SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
System can be used to detect "ready" light on automatic cooking device, to tell if lights are on for visitors, or to tell whether it is daylight or dark outside. Device is actuated like flashlight. Light impinging on photo cell activates transistor which energizes buzzer to indicate presence of light.
Feedback system notifies wearer when specific types of body motion occur.
Mechanical support structure, originally designed for use with electrical cables, can support hydraulic, pneumatic, and cryogenic lines where bends are required, assemblies are inaccessible, and conduits are impractical. Support is also light in weight and offers means of damping vibration.
Control logic and the on-body radio transmitter is investigated. The control logic capability and studied methods for implementing the on-body portion of the logic in a small package are improved. A small low power, on-body transmitter was designed, developed, and tested with a wrist-strap antenna to extend the one-way communication system developed during Phase 1 to a two-way communication system.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
Panels, sheets, doors and other structures could be easily attached to and removed from mating part by proposed new fastener. Fastener is permanently anchored in removable part only. Its protruding end is inserted into a hole in mating part. When wedge pin is screwed tightly closed, segmented collar contracts or expands to release parts or to grip them. Installation has no loose parts, and no rear nut is needed.
There is a fundamental connection between the mathematical theory of discrete probability distributions and the parametric curves and surfaces of computer-aided geometric design. It is no accident that the blending functions of Bezier curves and surfaces have an obvious probabilistic interpretation, nor is it a coincidence that the normalized uniform B-spline basis functions also model a simple stochastic process. The link between probability and geometry, and how to exploit simple probabilistic arguments to derive many of the classical geometric properties of the parametric curves and surfaces currently in vogue in computer-aided geometric design is discussed. This probabilistic approach is also used to introduce many new types of curves and surfaces, and it is demonstrated how probability theory can be used to simplify, unify, and generalize many well-known results.
MITES (Miniature Interferometer Terminals for Earth Surveying) observations conducted on December 17 and 29, 1980, are analyzed. It is noted that the time span of the observations used on each day was 78 minutes, during which five satellites were always above 20 deg elevation. The observations are analyzed to determine the intersite position vectors by means of the algorithm described by Couselman and Gourevitch (1981). The average of the MITES results from the two days is presented. The rms differences between the two determinations of the components of the three vectors, which were about 65, 92, and 124 m long, were 8 mm for the north, 3 mm for the east, and 6 mm for the vertical. It is concluded that, at least for short distances, relative positioning by interferometry with GPS can be done reliably with subcentimeter accuracy.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Several control and display concepts were evaluated on a variable-stability helicopter prior to future evaluations on a modified Harrier. The control and display concepts had been developed to enable precise hover maneuvers, station keeping, and vertical landings in simulated zero-visibility conditions and had been evaluated extensively in previous piloted simulations. Flight evaluations early in the program revealed several inadequacies in the display drive laws that were later corrected using an alternative design approach that integrated the control and display characteristics with the desired guidance law. While hooded, three pilots performed landing-pad captures followed by vertical landings with attitude-rate, attitude, and translation-velocity-command control systems. The latter control system incorporated a modified version of state-rate-feedback implicit-model following. Precise landing within 2 ft of the desired touchdown point were achieved.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The flight path followed by an airplane which was being flown by a blindfolded pilot was observed and recorded. When the pilot attempted to make a straight-away flight there was a tendency to deviate from the straight path and to take up a spiral one.
The current inspection technique for locating interstitial leaking in the Space Shuttle Main Engine nozzles is the application of a liquid leak check solution in the openings where the interstitials space between the tubing and the structural jacket vent out the aft end of the nozzle, while its cooling tubes are pressurized to 25 psig with Helium. When a leak is found, it is classified, and if the leak is severe enough the suspect tube is cut open so that a boroscope can be inserted to find the leak point. Since the boroscope can only cover a finite tube length and since it is impossible to identify which tube (to the right or left of the identified interstitial) is leaking, many extra and undesired repairs have been made to fix just one leak. In certain instances when the interstitials are interlinked by poor braze bonding, many interstitials will show indications of leaking from a single source. What is desired is a technique that can identify the leak source so that a single repair can be performed. Dr, Samuel Russell and James Walker, both with NASA/MSFC have developed a thermographic inspection system that addresses a single repair approach. They have teamed with Boeing/Rocketdyne to repackage the inspection processes to be suitable to address full scale Shuttle development and flight hardware and implement the process at NASA centers. The methods and results presented address the thermographic identification of interstitial leaks in the Space Shuttle Main Engine nozzles. A highly sensitive digital infrared camera (capable of detecting a delta temperature difference of 0.025 C) is used to record the cooling effects associated with a leak source, such as a crack or pinhole, hidden within the nozzle wall by observing the inner hot wall surface as the nozzle is pressurized, These images are enhanced by digitally subtracting a thermal reference image taken before pressurization. The method provides a non-intrusive way of locating the tube that is leaking and the exact leak source position to within a very small axial distance. Many of the factors that influence the inspectability of the nozzle are addressed; including pressure rate, peak pressure, gas type, ambient temperature and surface preparation. Other applications for this thermographic inspection system are the Reinforced-Carbon-Carbon (RCC) leading edge of the Space Shuttle orbiter and braze joint integrity.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
NASA's Deep Space Communications Network (DSN) consists of three complexes of large antennas located at Goldstone, California, Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia.
Two experiments were conducted in actual flight operations to evaluate an audio artificial horizon display that imposed aircraft attitude information on pilot-selected music. The first experiment examined a pilot's ability to identify, with vision obscured, a change in aircraft roll or pitch, with and without the audio artificial horizon display. The results suggest that the audio horizon display improves the accuracy of attitude identification overall, but differentially affects response time across conditions. In the second experiment, subject pilots performed recoveries from displaced aircraft attitudes using either standard visual instruments, or, with vision obscured, the audio artificial horizon display. The results suggest that subjects were able to maneuver the aircraft to within its safety envelope. Overall, pilots were able to benefit from the display, suggesting that such a display could help to improve overall safety in general aviation.
This slide presentation reviews the use of a simple text file to work with large, multi-component thermal models that present a post-processing challenge. This complexity is due to temperatures for many components, with varying requirements, need to be examined and that false color temperature maps, or rainbows, provide a qualitative assessment of results.