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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.

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At least 217 records · Page 12

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NASA NTRS2008

Analysis of International Space Station Materials on MISSE-3 and MISSE-4

For high-temperature applications (> 2,000 C) such as solid rocket motors, hypersonic aircraft, nuclear electric/thermal propulsion for spacecraft, and more efficient jet engines, creep becomes one of the most important design factors to be considered. Conventional creep-testing methods, where the specimen and test apparatus are in contact with each other, are limited to temperatures ~1,700 deg. C. Development of alloys for higher-temperature applications is limited by the availability of testing methods at temperatures above 2000 C. Development of alloys for applications requiring a long service life at temperatures as low as 1500 C, such as the next generation of jet turbine superalloys, is limited by the difficulty of accelerated testing at temperatures above 1700 0c. For these reasons, a new, non-contact creep-measurement technique is needed for higher temperature applications. A new non-contact method for creep measurements of ultra-high-temperature metals and ceramics has been developed and validated. Using the electrostatic levitation (ESL) facility at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, a spherical sample is rotated quickly enough to cause creep deformation due to centrifugal acceleration. Very accurate measurement of the deformed shape through digital image analysis allows the stress exponent n to be determined very precisely from a single test, rather than from numerous conventional tests. Validation tests on single-crystal niobium spheres showed excellent agreement with conventional tests at 1985 C; however the non-contact method provides much greater precision while using only about 40 milligrams of material. This method is being applied to materials including metals and ceramics for noneroding throats in solid rockets and next-generation superalloys for turbine engines. Recent advances in the method and the current state of these new measurements will be presented.

Finckenor, Miria M.↗

NASA NTRS1979

A model for predicting the wearout lifetime of the LeRC/Hughes 30-cm mercury ion thruster

An investigation of parameters that affect the erosion rates of 30-cm-diameter mercury-ion-thruster components is described. A sputter-erosion model is formulated in terms of the design, operational, and material characteristics of the thruster. The erosion model is applied to the screen electrode, which is assumed to be the life-limiting component of the 30-cm thruster, resulting in a model of wearout lifetime. Results of short-term erosion-rate tests are presented that illustrate the dependence of component wear rates on variables such as discharge voltage, accelerator-grid open-area fraction, ion energy, electrode material, and the partial pressure of facility residual gases such as nitrogen. Test results are compared with wearout rates predicted by the sputter-erosion model.

Beattie, J. R.↗

NASA NTRS1984

Development of a radiation-hard photomultiplier tube

In a radiation-hard photomultiplier tube (PMT) such as has been developed for stabilization of the Galileo spacecraft as it goes through the Jovian high energy radiation belts, the primary effects of high energy electron and proton radiation that must be resisted are the production of fluorescence and Cerenkov emission. The present PMT envelope is ceramic rather than glass, and employs a special, electron-focusing design which will collect, accelerate and amplify electrons only from desired photocathode areas. Tests in a Co-60 radiation facility have shown that the radiation-hard PMT produces less than 2.5 percent of the radiation noise of a standard PMT.

Birnbaum, M. M.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Low-gravity impact experiments: Progress toward a facility definition

Innumerable efforts were made to understand the cratering process and its ramifications in terms of planetary observations, during which the role of gravity has often come into question. Well known facilities and experiments both were devoted in many cases to unraveling the contribution of gravitational acceleration to cratering mechanisms. Included among these are the explosion experiments in low gravity aircraft, the drop platform experiments, and the high gravity centrifuge experiments. Considerable insight into the effects of gravity was gained. Most investigations were confined to terrestrial laboratories. It is in this light that the Space Station is being examined as a vehicle with the potential to support otherwise impractical impact experiments. The results of studies performed by members of the planetary cratering community are summarized.

Cintala, M. J.↗

NASA NTRS1986

White paper: A plan for cooperation between NASA and DARPA to establish a center for advanced architectures

Large, complex computer systems require many years of development. It is recognized that large scale systems are unlikely to be delivered in useful condition unless users are intimately involved throughout the design process. A mechanism is described that will involve users in the design of advanced computing systems and will accelerate the insertion of new systems into scientific research. This mechanism is embodied in a facility called the Center for Advanced Architectures (CAA). CAA would be a division of RIACS (Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science) and would receive its technical direction from a Scientific Advisory Board established by RIACS. The CAA described here is a possible implementation of a center envisaged in a proposed cooperation between NASA and DARPA.

Denning, P. J.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Scientific tradeoffs in pinhole/occulter facility accommodation

The Pinhole/Occulter Facility (P/OF) consists of state-of-the-art instruments for the study of particle acceleration in the solar corona, and uses a large structure to obtain very high angular resolution. P/OF has been studied in the past as an attached payload for the Space Shuttle, and has been the subject of study by a NASA Science Working Group (P/OFSWG). Appendix A lists various technical studies and reports carried out under the auspices of P/OFSWG and the Program Development Office of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Under the rationalization of NASA flight opportunities following the Challenger disaster, and the beginning of the Space Station Freedom program, the sortie-mode deployment of P/OF seemed less efficient and desirable. Thus, NASA decided to reconsider P/OF for deployment on the Space Station Freedom. The technical studies for this deployment continue at the present and will evolve as our knowledge of Space Station architecture and capabilities increase. MSFC contracted with Teledyne Brown Engineering for these technical studies.

Hudson, Hugh S.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Graphic simualtion test bed for robotics applications in a workstation environment

Graphical simulation is a cost-effective solution for developing and testing robots and their control systems. The availability of various high-performance workstations makes these systems feasible. Simulation offers preliminary testing of systems before their actual realizations, and it provides a framework for developing new control and planning algorithms. On the other hand, these simulation systems have to have the capability of incorporating various knowledge-based system components, e.g., task planners, representation formalisms, etc. They also should have an appropriate user interface, which makes possible the creation and control of simulation models. ROBOSIM was developed jointly by MSFC and Vanderbilt University, first in a VAX environment. Recently, the system has been ported to an HP-9000 workstation equipped with an SRX graphics accelerator. The user interface of the system now contains a menu- and icon-based facility, as well as the original ROBOSIM language. The system is also coupled to a symbolic computing system based on Common Lisp, where knowledge-based functionalities are implemented. The knowledge-based layer uses various representation and reasoning facilities for programming and testing the control systems of robots.

Springfield, J.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Piloted Simulator Investigation of Techniques to Achieve Attitude Command Response with Limited Authority Servos

The purpose of the study was to develop generic design principles for obtaining attitude command response in moderate to aggressive maneuvers without increasing SCAS series servo authority from the existing +/- 10%. In particular, to develop a scheme that would work on the UH-60 helicopter so that it can be considered for incorporation in future upgrades. The basic math model was a UH-60A version of GENHEL. The simulation facility was the NASA-Ames Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS). Evaluation tasks were Hover, Acceleration-Deceleration, and Sidestep, as defined in ADS-33D-PRF for Degraded Visual Environment (DVE). The DVE was adjusted to provide a Usable Cue Environment (UCE) equal to two. The basic concept investigated was the extent to which the limited attitude command authority achievable by the series servo could be supplemented by a 10%/sec trim servo. The architecture used provided angular rate feedback to only the series servo, shared the attitude feedback between the series and trim servos, and when the series servo approached saturation the attitude feedback was slowly phased out. Results show that modest use of the trim servo does improve pilot ratings, especially in and around hover. This improvement can be achieved with little degradation in response predictability during moderately aggressive maneuvers.

Key, David L.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Non-contact Creep Resistance Measurement for Ultra-High Temperature Materials

Conventional techniques for measuring creep are limited to about 1700 C, so a new technique is required for higher temperatures. This technique is based on electrostatic levitation (ESL) of a spherical sample, which is rotated quickly enough to cause creep deformation by centrifugal acceleration. Creep of samples has been demonstrated at up to 2300 C in the ESL facility at NASA MSFC, while ESL itself has been applied at over 3000 C, and has no theoretical maximum temperature. The preliminary results and future directions of this NASA-funded research collaboration will be presented.

Lee, J.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Evaluating the Performance of the NASA LaRC CMF Motion Base Safety Devices

This paper describes the initial measured performance results of the previously documented NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Cockpit Motion Facility (CMF) motion base hardware safety devices. These safety systems are required to prevent excessive accelerations that could injure personnel and damage simulator cockpits or the motion base structure. Excessive accelerations may be caused by erroneous commands or hardware failures driving an actuator to the end of its travel at high velocity, stepping a servo valve, or instantly reversing servo direction. Such commands may result from single order failures of electrical or hydraulic components within the control system itself, or from aggressive or improper cueing commands from the host simulation computer. The safety systems must mitigate these high acceleration events while minimizing the negative performance impacts. The system accomplishes this by controlling the rate of change of valve signals to limit excessive commanded accelerations. It also aids hydraulic cushion performance by limiting valve command authority as the actuator approaches its end of travel. The design takes advantage of inherent motion base hydraulic characteristics to implement all safety features using hardware only solutions.

Gupton, Lawrence E.↗

NASA NTRS1998

NASA's Microgravity Fluid Physics Program: Tolerability to Residual Accelerations

An overview of the NASA microgravity fluid physics program is presented. The necessary quality of a reduced-gravity environment in terms of tolerable residual acceleration or g levels is a concern that is inevitably raised for each new microgravity experiment. Methodologies have been reported in the literature that provide guidance in obtaining reasonable estimates of residual acceleration sensitivity for a broad range of fluid physics phenomena. Furthermore, a relatively large and growing database of microgravity experiments that have successfully been performed in terrestrial reduced gravity facilities and orbiting platforms exists. Similarity of experimental conditions and hardware, in some cases, lead to new experiments adopting prior experiments g-requirements. Rationale applied to other experiments can, in principle, be a valuable guide to assist new Principal Investigators, PIs, in determining the residual acceleration tolerability of their flight experiments. The availability of g-requirements rationale from prior (mu)g experiments is discussed. An example of establishing g tolerability requirements is demonstrated, using a current microgravity fluid physics flight experiment. The Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF) which is currently manifested on the US Laboratory of the International Space Station (ISS) will provide opportunities for fluid physics and combustion experiments throughout the life of the ISS. Although the FCF is not intended to accommodate all fluid physics experiments, it is expected to meet the science requirements of approximately 80% of the new PIs that enter the microgravity fluid physics program. The residual acceleration requirements for the FCF fluid physics experiments are based on a set of fourteen reference fluid physics experiments which are discussed.

Skarda, J. Raymond↗

NASA NTRS2023

Facility Effects on the Ion Characteristics of A 12.5-Kw Hall Thruster

During a laser-induced fluorescence test of a 12.5-kW magnetically-shielded Hall thruster, ion characteristics in the discharge channel and near the poles were measured as the background pressure and electrical configuration were varied. The acceleration zone of the thruster moved upstream by 2% and 10% of the channel length when the background pressure was raised to 1.8 times and 7 times the lowest achievable pressure, respectively. Examination of the characteristics of the ions near the pole covers suggested that as the background pressure decreased the pole covers may be experiencing more erosion. When operating at a discharge voltage of 300 V, the acceleration zone was observed to be at the same location for all electrical configurations. When operating at a discharge voltage of 600V, the acceleration zone was observed to move 3% of the channel length upstream when the thruster body was floated instead of tied to the cathode or grounded to the facility. Characteristics of the ions bombarding the pole covers did not vary across the tested electrical configurations. This observation combined with thruster body voltage measurements suggested that varying the electrical configuration only affected the thruster body sheath voltage and did not affect the plasma potential beyond the sheath.

Electric propulsion↗

NASA NTRS2004

Test of the Equivalence Principle in an Einstein Elevator

The scientific goal of the experiment is to test the equality of gravitational and inertial mass (i.e., to test the Principle of Equivalence) by measuring the independence of the rate of fall of bodies from the composition of the falling body. The measurement is accomplished by measuring the relative displacement (or equivalently acceleration) of two falling bodies of different materials which are the proof masses of a differential accelerometer. The goal of the experiment is to measure the Eoetvoes ratio sigma g/g (differential acceleration/common acceleration) with an accuracy goal of several parts in 10(exp 15). The estimated accuracy is about two orders of magnitude better than the present state of the art. The main goal of the study to be carried out under this grant is part of the flight definition of the experiment and laboratory testing of key components. The project involves an international cooperation in which the responsibility of the US side is the flight definition of the experimental facility while the responsibility of the non-US partners is the flight definition and laboratory prototyping of the differential acceleration detector.In summary, the experiment to be designed is for taking differential acceleration measurements with a high-sensitivity detector (the sensor) during free fall conditions lasting up to 30 s in a disturbance-free acceleration environment. The experiment strategy consists in letting the sensor free fall inside a few meters long (in the vertical direction) evacuated capsule that is falling simultaneously in the rarefied atmosphere after release from a helium balloon flying at a stratospheric altitude.

Shapiro, Irwin I.↗

NASA NTRS1981

Propulsion system ignition overpressure for the Space Shuttle

Liquid and solid rocket motor propulsion systems create an overpressure wave during ignition, caused by the accelerating gas particles pushing against or displacing the air contained in the launch pad or launch facility and by the afterburning of the fuel-rich gases. This wave behaves as a blast or shock wave characterized by a positive triangular-shaped first pulse and a negative half-sine wave second pulse. The pulse travels up the space vehicle and has the potential of either overloading individual elements or exciting overall vehicle dynamics. The latter effect results from the phasing difference of the wave from one side of the vehicle to the other. This overpressure phasing, or delta P environment, because of its frequency content as well as amplitude, becomes a design driver for certain panels (e.g., thermal shields) and payloads for the Space Shuttle. The history of overpressure effects on the Space Shuttle, the basic overpressure phenomenon, Space Shuttle overpressure environment, scale model overpressure testing, and techniques for suppressing the overpressure environments are considered.

Ryan, R. S.↗

NASA NTRS1982

Aerospace gerontology

The relevancy of gerontology and geriatrics to the discipline of aerospace medicine is examined. It is noted that since the shuttle program gives the facility to fly passengers, including specially qualified older persons, it is essential to examine response to acceleration, weightlessness, and re-entry over the whole adult lifespan, not only its second quartile. The physiological responses of the older person to weightlessness and the return to Earth gravity are reviewed. The importance of the use of the weightless environment to solve critical problems in the fields of fundamental gerontology and geriatrics is also stressed.

Comfort, A.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Outdoor performance testing of thin-film devices

The Advanced Systems Research Group supports the photovoltaic advanced R&D (PV AR&D) project by providing outdoor (global) testing of PV cells, submodules, modules, and arrays. The group also provides in house engineering and analysis to identify and determine how technical issues such as cell/module/system adaptations, long term stability, reliability, economics, materials availability, safety, and environmental impacts affect the development and ultimate use of advanced PV thin film, innovative cell, and material technologies. A major thrust of the research effort is to develop and utilize instrumentation and procedures for monitoring and analyzing PV cells and submodules including outdoor performance and stability testing and life cycle accelerated stress testing. To accomplish the above, the solar energy research institute (SERI) outdoor PV test facility was established in 1982. The group has designed testing systems and analysis procedures for, and has tested, numerous amorphous silicon thin film submodules provided by SERI subcontractors and has performed long term outdoor stability tests on CdS/CuIr Se sub 2 and hydrogen passivated silicon solar cells. A significant contribution from this facility over the past year was the testing of large area amorphous silicon submodules.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1986

New shape in the sky

The 'dual keel' design currently under consideration for NASA's Space Station program is of rectangular configuration to yield greater space along the truss structure for the attachment of payloads, by comparison with a previously considered single-keel truss design. The placing of the pressurized modules much nearer the center of gravity of this station configuration allows accelerations that are closer to 1 micro-g than the earlier alternative. The U.S. Servicing Facility and Telerobotic System, and the Canadian Mobile Servicing Center, will be incorporated in order to meet a large variety of Space Station servicing requirements.

Aaron, J. W.↗

NASA NTRS1987

A particle astrophysics magnet spectrometer facility for Space Station

Planning for and design tradeoff studies related to the particle astrophysics magnet spectrometer known as Astromag are presented. This facility is being planned for the Space Station Freedom and address questions regarding the origin and acceleration of cosmic rays, explore the synthesis of elements by making detailed measurements of cosmic ray isotopic composition, and search for evidence of antimatter and other cosmologically significant particles. This work was supported by an international study team which includes particle physicists and cosmic ray physicists.

Ormes, J. F.↗