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Koushik Datta

Publications and source records attributed to Koushik Datta.

10 records
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NASA NTRS2021

Adaptive Aerostructures for Revolutionary Civil Supersonic Transportation

To enable commercially viable civil supersonic transport (SST) aircraft, innovative solutions must be developed to meet noise and efficiency requirements for overland flight. This research effort consists of a multidisciplinary team of academic and industrial experts exploring for the first time the potential of small real-time geometric outer mold line (OML) reconfigurations to minimize sonic boom signatures and aircraft drag in response to changing ambient conditions, thereby enabling noise-compliant overland supersonic flight. The team utilizes recent advances in supersonic computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods, new noise prediction tools, and new design approaches to consider embedded highly energy-dense shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators for local shape modifications to an SST aircraft leading to optimal low boom signature and low drag in different environments. This university-led program will provide strategic leadership toward technology convergence that advances NASA's Aerospace Research Mission Directorate's (ARMD) research objectives with regard to Thrust 2: “Innovation in Commercial Supersonic Aircraft” by exploring for the first time enabling low-boom operation across a range of flight conditions via structural adaptivity, and will promote education of the next generation of engineers. The overall research strategy is to pursue three critical areas: the design of configurations for reducing boom, SMA material development and modeling, and technology feasibility demonstration in a relevant environment. Initially, the team will identify potential applications where structure or geometry adaptivity provides a benefit in noise or drag across the entire flight envelope. For selected applications/structural locations, required OML geometry changes will be determined based on analysis of sonic boom ground signature and drag reduction using new design tools, trade studies, and atmospheric sensing techniques. Designs will be developed and evaluated against requirements on loading, stroke length, and operational temperature. New alloy formulations will be developed tailored for both autonomous and controlled actuation modes. As the SMA material development matures, integrated system-level factors will be investigated. Optimized designs for small-scale distributed adaptivity applications of maximum benefit will then be matured and tested, moving toward demonstration of the innovative technology approaches at a TRL 4-5 and showing that sonic booms can be reduced by reconfiguration on demand.

Koushik Datta↗
NASA NTRS2021

Center for High-Efficiency Electrical Technologies for Aircraft (CHEETA)

The aeronautics industry has been challenged on many fronts to increase efficiency, reduce emissions, and decrease dependency on carbon-based fuels. With subsonic transports serving as the dominant contributor to the fuel consumption and carbon footprint of global aviation, the need for environmentally-responsible transportation has been met with a boom of research in the field of aircraft propulsion electrification across industry, government, and academic organizations. However, adoption of electrified propulsion systems for large commercial aircraft today is unattainable, due to the lack of motors and power electronics appropriately sized for these vehicles, high weight requirements of conventional electrical energy storage systems, and new principles required to design these classes of aircraft. The mission of the Center for High-Efficiency Electrical Technologies for Aircraft (CHEETA) program is to develop, mature, and design disruptive technologies for electric commercial aviation. The associated technologies being researched include distributed aero-propulsion system integration, high-efficiency electrochemical power conversion, flight-weight electric machines and power electronics, materials and systems for superconducting high-efficiency power transmission, and methods for complex system integration and optimization. Additionally, the current program is investigating the use of unconventional energy storage and power generation architectures, such as liquid hydrogen fuel and high-efficiency fuel cell systems. The research program provides a direct line-of-sight to not only achieving, but potentially even exceeding the aviation community goals for transition to alternative propulsion and energy through convergence of various novel technologies. The end result of maturation and integration of these technologies is an aircraft system with a quiet, efficient propulsion system that produces zero carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emissions at the vehicle level.

Koushik Datta↗
NASA NTRS2021

Development of an Additive Manufacturing Ecosystem for Qualification of Additive Manufacturing Processes and Materials in Aviation

The major challenges associated with additive manufacturing (AM) are an ability to qualify parts and the costs associated with the technology. Our team will study and mature technologies as detailed below to develop an ecosystem for the qualification of AM machines, which in turn supports the certification of part production. Additive manufacturing offers unique opportunities for the aviation industry in the fabrication of original components and replacement parts. Aggressive use of metals AM has, for example, allowed the rapid development and production of new launch vehicle designs, at substantially reduced costs. Aviation has unique challenges, such as higher production volumes, but the potential value of integrating AM into aviation manufacturing is clear. To implement the ecosystem for AM qualification, the team will run a set of six multi-disciplinary projects. Each of these projects will address a current barrier to AM process qualification, and efficient production.

Koushik Datta↗
NASA NTRS2021

Atoms to Aircraft to Spacecraft

The next generation of aerospace systems requires materials and structures that combine high performance at high utilization in short missions with the possibility of high rate production, without excessive non-recurring cost, to allow for rate flexibility and shorter structural life cycles. The development of materials and structures that offer this flexibility in rate without negatively influencing performance and economic viability will require a matching and overlapping experimental and computational design approach. The objective is to go from Atom to Airframe to Spaceframe for thermoplastic unidirectional tape based fastener-free assemblies. Thermoplastic composites are chosen as the focus because these materials allow for reversible fusion bonding in every stage of their life cycle after synthesis. Our strategy is to combine multi-scale computational approaches with multi-scale experimental activities to develop an understanding of and capabilities to manufacture custom unidirectional thermoplastic tape. This tape will be the basis for our high-rate multiple-technology manufacturing approach validated by the production of two representative demonstrators for urban air mobility vehicle structures. The multi-disciplinary team will work in an integrated manner to effectively combine computational approaches with experimental approaches at each stage of characteristic manufacturing flows. The team aims for tools and technology to quantify the thermo-rheological aspects of unidirectional tape-based production and assembly of aerospace quality thermoplastic components as well as for validated tools for unidirectional tape-based thermoplastic preform and part design and manufacture. The work will be used to design and build two demonstration structural parts characteristic for urban air mobility vehicles.

Paul Ziehl↗
NASA NTRS2021

Secure and Safe Assured Autonomy (S2A2)

Aviation’s future will likely see the integration of a wide variety of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) systems including Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for cargo/delivery, personal air vehicles, and commercial Urban Air Mobility (UAM)vehicles. However, substantial challenges exist that could delay (and possibly prevent) these developments and thus research is needed in a variety of areas to leverage technologies in autonomy, Air Traffic Management (ATM), multi-redundant flight systems architectures, and advanced wireless connectivity like 5G to meet these challenges. The goal of this ULI project is to develop new technologies and innovative operational concepts which will ensure safe, secure and robust integration of autonomous vehicles into Advanced Air Mobility-tailored transportation infrastructure. All this must be done while maintaining inter-operability with current civil air transportation systems and associated safety standards. The project is organized into four Technical Challenges (TCs) areas designed to provide unique UAM solutions and a transition roadmap for industry and government to utilize research product output.

Koushik Datta↗
NASA NTRS2021

Weather Intelligent Navigation Data and Models for Aviation Planning (WINDMAP)

WINDMAP addresses the emerging needs in the aviation community of providing real-time weather forecasting to improve the safety of low altitude aircraft operations. This is accomplished through the integration of real-time observations from autonomous systems, such as drones and urban air taxis, with numerical weather prediction models and flight management and safety systems. To solve this problem, several technical challenges have been identified. These include (1) developing autonomous UAS capable of conducting observations accurately and reliably; (2) determining the number and frequency of required observations and the sensitivity of these observations in data sparse regions of the lower atmosphere;(3) assimilating dense observational data into models in real-time with sufficient resolution and accuracy; (4) developing novel physics-based reduced order models capable of incorporating diverse data sets; and (5)integrating real-time forecasting into UTM and DAA (detect-and-avoid) architectures for path planning and navigation. The goal of this proposed effort is to demonstrate the value of using small UAS to collect measurements of the dynamic and thermodynamic properties of the lower atmosphere at scales that match or exceed the spatio-temporal resolution of today’s best numerical weather prediction models

Koushik Datta↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Putting Universities in Charge Yields Early Success for NASA Aeronautics

The process by which NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) interacts with the university community has been augmented with the introduction of the University Leadership Initiative (ULI). ULI represents a new approach that asks universities to propose what they want to work on as long as it is in line with the ARMD’s vision for aviation. In ULI, NASA is seeing academia working with industry to solve important aviation problems. Multi-disciplinary, multi-university teams are researching diverse and relevant topics spanning the various ARMD strategic thrusts. Undergraduate and graduate student involvement in ULI research is already having a significant impact in student education and next generation workforce development. Through ULI, ARMD seeks to develop several novel technologies that will complement the NASA-internal portfolio.

Koushik Datta↗