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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
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1986

Verification of small-scale water vapor features in VAS imagery using high resolution MAMS imagery

The Multispectral Atmospheric Mapping Sensor (MAMS), a modification of NASA's Airborne Thematic Mapper, is described, and radiances from the MAMS and the VISSR Atmospheric Sounder (VAS) are compared which were collected simultaneously on May 18, 1985. Thermal emission from the earth atmosphere system in eight visible and three infrared spectral bands (12.3, 11.2 and 6.5 microns) are measured by the MAMS at up to 50 m horizontal resolution, and the infrared bands are similar to three of the VAS infrared bands. Similar radiometric performance was found for the two systems, though the MAMS showed somewhat less attenuation from water vapor than VAS because its spectral bands are shifted to shorter wavelengths away from the absorption band center.

Menzel, Paul W.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Repeated buckling of composite shear panels

Failures in service of aerospace structures and research at the Technion Aircraft Structures Laboratory have revealed that repeatedly buckled stiffened shear panels might be susceptible to premature fatigue failures. Extensive experimental and analytical studies have been performed at Technion on repeated buckling, far in excess of initial buckling, for both metal and composite shear panels with focus on the influence of the surrounding structure. The core of the experimental investigation consisted of repeated buckling and postbuckling tests on Wagner beams in a three-point loading system under realistic test conditions. The effects of varying sizes of stiffeners, of the magnitude of initial buckling loads, of the panel aspect ratio and of the cyclic shearing force, V sub cyc, were studied. The cyclic to critical shear buckling ratios, (V sub cyc/V sub cr) were on the high side, as needed for efficient panel design, yet all within possible flight envelopes. The experiments were supplemented by analytical and numerical analyses. For the metal shear panels the test and numerical results were synthesized into prediction formulas, which relate the life of the metal shear panels to two cyclic load parameters. The composite shear panels studied were hybrid beams with graphite/epoxy webs bonded to aluminum alloy frames. The test results demonstrated that composite panels were less fatigue sensitive than comparable metal ones, and that repeated buckling, even when causing extensive damage, did not reduce the residual strength by more than 20 percent. All the composite panels sustained the specified fatigue life of 250,000 cycles. The effect of local unstiffened holes on the durability of repeatedly buckled shear panels was studied for one series of the metal panels. Tests on 2024 T3 aluminum panels with relatively small unstiffened holes in the center of the panels demonstrated premature fatigue failure, compared to panels without holes. Preliminary tests on two graphite epoxy shear panels with small holes in the center showed no similar fatigue life degradation and no shift in failure mode. Further tests on the effect of holes are in progress.

Singer, Josef↗
NASA NTRS2000

Radiation Susceptibility Assessment of Off the Shelf (OTS) Hardware

The reduction in budgets, shortening of schedules and necessity of flying near state of the art technology have forced projects and designers to utilize not only modern, non-space rated EEE parts but also OTS boards, subassemblies and systems. New instrumentation, communications, portable computers and navigation systems for the International Space Station, Space Shuttle, and Crew Return Vehicle are examples of the realization of this paradigm change at the Johnson Space Center. Because of this change, there has been a shift in the radiation assessment methodology from individual part testing using low energy heavy ions to board and box level testing using high-energy particle beams. Highlights of several years of board and system level testing are presented along with lessons learned, present areas of concern, insights into test costs, and future challenges.

Culpepper, William X.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Shift changes, updates, and the on-call architecture in space shuttle mission control

In domains such as nuclear power, industrial process control, and space shuttle mission control, there is increased interest in reducing personnel during nominal operations. An essential element in maintaining safe operations in high risk environments with this 'on-call' organizational architecture is to understand how to bring called-in practitioners up to speed quickly during escalating situations. Targeted field observations were conducted to investigate what it means to update a supervisory controller on the status of a continuous, anomaly-driven process in a complex, distributed environment. Sixteen shift changes, or handovers, at the NASA Johnson Space Center were observed during the STS-76 Space Shuttle mission. The findings from this observational study highlight the importance of prior knowledge in the updates and demonstrate how missing updates can leave flight controllers vulnerable to being unprepared. Implications for mitigating risk in the transition to 'on-call' architectures are discussed.

Non-NASA Center↗
NASA NTRS2004

High-Accuracy Surface Figure Measurement of Silicon Mirrors at 80 K

This report describes the equipment, experimental methods, and first results at a new facility for interferometric measurement of cryogenically-cooled spherical mirrors at the Goddard Space Flight Center Optics Branch. The procedure, using standard phase-shifting interferometry, has an standard combined uncertainty of 3.6 nm rms in its representation of the two-dimensional surface figure error at 80, and an uncertainty of plus or minus 1 nm in the rms statistic itself. The first mirror tested was a concave spherical silicon foam-core mirror, with a clear aperture of 120 mm. The optic surface was measured at room temperature using standard absolute techniques; and then the change in surface figure error from room temperature to 80 K was measured. The mirror was cooled within a cryostat. and its surface figure error measured through a fused-silica window. The facility and techniques will be used to measure the surface figure error at 20K of prototype lightweight silicon carbide and Cesic mirrors developed by Galileo Avionica (Italy) for the European Space Agency (ESA).

Blake, Peter↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Effect of Baseline Period on Quantification of Climate Extremes over the United States

Extreme weather events, including heatwaves, heavy precipitation, and drought, have a large impact on society through human health, destruction of infrastructure, ecological change, and economic losses. Reanalyses such as NASA’s Modern Era Retrospective Analysis, version 2 (MERRA-2) are a valuable tool for analyzing past extreme events to determine their underlying causes and how extremes have changed over the past four decades. The detection of extreme events relies on a threshold for precipitation or temperature that is derived using a reference period, which can then be used to determine how extreme an event was or what the return period is. Operational centers typically use a 30-year climatology period that shifts in time every ten years, while the World Meteorological Organization suggests that the maximum amount of data should be included for the detection of extreme events due to their rare occurrence. As global and regional climate continues to change, the interpretation of extreme events is reliant on the baseline period that is used for the underlying thresholds and can be a source of uncertainty for the policy making community. Three baseline periods – 1981-2010, 1991-2020, and 1981-2020 – will be used to compute percentiles of temperature and precipitation across the contiguous United States and will then by employed to determine monthly indices representing heatwaves, cold spells, and extreme precipitation events. A spatial and temporal analysis of the resulting extreme weather indices will demonstrate the appropriateness for each baseline period for the evaluation of extreme events.

Extremes↗
NASA NTRS2009

Development of the One-Sided Nonlinear Adaptive Doppler Shift Estimation

The new development of a one-sided nonlinear adaptive shift estimation technique (NADSET) is introduced. The background of the algorithm and a brief overview of NADSET are presented. The new technique is applied to the wind parameter estimates from a 2-micron wavelength coherent Doppler lidar system called VALIDAR located in NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. The new technique enhances wind parameters such as Doppler shift and power estimates in low Signal-To-Noise-Ratio (SNR) regimes using the estimates in high SNR regimes as the algorithm scans the range bins from low to high altitude. The original NADSET utilizes the statistics in both the lower and the higher range bins to refine the wind parameter estimates in between. The results of the two different approaches of NADSET are compared.

Beyon, Jeffrey Y.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Strength, Width, and Pressure Shift Measurements of 54 Lines in the Oxygen A-Band

The absorption band of molecular oxygen, centered at 760]en1] nm, is the atmospheric absorber for the Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) systems used to measure atmospheric temperature, pressure, and density. To provide accurate line parameters for such systems, a careful spectroscopic study was made of the A-band, with measurements of line strengths, widths, pressure-induced frequency shifts, and collisional narrowing effects. The width and shift parameters were measured over a temperature range of -20 to 100 C so that the temperature dependence of these parameters can also be determined. To analyze the results, a least-squares fiting routine was written to fit standard line profiles to the observed profiles. These measurements, which include the first observations of pressure shifts and collisional narrowing in the band, are an important contribution to lidar system utilizing the A-band.

Ritter, K. J.↗
NASA NTRS1994

OH/IR stars near the Galactic Center: Pulsation periods, luminosities, and polarimetry

17 stars in the direction of the Galactic Center, 15 of which are OH/IR stars, have been monitored at infrared wavelengths over a period of nearly eight years. Pulsation periods, bolometric luminosities, and light curves for 14 OH/IR stars are presented. The Galactic Center OH/IR stars range in luminosity between M(sub Bol) = -4.5 to M(sub Bol) = -6, implying main sequence progenitors with masses less than 3 solar mass. When compared to optically visible long period variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) with similar bolometric luminosities, the Galactic Center OH/IR stars have pulsation periods on average 30% longer. This shift to longer periods is consistent with the current picture of late asymptotic giant branch evolution, placing the OH/IR stars in a phase immediately following the optically visible Mira variable phase during which the star dramatically increases its mass loss rate, becoming invisible at optical wavelength. Infrared polarimetry of 11 of the stars is also presented. The polarization for all of the stars is consistent with purely interstellar polarization, with little evidence for a significant intrinsic component. When compared to OH/IR stars in the galactic plane, the Galactic Center OH/IR stars appear similar in photometric characteristics, except none of the Galactic Center OH/IR stars shows the extremely thick dust shells or very high intrinsic polarization found in the more extreme galactic plane OH/IR stars.

Jones, Terry Jay↗
NASA NTRS1973

Evaluation of experimental flow properties in the wake of a Viking '75 entry vehicle.

An experimental investigation has been conducted to obtain the flow properties in the wake of a model of the Viking '75 entry vehicle. Data are presented for the model at several angles of attack at free-stream Mach numbers from 0.2 to 3.95. The characteristics of the wake flow field are discussed and results are shown to demonstrate the significant variation of wake center-line flow properties in the transonic speed range, the shift in wake profiles with change in angle of attack, and the similarity exhibited by the velocity profiles across the wake.

Campbell, J. F.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Coded 16-CPFSK for downlink applications

A bandwidth-efficient constant-envelope Proof-of-Concept (POC) modem is described. The modem was developed on an Advanced Modulation Techniques Development contract for the NASA/Lewis Research Center. The POC modem employs 16-ary Continuous Phase Frequency Shift Keying (16-CPFSK) modulation. The 16 frequencies are spaced every 1/16th baud rate which produces a compact spectrum allowing 2 bits/sec/Hz operation. The modem is designed for 200 mb/s Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) application with 100 MHz adjacent channel spacing. Overall rate 3.4 convolutional coding is incorporated. The demodulator differs significantly from typical quadrature phase detector approaches in that phase is coherently measured by processing the baseband output of a frequency discriminator. Baud rate phase samples for the baseband processor are subsequently decoded to yield the original data stream. The method of encoding onto the 16-ary symbol-ending phase nodes, together with convolutional coding gain, results in near Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) theoretical performance. The modulated signal is of constant envelope; thus the power amplifier can be saturated for peak performance. The spectrum is inherently bandlimited and requires no RF filter for sidelobe containment. Two novel theoretical techniques are used in this 16-CPFSK modem: (1) coherent phase measurements are obtained by processing an FM discriminator baseband output; and (2) modulation is accomplished via a closed-loop-linearized voltage controlled oscillator (VCO).

Davis, Robert↗
NASA NTRS1991

Effect of nearest-neighbor ions on excited ionic states, emission spectra, and line profiles in hot and dense plasmas

The effect of the cylindrical symmetry imposed by the nearest-neighbor ions on the ionic levels and the emission spectra of a Li-like Kr ion immersed in hot and dense plasmas is investigated using the Stein et al. (1989) two-centered model extended to include computations of the line profiles, shifts, and widths, as well as the energy-level mixing and the forbidden transition probabilities. It is shown that the cylindrical symmetry mixes states with different orbital quantum numbers l, particularly for highly excited states, and, thereby, gives rise to forbidden transitions in the emission spectrum. Results are obtained for the variation of the ionic level shifts and mixing coefficients with the distance to the nearest neighbor. Also obtained are representative computed spectra that show the density effects on the spectral line profiles, shifts, and widths, and the forbidden components in the spectrum.

Salzmann, D.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Of narrow lines and beaming in the strong-field SSC emission model

The synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission model for gamma-ray bursts is capable of producing narrow line features for a variety of modelled field strengths, primary electron injection distributions and burst luminosities. Multiple resonant scattering with synchrotron continuum photons efficiently traps and cools pairs in the ground state to an average energy where the Compton energy loss rate is zero. Annihilation between pairs in these cooled distributions can be very efficient. For isotropic injection of primary electrons, there is an anti-correlation of the intensity of the angular-binned emission between the portions of the continuum spectrum below the cyclotron peak and above the annihilation line feature. Small-angle emission dominates the continuum above the annihilation line feature and is smooth through the line up to the pair production cut-off, which can be above several MeV for small enough angles. The angle-averaged annihilation line is made of components which can have peak emission centered at energies away from 511 keV, due to Doppler shifting. For beamed injection,the annihilation line breaks up into relatively narrow components in the angular emission, which sum into a broad feature in the angle-averaged emission.

Preece, Robert D.↗
NASA NTRS1994

The origin of extended interstellar shells around Wolf-Rayet stars having bright optical ring nebulae

Investigations of the interstellar environment around Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars have lead to the discovery of extended shells of gas and dust 50-100 pc in diameter in the lines of sight toward three WR stars. In this paper, several origins for these extended shells are discussed. While positional coincidences cannot be excluded, the locations of the WR stars near the projected centers of the shells, the detection of only shortward-shifted, high-velocity UV absorption line components in their IUE spectra, plus commonality of some WR star properties which are rare in the general WR star population suggest some casual connections between the WR stars and formation of interstellar shells. To access whether the high-velocity UV interstellar absorption lines are a frequent phenomenon related to WR stellar winds, we present a survey of such features in all WR stars observed with IUE through 1991. Of 35 stars studied, only four are found to have components with velocity displacements greater than 45 km/s which are not attributable to previously identified OB association superbubbles. The means a surprising 82% of non-OB association WR stars show no evidence of high-velocity gas in their lines of sight at IUE's spectral resolution, suggesting that high-velocity interstellar absorption lines are not a common consequence of Wolf-Rayet star stellar winds alone. We review the properties of three WR stars (HD 50896, HD 96548, and HD 192163) which may reside inside extended interstellar shells and find that they are similar in terms of spectral class (WN5-8), presence of an optical ring nebula, and reported photometric variability. Evaluation of possible origins of the extended shells suggests these three stars are in a post X-ray binary stage of high-mass binary star evolution. If this is correct, then the large interstellar shells detected might be evidence of either supernova remnant shells generated by the explosion of the binary's primary star, or non-conservative mass transfer during a Roche Lobe overflow stage of the binary after the supernova explosion. In either of these cases the bright optical ring nebulae associated with these three WR stars may signify recent Roche Lobe overflows consistent with spectroscopic abundance analysis.

Nichols, J. S.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Precise laboratory measurements of methanol rotational transition frequencies in the 5 to 13 GHz region

Rotational transitions for CH3OH were measured in the 5-13 GHz range with a precision and accuracy of a few kilohertz or less using a Flygare-Balle type pulsed-beam Fourier transform microwave spectrometer. The accurate center frequencies measured should be useful in determining accurate Doppler shifts and making positive molecule identification in radio astronomy.

Breckenridge, S. M.↗
NASA NTRS1995

New results on the site of initiation of Cornal Mass Ejections (CMES), and an interpretation of observation of their interaction with streamers

In this paper it is shown that in some months of the phase of minimum solar activity 1985-1987 as many as (80-90)% of a total number of CMEs occur near belts of streamers with neutral line (NL), and only (10-20)% of them appear near belts of streamers without NL. (Streamers without NL separate regions in the corona with the same direction of radial fields of magnetic tubes originating from adjacent coronal holes). With increasing solar activity, the center of gravity of the number of emerging CMEs is shifting toward belts of steamers without NL and reaches over 80% of their total number in some months by the end of 1989. The CME position angle (PA) coincides, on average, with the angle of the portion of NL which straddles the CME. It is quite possible that this condition is satisfied not in the average but rigorously for each CME. The streamer observed on the limb does not disrupt if the CME in transit either only slightly overlaps with the streamer or lies at all outside it. If in the limb plane under consideration the steamer lies inside the CME, then it disrupts after CME passage.

Eselevich, V. G.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Operation, Modeling and Analysis of the Reverse Water Gas Shift Process

The Reverse Water Gas Shift process is a candidate technology for water and oxygen production on Mars under the In-Situ Propellant Production project. This report focuses on the operation and analysis of the Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) process, which has been constructed at Kennedy Space Center. A summary of results from the initial operation of the RWGS, process along with an analysis of these results is included in this report. In addition an evaluation of a material balance model developed from the work performed previously under the summer program is included along with recommendations for further experimental work.

Whitlow, Jonathan E.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Alternative Perspectives on Risk

The goal of the commercial air transport system is to provide air transportation to the flying public at an acceptable cost with minimal risk. in an ideal situation these three goals would support each other. In fact, it is sometimes the case that the goals conflict: getting passengers to their destinations on time may conflict with fixing a minor mechanical malfunction that may or may not impact safety; flying a route that will avoid turbulence, thereby providing passengers with a more comfortable ride, may consume more fuel; managing traffic density may mean aircraft are delayed or must use an approach that will result in a long taxi to their gates, costing time and fuel. Various players in the system--pilots, dispatchers, controllers, as well as managers in the airline carriers and traffic management system--make decisions every day that involve trade-offs of benefits and costs. The prospect of revisions in the air traffic management system, with shifts in responsibilities from controllers to users, including airline operations center personnel and pilots, means that individuals may be performing either new jobs or old jobs under new guidance. It will be essential to know how the various players (a) perceive the risks and benefits associated with the decisions they will make under the old and new control structures, and (b) how much risk they are willing to accept in making decisions. Risk is here defined as the probability and magnitude of negative events (after Slovic, 1987). Of primary interest are risks associated with traffic, weather, and operational factors such as schedule, fuel consumption, and passenger service. Previous research has documented differences between groups in perceptions of risks associated with both everyday and aviation related situations. Risk perception varies as a function of familiarity with the situation, degree to which one is potentially affected by the risk, the level of control one has over the situation, and one's level of experience and responsibility in the situation. In our presentation we will consider several factors that may influence differences in risk perception, risk tolerance and risk management among the three major categories of participants in the aviation system (pilots, dispatchers, and controllers). Primary factors that may affect risk attitudes (the collective term we will use for the three components of risk) include: expertise or job-specific knowledge or training, personal involvement or vulnerability to consequences, goals, time horizon (imminence of consequences), span of control and type of control, and information or technology support. These will be considered in the context of five different types of risk (physical threat, economic, social, legal, and ethical). A study designed to study differences between pilots and controllers in their perceptions and responses to traffic risks under the present and a user-preferred control situation will be described. Future studies involving dispatchers' risk perceptions regarding various types of risk will be discussed.

Davison, Jeannie↗