.

Montgomery, Raymond C.↗