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NASA NTRS2022

Maintenance Human Factors and Flight Safety

This chapter will chronicle the journey of the community of operators, regulators, and researchers who embarked upon the task of identifying critical human factors of maintenance and inspection, establishing a database and research tools, developing practical strategies for reducing the risks of maintenance and inspection errors, and understanding its critical role in preserving flight safety. We will take a historical perspective, developing a timeline that is largely driven by key events such as accidents and regulatory/government actions and initiatives. Part 1 focuses on how the field of maintenance human factors was built, beginning in the late 1980’s. Part 2 describes the development of methods and tools for meeting the maintenance human factors challenges identified. Finally, Part 3 updates the original chapter by focusing on issues that have persisted or emerged since 2010.

maintenance↗

NASA NTRS1999

System Identification for Integrated Aircraft Development and Flight Testing [l'Identification Des Systemes Pour le Developpement Integre des Aeronefs et les Essais en Vol]

Over the last decades flight vehicles such as aircraft and helicopters entering service and requiring increased operational effectiveness have with few exceptions experienced prolonged flight test development to achieve full certification. In many cases the original requirements had later to be reduced to enable release to service. The impact on the customer, and manufacturer has been considerable leading to increased costs and or reduced operational capabilities. These costly experiences are largely a result of the flight vehicle not behaving as modelled and designed. The evaluation of flight test data can be used as a tool for validating windtunnel results and mathematical models describing the flight dynamical behaviour. In this sense the uncertainty of important aerodynamic stability and control parameters can be reduced and the confidence of aircraft mathematical models improved. An additional important factor comes from the implementation of active control systems offering the promise of significantly increased flight vehicle performance and operational capability. This approach extends the traditional trade-offs between aerodynamics, structures and propulsion systems to include full- time, full-authority fly-by-wire/light systems. It is imperative that the aerodynamic stability and control parameters of such integrated flight and propulsion control systems have to turn out inflight as predicted, since inherent stability margins will be lower and the flight control system must correct these deficiencies to provide flight critical redundancy and safety. With the methodology of system identification from flight tests it is possible to sense the control inputs and the flight vehicle reactions Such as accelerations, rates and attitudes. The mathematical model, e.g. the model structure and parameters, has to be determined from the relationship of the measured control inputs and the system's responses. The aim of this symposium was to review the present state of the art of flight vehicle system and parameter identification techniques, and to provide a critical appraisal of current methods developed and applied to flight test data in a number of NATO nations. Particular emphasis was placed on practical aspects and lessons learned in order to generate information useful to the flight test community in industry and government agencies. The technical papers share invaluable experience and emphasize the advances of flight vehicle system identification over the last years to the point where confidence and robustness level is now reasonably high. The symposium covered overviews of identification methodologies, flight test techniques, recent aircraft and helicopter application programs, and a session of short papers covering up-to-the-minute flight test results. A final discussion included prepared comments from experts and concluded with key issues learned in the application of system identification and future research needs. The essential benefits to NATO nations can be condensed as follows: More accurate mathematical models for high bandwidth flight control systems, Improved assessment and evaluation of flying qualities, High fidelity mathematical models for flight vehicle development and mission training simulators, and generally, Reduced flight test time and costs.

Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Developm↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The SSRI Knowledge Base Tool: Current Tool Functionality Review and Planned Future Enhancements

NASA’s Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI), in conjunction with NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI), has developed the SSRI Knowledge Base to improve mission confidence for small spacecraft. The SSRI Knowledge Base provides vetted, high-quality sources of information on elements that are key to successful small spacecraft missions. These resources include SSRI working group generated documents and presentations in addition to existing guides, publications, standards, software tools, websites, and books. The Knowledge Base is fully searchable, offers downloadable content when possible, and otherwise links to or references content directly from within the tool. All 58 of the planned topic pages that comprise the SSRI Knowledge Base have been recently completed and include over 450 unique resources that are now available for review. Over the past several months significant enhancements to the tool’s capabilities have been developed and implemented. These enhancements consist of the completed baseline content; development of an Application Programming Interface (API); improved user interfaces; scalable and searchable Best Practices and Lessons Learned (BPLL) lists with ratings; and custom website analytics. The SSRI Knowledge Base is a comprehensive and searchable online tool that consolidates and organizes resources, best practices, and lessons learned from previous small spacecraft missions sponsored by NASA, other government agencies, and academia. This free, publicly available tool is available to the entire SmallSat community at: NASA SSRI Knowledge Base | Explore. This presentation will discuss the motivation for and development of the SSRI Knowledge Base, demonstrate the existing tool, share how the smallsat community can get involved and outline plans for further enhancement development. The SSRI is a collaborative activity with broad participation from civil, Department of Defense, and both national and international commercial space systems providers and stakeholders. The S3VI is jointly sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate.

Small Spacecraft↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The SSRI Knowledge Base Tool: Current Tool Functionality Review and Planned Future Enhancements

Small Spacecraft↗

DOE OSTI2024

Recommendations for improving rigor and reproducibility in site specific characterization

Heterogeneous catalysis is driven by the interaction of reactant molecules and the catalyst surface. The locus of this interaction as well as the surrounding ensemble of atoms is referred to as the catalyst active site. Active site characterization attempts to distinguish active catalytic sites from inactive surface sites, to elucidate the structural and chemical nature of active sites, and to quantify active site concentration. Numerous techniques have been demonstrated to provide compositional and structural information about the active sites within a catalyst. However, each technique has its own limitations and experimental pitfalls that can lead to data misinterpretation or irreproducible results. Further, this work aims to provide an overview of the types of data that can be collected, to outline common experimental challenges and how to avoid them, and to assemble relevant references for the most used active site characterization techniques. More broadly, we aim to outline best practices for researchers to collect, interpret, and report active site characterization data in a way that provides the most benefit to the broader catalysis community. Increasing the rigor and reproducibility of active site characterization offers a strategy to better link properties with catalytic performance and to enable the community to develop consensus concerning these relationships.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2026

E2C Successful Project Implementation Cohort: Overview of Solar, Microgrid and Resilience Project Development [Slides]

The Energy to Communities (E2C) peer-learning cohort program provides technical assistance to groups of 15 community entities around a common energy topic over the course of 6 months. Every month, participants join a virtual meeting where they hear from experts and exchange strategies and best practices with their peers. This cohort, "Successful Energy Project Implementation" will explore common challenges in implementing energy projects and learn strategies to turn project plans into reality. Each participant will focus on a local energy project or priority as a cornerstone for their learning throughout the series. This presentation overviews the basics of developing solar, microgrid and resilience projects with emphasis on understanding the project development process.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2020

Leveraging Open-Source Tools for Collaborative Macro-energy System Modeling Efforts

The authors are founding team members of a new effort to develop an Open Energy Outlook for the United States. The effort aims to apply best practices of policy-focused energy system modeling, ensure transparency, build a networked community, and work toward a common purpose: examining possible US energy system futures to inform energy and climate policy efforts. Individual author biographies can be found on the project website: https://openenergyoutlook.org/.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2020

Design Consideration for Solar Powered Wastewater Treatment Facility for Agriculture and Potable Usage on Acoma Pueblo Reservation

Environmental stewardship has long been a guiding principle among indigenous peoples. Acoma Pueblo, located approximately 45 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, shares these values. They are exploring how to incorporate these values into future development projects. As such, Acoma recently created a wastewater treatment facility to provide irrigation water to nearby crops. Treatment facilities like this further sustainable practices and benefit the community but may draw power from the grid. This report looks at design considerations for possible photovoltaic utilization at the site to offset current power and monetary costs. Lessons learned from a larger, municipal wastewater treatment center will be applied with special considerations for Acoma Pueblo's values and unique wastewater treatment facility configuration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

NASA NTRS2012

Managing Space System Faults: Coalescing NASA's Views

Managing faults and their resultant failures is a fundamental and critical part of developing and operating aerospace systems. Yet, recent studies have shown that the engineering "discipline" required to manage faults is not widely recognized nor evenly practiced within the NASA community. Attempts to simply name this discipline in recent years has been fraught with controversy among members of the Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM), Fault Management (FM), Fault Protection (FP), Hazard Analysis (HA), and Aborts communities. Approaches to managing space system faults typically are unique to each organization, with little commonality in the architectures, processes and practices across the industry.

Muirhead, Brian↗

NASA NTRS2018

Marrying Social Media Approaches and Space Flight Control: Eight Years at SpaceOps

Three previous SpaceOps papers [1-3] - published in 2010, 2012 (honored by the Conference as a "Best Paper"), and 2014 - have discussed paths to using social media concepts and techniques to enhance space flight controller effectiveness by a) reducing clutter of nonverbal communications (e.g., visual flow with minimal headers and shared content instead of multiple copies), b) moving some voice communication to non-verbal transmission (virtually eliminating "say again" requests because non-verbal comm can be re-read), thus making remaining voice comm easier to focus on, and c) reducing short-term and long-term flight stress on flight control personnel. This paper shows how Marshall Space Flight Center's (MSFC) ISS Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) is realizing the above goals via the Communications Dashboard (CommDash) software suite deployed in 2017 (including enhancements to the Console Log Tool (CoLT) discussed in earlier papers). Two larger-scope benefits spawned by CommDash evolution are also chronicled: a) emergence of an Agile Software Development (ASD) process adapted to the not-always-nimble environment of government projects, and b) the sprouting of a Human Factors Engineering (HF or HFE) community of practice within MSFC's Payload and Mission Operations Division (PMOD).

Scott, David W.↗

NASA NTRS2024

NASA Agile Community of Practice

This 2023-2024 report provides a comprehensive summary of the products and activities executed by the NASA Agile Community of Practice over its first year from being formally stood up. The report highlights the community's ongoing efforts to advance Agile values and principles, improve practices, and foster innovation within teams across NASA centers. The report delves into key initiatives, including the development of a strategic plan, executive summary, and best practice guidelines; as well as the facilitation of knowledge-sharing events such as webinars with internal and external speakers, workshops, and technical interchange meeting.

Agile↗

DOE OSTI2022

Lignin-First Biorefinery Development

Cost-effective biomass fractionation is an enabling, grand challenge for biorefining, especially when both carbohydrates and lignin are targeted for valorization. The advent of Reductive Catalytic Fractionation (RCF) - an active stabilization approach that solubilizes lignin from biomass and catalytically depolymerizes it into a narrow slate of monomers and oligomers - represents a potential step forward for this important goal. In the Lignin-First Biorefinery Development project, we are employing techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) to guide bench-scale R&D efforts towards cost-effective RCF-based biorefining. This project is critical to lignin valorization efforts and could enable the use of woody feedstocks in a traditional biochemical conversion context. To date, we have conducted the first rigorous TEA and LCA study of the RCF process, developed a flow-through system to separate biomass and the chemical catalyst in RCF chemistry, developed models for solvolysis chemistry and transport phenomena for poplar, and co-led an international, authoritative perspective on guidelines for the research community on how to best practice lignin-first biorefining. The primary challenges for the lignin-first RCF process going forward are catalyst stability, the need to utilize, recover, and recycle high boiling point solvents to lower RCF reactor pressure, and the challenge of operating RCF continuously - all of which are being directly tackled by this project.

biomass↗

DOE OSTI2021

Coal-dependent Communities in Transition: Identifying Best Practices to Ensure Equitable Outcomes

The U.S. coal industry is experiencing a sharp increase in the numbers of retired and/or decommissioned coal-fired power plants across the U.S. In the years between 2010-2019, around 102 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired generating capacity has been announced to be decommissioned, representing more than 546 coal-fired power plant units, and an additional 17 GW is planned to be decommissioned by 2025. This change in the energy production landscape presents an impact on the social, environmental, and economic prospects of coal-dependent communities. This report examined the role of communities in the coal power plant decommissioning process and provided community-identified best practices to ensure an equitable process. The experiences of four coal-dependent communities—Wise County, VA, Muskegon, MI, Anderson County, TN, and Becker, MN—are presented as case studies to understand the impacts of the decommissioning process, and associated best practices, from the communities’ perspective. The report results highlight the need to recognize that the decommissioning decision-making process must be community-based to be equitable. Each community’s input is key to the transition away from coal power because there is no one-size-fits-all development plan. In other words, each community’s trajectory through the decommissioning process—from the retirement decision-making stage to the final site redevelopment phase—is unique because each community has distinct needs and wants from the energy transition. What is best for one community may not be suited for another. Ultimately, the framework for site development and community revitalization post-decommissioning cannot be universal because each community’s profile—from a social, cultural, and economic perspective—is different. Community impacts of power plant decommissioning are not limited to job and revenue losses. Communities are likely to be impacted culturally, socially, environmentally, and have long-term health-based impacts that should be acknowledged and addressed in post-retirement plans. Commonly identified decommissioning best practices include: Early and continued engagement throughout, with a number of mediums for communication and feedback (e.g., in-person sessions, virtual meetings, written comment opportunities); Early planning of post-decommissioning projects to replace lost jobs, revenue, and economic activity; Recognition (and mitigation, if possible) of social impacts on the community due to plant closure; Transparency throughout the process, with trusted information being provided about the decommissioning process and timeline; potential impacts on the workforce, economy, and environment; and the feasibility of alternative site uses; Identification of funding sources, technical experts, and/or strategic partnerships to support decommissioning and the affected communities upfront; and, Acknowledgment of communities as stakeholders who have a role in the conversation and right to determine their futures. Three key areas for assisting coal-dependent communities affected by the energy transition: Technical assistance: assessment of site feasibility for alternative uses or to repower with new technologies; Cross-partnership engagement and collaboration: facilitate knowledge-sharing of “lessons learned” about the decommissioning process between communities and provide guidance for decision-making processes; and, Financial assistance: access to grant and/or loan programs to assist with redevelopment survey, bolster community economic security through job creation, and cover environmental clean-up costs. Technical assistance, cross-partnership engagement, and financial aid can be mobilized to help communities throughout various stages of the decommissioning process, including the retirement decision, the site reclamation phase, and eventual revitalization of the site and surrounding community.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

NASA NTRS2019

Design Thinking for the Applied Sciences: Developing a Novel Approach to Encourage the Use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Open Source Tools for Forest Monitoring

Earth observations from Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, have yet to be fully leveraged for forest monitoring applications. While SAR sensors are uniquely able to capture components of forest structure over optical imagery, especially in cloud-heavy regions, there is a shortage of freely-available applied training materials and related case studies. With the wealth of available datasets from Sentinel-1 and other missions, such as ALOS-Palsar open historical archive, and in preparation for upcoming opendata policy SAR missions (e.g. NISAR and BIOMASS), the applied forestry community would benefit from increased access to relevant, understandable SAR training materials. This work documents lessons learned and best practices for creating EO capacity building/training materials gleaned from the SAR Handbook project. Strategies for increasing legibility for both print and online applications, illustration and editing guidelines for original and modified figures, and the development of quick-reference guides will be shared. Additionally, the conception and use of companion “explainer” videos, using cartoon characters and humor to outline relevant SAR concepts will be explored. Preliminary results indicate the SAR Handbook and supplemental project materials are already having an impact in training sessions. Increased uptake of SAR technologies in SERVIR Hub regions, where Hubs are leading follow-on SAR trainings, has also been noted. In addition, a review of download statistics from the SERVIR global website indicates widespread worldwide access. We conclude similar holistic approaches integrating design concepts into future content development would help increase uptake of EO applications by the earth science community.

Kucera, Leah M.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Helicopter Flight Procedures for Community Noise Reduction

A computationally efficient, semiempirical noise model suitable for maneuvering flight noise prediction is used to evaluate the community noise impact of practical variations on several helicopter flight procedures typical of normal operations. Turns, "quick-stops," approaches, climbs, and combinations of these maneuvers are assessed. Relatively small variations in flight procedures are shown to cause significant changes to Sound Exposure Levels over a wide area. Guidelines are developed for helicopter pilots intended to provide effective strategies for reducing the negative effects of helicopter noise on the community. Finally, direct optimization of flight trajectories is conducted to identify low noise optimal flight procedures and quantify the magnitude of community noise reductions that can be obtained through tailored helicopter flight procedures. Physically realizable optimal turns and approaches are identified that achieve global noise reductions of as much as 10 dBA Sound Exposure Level.

Greenwood, Eric↗

DOE OSTI2020

Multiple social platforms reveal actionable signals for software vulnerability awareness: A study of GitHub, Twitter and Reddit

Software vulnerabilities are flaws in computer systems that leave users open to attack. In many cases, these vulnerabilities go unnoticed and remain unresolved in codebases. Thus, awareness of software vulnerabilities among the public is crucial to ensure effective cybersecurity practices, the development of high quality software, and ultimately national security. This awareness can be better understood by studying the spread and evolution of software vulnerability discussions in online communities. This work is the first to evaluate and contrast how discussions about software vulnerabilities spread on three social platforms -- Twitter, GitHub, and Reddit. To lay the groundwork, we showcase a novel fundamental framework for measuring information spread that identifies the spread mechanisms and observables across platforms, the units of information, and the groups of measurements that can be applied to focus on a specific phenomena e.g., information cascades. We then analyze and contrast social network topologies for three example social networks and measure the scale and speed of the spread of discussion of specific vulnerabilities to understand how far and how widely they spread, how many users participate in discussions, and the duration of their spread. To demonstrate the awareness of more impactful software vulnerabilities, a subset of our analysis focuses on vulnerabilities targeted during recent major cyber attacks as well as vulnerabilities exploited by advanced persistent threat groups. We discover that usually, vulnerability discussions start on GitHub, before occurring on Twitter and Reddit. While studying how some user-level and content-level characteristics influence vulnerability spread, we observe that Twitter discussions started by users predicted to be humans have larger size, breadth, depth, adoption rate, lifetime, and structural virality compared to those started by users predicted to be bots. On Reddit, we contrast the differences in thread structure that originate from posts with positive, negative and neutral polarity. We find that posts that are positive have larger, deeper and wider discussions compared to negative and neutral posts. We anticipate the results of our analysis to not only increase the understanding of software vulnerability awareness but also inform models for simulating information spread across multiple social environments online.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2025

IROS 2023 Workshop Report: Draft Guidelines on Manufacturing Procedures, Test Methods and Reporting for Soft Robotics

Soft roboticists are facing challenges with reproducibility, which prevents researchers from making holistic comparisons to prior work, impedes full understanding of results, and forces the need to “reinvent the wheel,” delaying fundamental advances. Reproducibility of results is key to advancing science as well as achieving technology transfer from research laboratories to industrial applications. Recently, a discussion-based workshop dedicated to the topic, “Developing Standard Testing and Reporting Guidelines for Soft Robotics,” was held at IROS 2023 in Detroit, MI. The purpose of this document is to record a set of recommendations and voluntary draft guidelines for soft roboticists concerning fabrication/manufacturing, test procedures, and reporting, which were collectively developed at the workshop. Together as a community, we hope to improve the reporting standards of soft robotics and drive the field as a whole toward more rigorous research practices.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Stepping into the Midwest Bioeconomy: Stakeholder Engagement and Geospatial Tools to Assist in Perennial Bioenergy Crop Decision Making and Entrepreneurship

This project, “Ecosystem Services and Farm Entrepreneurship Technical Assistance,” was a three-year project originally planned for FY22–FY24. Due to a late start and a few extensions, it is being completed in early FY25. This project explored opportunities to support the deployment of a bioeconomy with a circular, more sustainable supply chain. Using a tool developed by Argonne to identify agricultural areas suitable for use in the bioeconomy, we sought to create opportunities in the bioeconomy as biomass producers, bioenergy users, and environmental entrepreneurs. We proposed to focus at the beginning on enhancing the tool’s capabilities, while engaging with key stakeholders to improve and expand the tool’s functionality for all potential stakeholders in the bioeconomy. We believe that expanding our tools and technologies, coupled with conversations in agricultural spaces, will be needed as we continue to explore how best to offer farmers whole-of supply-chain opportunities to participate in the bioeconomy. Through this project we have continued to gain a better understanding of the ways in which farmers, landowners, bioenergy users, and environmental entrepreneurs may approach the bioeconomy. In addition, as we improve our analytic toolkit, we can continue to refine our communication and the ways in which we can valuate the bioeconomy. Refining these tools allows us to dive deeper into conversations around plausible policies and drivers for future bioeconomy investment and engagement by stakeholders. By working with farmers and agricultural landowners to enable a sustainable bioeconomy business model, enhance their energy options, and recover resources from their waste streams, this project directly responds to the Bioenergy Technology Office’s (BETO) priorities of building a resilient energy economy. It addresses BETO’s focus on fostering the development and adoption of energy technologies that enable the conversion of waste to energy, efficient land use, and robust job creation. By establishing a technical assistance program that develops capabilities and practices in agricultural areas to implement a bioeconomy future, this program will develop an important linkage between technology being developed at U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and the agricultural communities of the Midwest. This project focuses on farmers with lower productivity farmland. Because less productive lands create a more difficult revenue stream for conventional crops, these farmers may therefore be more open to alternative agricultural land management regimes. Consequently, the technical assistance program and the methodologies for targeting perennial bioenergy crop application on marginal land provide a distinct opportunity to engage with and invest in the bioeconomy in these economically stressed areas. Stakeholders in this project include farmers and landowners, local conservation organizations (NRCS, SWCS, etc.), universities, non-profit environmental and agricultural entities, farm consultants, environmental regulators, and industry, including the industries working on conversion technologies, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, and biochar generation, and the companies interested in trading or purchasing/supporting the valuation of ecosystem services (ES).

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗