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At least 253 records · Page 14

Aerodynamic design data for a cruise-matched high performance single-engine airplane

Design data are presented for a class of high-performance single-engine business airplanes. The design objectives include a cruise speed of 300 knots, a cruise altitude of 10,700 m (35,000 ft), a cruise payload of six passengers (including crew and baggage), and a no-reserves cruise range of 1300 n.mi. Two unconventional aerodynamic technologies were evaluated: the individual and combined effects of cruise-matched wing loading and of a natural laminar flow airfoil were analyzed. The trade-off data presented illustrate the ranges of wing geometries, propulsion requirements, airplane weights, and aerodynamic characteristics which are necessary to meet the design objectives. Very large design and performance improvements resulted from use of the aerodynamic technologies evaluated. It is shown that the potential exists for achieving more than 200-percent greater fuel efficiency than is achieved by current airplanes capable of similar cruise speeds, payloads, and ranges.

Holmes, B. J.↗

High-performance parallel analysis of coupled problems for aircraft propulsion

Applications are described of high-performance parallel, computation for the analysis of complete jet engines, considering its multi-discipline coupled problem. The coupled problem involves interaction of structures with gas dynamics, heat conduction and heat transfer in aircraft engines. The methodology issues addressed include: consistent discrete formulation of coupled problems with emphasis on coupling phenomena; effect of partitioning strategies, augmentation and temporal solution procedures; sensitivity of response to problem parameters; and methods for interfacing multiscale discretizations in different single fields. The computer implementation issues addressed include: parallel treatment of coupled systems; domain decomposition and mesh partitioning strategies; data representation in object-oriented form and mapping to hardware driven representation, and tradeoff studies between partitioning schemes and fully coupled treatment.

Felippa, C. A.↗

High performance stepper motors for space mechanisms

Hybrid stepper motors are very well adapted to high performance space mechanisms. They are very simple to operate and are often used for accurate positioning and for smooth rotations. In order to fulfill these requirements, the motor torque, its harmonic content, and the magnetic parasitic torque have to be properly designed. Only finite element computations can provide enough accuracy to determine the toothed structures' magnetic permeance, whose derivative function leads to the torque. It is then possible to design motors with a maximum torque capability or with the most reduced torque harmonic content (less than 3 percent of fundamental). These later motors are dedicated to applications where a microstep or a synchronous mode is selected for minimal dynamic disturbances. In every case, the capability to convert electrical power into torque is much higher than on DC brushless motors.

Sega, Patrick↗

High-Performance Parallel Analysis of Coupled Problems for Aircraft Propulsion

Applications are described of high-performance computing methods to the numerical simulation of complete jet engines. The methodology focuses on the partitioned analysis of the interaction of the gas flow with a flexible structure and with the fluid mesh motion driven by structural displacements. The latter is treated by a ALE technique that models the fluid mesh motion as that of a fictitious mechanical network laid along the edges of near-field elements. New partitioned analysis procedures to treat this coupled three-component problem were developed. These procedures involved delayed corrections and subcycling, and have been successfully tested on several massively parallel computers, including the iPSC-860, Paragon XP/S and the IBM SP2. The NASA-sponsored ENG10 program was used for the global steady state analysis of the whole engine. This program uses a regular FV-multiblock-grid discretization in conjunction with circumferential averaging to include effects of blade forces, loss, combustor heat addition, blockage, bleeds and convective mixing. A load-balancing preprocessor for parallel versions of ENG10 was developed as well as the capability for the first full 3D aeroelastic simulation of a multirow engine stage. This capability was tested on the IBM SP2 parallel supercomputer at NASA Ames.

Felippa, C. A.↗

An Overview of National Transonic Facility Investigations for High Performance Military Aerodynamics (Invited)

A review of National Transonic Facility (NTF) investigations for high-performance military aerodynamics has been completed. The review spans the entire operational period of the tunnel, and includes configurations ranging from full aircraft to basic research geometries. The intent for this document is to establish a comprehensive summary of these experiments with selected technical results

Luckring, J. M.↗

Comparison of High-Performance Fiber Materials Properties in Simulated and Actual Space Environments

A variety of high-performance fibers, including Kevlar, Nomex, Vectran, and Spectra, have been tested for durability in the space environment, mostly the low Earth orbital environment. These materials have been tested in yarn, tether/cable, and fabric forms. Some material samples were tested in a simulated space environment, such as the Atomic Oxygen Beam Facility and solar simulators in the laboratory. Other samples were flown on the International Space Station as part of the Materials on International Space Station Experiment. Mass loss due to atomic oxygen erosion and optical property changes due to ultraviolet radiation degradation are given. Tensile test results are also presented, including where moisture loss in a vacuum had an impact on tensile strength.

Finckenor, M. M.↗

Mu-Spec: A High Performance Compact Spectrometer for Submillimeter Astronomy

We describe the Mu-Spec, an extremely compact high performance spectrometer for the submillimeter and millimeter spectral ranges. We have designed a fully integrated submillimeter spectrometer based on superconducting microstrip technology and fabricated its critical elements. Using low loss transmission lines, we can produce a fully integrated high resolution submillimeter spectrometer on a single four inch Si wafer. A resolution of 500 can readily be achieved with standard fabrication tolerance, higher with phase trimming. All functions of the spectrometer are integrated - light is coupled to the microstrip circuit with a planar antenna, the spectra discrimination is achieved using a synthetic grating, orders are separated using a built-in planar filter, and the light is detected using photon counting Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKID). We will discus the design principle of the instrument, describe its technical advantages, and report the progress on the development of the instrument.

Hsieh, Wen-Ting↗

Micro-Spec: A High Performance Compact Spectrometer for Submillimeter Astronomy

We describe the micro-Spec, an extremely compact high performance spectrometer for the submillimeter and millimeter spectral ranges. We have designed a fully integrated submillimeter spectrometer based on superconducting microstrip technology and fabricated its critical elements. Using low loss transmission lines, we can produce a fully integrated high resolution submillimeter spectrometer on a single four inch Si wafer. A resolution of 500 can readily be achieved with standard fabrication tolerance, higher with phase trimming. All functions of the spectrometer are integrated - light is coupled to the micro strip circuit with a planar antenna, the spectra discrimination is achieved using a synthetic grating, orders are separated using a built-in planar filter, and the light is detected using photon counting Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKID). We will discus the design principle of the instrument, describe its technical advantages, and report the progress on the development of the instrument.

Hsieh, Wen-Ting↗

High performance architecture for robot control

Practical aspects of the design and implementation of a modular, high performance, parallel computer control system for telerobots are discussed. Topics of consideration include system architecture, operator interface, and control execution. In a laboratory environment, a telerobotics test control configuration is used to obtain measurements on communications and control loop timing for use in an effective full scale operational system design. The feasibility of the selected architectural approach has been successfully demonstrated. The modularity of the software and hardware enables ease of transport for use in the operational system. The distributed partioning of the control algorithms and the performance measurements acquired during control system implementation are discussed.

Byler, E.↗

High performance millimeter-wave microstrip circulators and isolators

Millimeter wave systems, phased array antennas, and high performance components all require wideband circulators (and isolators) to perform diplexing and switching, to improve isolation and Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR), and to construct IMPATT diode reflection amplifiers. Presently, most of the millimeter-wave circulators and isolators are available in the configurations of waveguide or stripline, both of which suffer from the shortcomings of bulky size/weight, narrow bandwidth, and poor compatibility with monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuits (MMIC). MMW microstrip circulators/isolators can eliminate or improve these shortcomings. Stub-tuned microstrip circulator configuration were developed utilizing the electromagnetic fields perturbation technique, the adhesion problems of microstrip metallization on new ferrite substrate were overcome, the fabrication, assembly, packaging techniques were improved, and then successfully designed, fabricated a Ka band circulator which has isolation and return loss of greater than 16dB, insertion loss less than 0.7dB. To assess the steady and reliable performance of the circulator, a temperature cycling test was done over the range of -20 to +50 C for 3 continuous cycles and found no significant impact or variation of circulator performance.

Shih, Ming↗

Simulation model of a twin-tail, high performance airplane

The mathematical model and associated computer program to simulate a twin-tailed high performance fighter airplane (McDonnell Douglas F/A-18) are described. The simulation program is written in the Advanced Continuous Simulation Language. The simulation math model includes the nonlinear six degree-of-freedom rigid-body equations, an engine model, sensors, and first order actuators with rate and position limiting. A simplified form of the F/A-18 digital control laws (version 8.3.3) are implemented. The simulated control law includes only inner loop augmentation in the up and away flight mode. The aerodynamic forces and moments are calculated from a wind-tunnel-derived database using table look-ups with linear interpolation. The aerodynamic database has an angle-of-attack range of -10 to +90 and a sideslip range of -20 to +20 degrees. The effects of elastic deformation are incorporated in a quasi-static-elastic manner. Elastic degrees of freedom are not actively simulated. In the engine model, the throttle-commanded steady-state thrust level and the dynamic response characteristics of the engine are based on airflow rate as determined from a table look-up. Afterburner dynamics are switched in at a threshold based on the engine airflow and commanded thrust.

Buttrill, Carey S.↗

Portability Support for High Performance Computing

While a large number of tools have been developed to support application portability, high performance application developers often prefer to use vendor-provided, non-portable programming interfaces. This phenomena indicates the mismatch between user priorities and tool capabilities. This paper summarizes the results of a user survey and a developer survey. The user survey has revealed the user priorities and resulted in three criteria for evaluating tool support for portability. The developer survey has resulted in the evaluation of portability support and indicated the possibilities and difficulties of improvements.

Cheng, Doreen Y.↗

High-Performance Tiled WMS and KML Web Server

This software is an Apache 2.0 module implementing a high-performance map server to support interactive map viewers and virtual planet client software. It can be used in applications that require access to very-high-resolution geolocated images, such as GIS, virtual planet applications, and flight simulators. It serves Web Map Service (WMS) requests that comply with a given request grid from an existing tile dataset. It also generates the KML super-overlay configuration files required to access the WMS image tiles.

Plesea, Lucian↗

A high performance, continuously variable data rate, digitally implemented BPSK modem for deep space network

This paper describes a high performance, digital, BPSK modem designed to improve the telemetry data handling capability of NASA's Deep Space Network. The data rate is continuously variable from 0.5 Mbps to 30 Mbps. It uses newly designed, high speed digital alogrithms for receive filtering, carrier tracking, bit timing and AGC. The carrier and bit time tracking loops have been designed to provide fast acquisition and low tracking phase jitter at E sub b/N sub 0 as low as -4 dB and bit transition density as low as 10%. The performance of the modem is within 0.65 dB below 10 Mbps, 1.0 dB from 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps, and 1.5 dB above 20 Mbps of theoretical coherent BPSK at a BER of 0.0004.

Paik, W. H.↗

Near Real-Time Probabilistic Damage Diagnosis Using Surrogate Modeling and High Performance Computing

This work investigates novel approaches to probabilistic damage diagnosis that utilize surrogate modeling and high performance computing (HPC) to achieve substantial computational speedup. Motivated by Digital Twin, a structural health management (SHM) paradigm that integrates vehicle-specific characteristics with continual in-situ damage diagnosis and prognosis, the methods studied herein yield near real-time damage assessments that could enable monitoring of a vehicle's health while it is operating (i.e. online SHM). High-fidelity modeling and uncertainty quantification (UQ), both critical to Digital Twin, are incorporated using finite element method simulations and Bayesian inference, respectively. The crux of the proposed Bayesian diagnosis methods, however, is the reformulation of the numerical sampling algorithms (e.g. Markov chain Monte Carlo) used to generate the resulting probabilistic damage estimates. To this end, three distinct methods are demonstrated for rapid sampling that utilize surrogate modeling and exploit various degrees of parallelism for leveraging HPC. The accuracy and computational efficiency of the methods are compared on the problem of strain-based crack identification in thin plates. While each approach has inherent problem-specific strengths and weaknesses, all approaches are shown to provide accurate probabilistic damage diagnoses and several orders of magnitude computational speedup relative to a baseline Bayesian diagnosis implementation.

Warner, James E.↗