Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Kerr, Patricia A..
The facilities and services of the GEOmetry LABoratory (GEOLAB) at the NASA Langley Research Center are described. Included in this description are the laboratory functions, the surface modeling and grid generation technologies used in the laboratory, and examples of the tasks performed in the laboratory.
This document specifies a subset of an existing product data exchange specification that is widely used in industry and government. The existing document is called the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification. This document, a subset of IGES, is intended for engineers analyzing product performance using tools such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. This document specifies how to define mathematically and exchange the geometric model of an object. The geometry is represented utilizing nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) curves and surfaces. Only surface models are represented; no solid model representation is included. This specification does not include most of the other types of product information available in IGES (e.g., no material properties or surface finish properties) and does not provide all the specific file format details of IGES. The data exchange protocol specified in this document is fully conforming to the American National Standard (ANSI) IGES 5.2.
Described here are the data exchange efforts and plans supported by the NASA Steering Committee for Surface Modeling and Grid Generation. Current methods for geometry data exchange between computer aided design (CAD) systems and NASA computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis systems are tedious and induce errors. A Geometry Data Exchange Standard is proposed, utilizing a subset of an existing national standard titled Initial Graphic Exchange Standard (IGES). Future plans for data exchange standardization include all aspects of CFD data. Software systems to utilize this NASA-IGES Geometry Data Exchange Specification are under development.
Smooth curves drawn among plotted data easily. Rational-Spline Approximation with Automatic Tension Adjustment algorithm leads to flexible, smooth representation of experimental data. "Tension" denotes mathematical analog of mechanical tension in spline or other mechanical curve-fitting tool, and "spline" as denotes mathematical generalization of tool. Program differs from usual spline under tension, allows user to specify different values of tension between adjacent pairs of knots rather than constant tension over entire range of data. Subroutines use automatic adjustment scheme that varies tension parameter for each interval until maximum deviation of spline from line joining knots less than or equal to amount specified by user. Procedure frees user from drudgery of adjusting individual tension parameters while still giving control over local behavior of spline.