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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 271 records · Page 15
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1991

First level release of 2GCHAS for comprehensive helicopter analysis

Consideration is given to the Second Generation Comprehensive Helicopter Analysis System (2GCHAS) under development by the Aeroflightdynamics Directorate of the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command to provide a significant advance in rotorcraft analysis capability. The recent progress that led to the completion of the first-level release in December 1990 is described. The project management approach, 2GCHAS engineering capabilities and features, documentation, and the user interface are also examined. The spanwise bound circulation distribution of the fixed wing calculated with the vortex wake system, and ground resonance frequency and damping results are illustrated in graphic form.

Ormiston, Robert A.↗
NASA NTRS1976

Tracking and data systems support for the Helios project. Volume 1: Project development through end of mission, phase 2

The overall evolution of the Helios Project is summarized from its conception through to the completion of the Helios-1 mission phase 2. Beginning with the project objectives and concluding with the Helios-1 spacecraft entering its first superior conjunction (end of mission phase 2), descriptions of the project, the mission and its phases, international management and interfaces, and Deep Space Network-spacecraft engineering development in telemetry, tracking, and command systems to ensure compatibility between the U.S. Deep Space Network and the German-built spacecraft are included.

Goodwin, P. S.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Air Traffic Control Response to Delays: A System Study of Newark International Airport

Airport delays are a significant problem in the United States air transportation system. Between 1999 and 2000 the number of flights delayed increased by 20 percent despite only a 0.4% increase in total operations. Newark International Airport (EWR), one of New York City's primary airports, is one of the airports in the United States most impacted by delays. Newark had the highest percentage of operations delayed in 1999, and was second only to LaGuardia Airport in 2000. Nearly 85% of delays at Newark are caused by adverse weather impacting an airport that may be characterized as having limited capacity and a very full schedule. Although Newark is heavily impacted by weather, delays have not increased significantly since 1998. This indicates that the airlines, air traffic control (ATC), and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have successfully adapted. On June 29, 2000, a research team from MIT visited Newark airport to assess the effectiveness of any adaptations made, and to collect data on airline and ATC departure operations, and of the national and local weather affecting the airport. Airline and ATC personnel were also interviewed. Results of this study indicate that airspace capacity limitations downstream of the airport are a primary flow constraint at the airport, and that these constraints are the source of most surface delays. A number of tactical ATC responses to delays were examined, including the application of restrictions, re-routing with the help of the National Playbook, and the use of decision-aiding tools such as the Dynamic Spacing Program (DSP) and the Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS). Improved interfacility communications and further utilization of runway 11-29 were identified as other tactical responses to delays, whilst the formation of the Air Traffic Control System Command Center and the New York Airspace redesign were identified as thekey strategic ATC responses to delays. Particularly the New York airspace redesign has great potential to reduce delays at the airport. Because delays at Newark are caused by downstream flow constraints, the responses at the airport can be applied to other airports as delays from downstream constraints increase. Such an increase in delays system wide from downstream constraints is inevitable as the system becomes more congested.

Evans, Antony D.↗
NASA NTRS2007

[Interview Questions]

The Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center, or GMSEC, was started in 2001 to create a new standard approach for managing GSFC missions. Standardized approaches in the past involved selecting and then integrating the most appropriate set of functional tools. Assumptions were made that "one size fits all" and that tool changes would not be necessary for many years. GMSEC took a very different approach and has proven to be very successful. The core of the GMSEC architecture consists of a publish/subscribe message bus, standardized message formats, and an Applications Programming Interface (API). The API supports multiple operating systems, programming languages and messaging middleware products. We use a GMSEC-developed free middleware for low-cost development. A high capacity, robust middleware is used for operations and a messaging system with a very small memory footprint is used for on-board flight software. Software components can use the standard message formats or develop adapters to convert from their native formats to the GMSEC formats. We do not want vendors to modify their core products. Over 50 software components are now available for use with the GMSEC architecture. Most available commercial telemetry and command systems, including the GMV hifly Satellite Control System, have been adapted to run in the GMSEC labs.

Smith, Dan↗
NASA NTRS1988

Design guide: Designing and building high voltage power supplies, volume 2

This report contains an accumulation of publications and analyses aimed at developing guidelines for improving both high voltage and low voltage power supplies for the U.S. Air Force systems command. It is the intent of the report to supply good design and manufacturing techniques for the packaging and the building of high quality, reliable, long-life power supplies. These data are based on the wealth of engineering practices established by design and manufacturing engineers. The contents are: Fundamentals of Insulation: Gases, Liquid Dielectrics, Solid Insulation; Environment: Pressure, Particulates, Environmental Interactions with Space Power Systems, Surface Charging, System Design Criteria; Configuration and Design Data: Designs, Transients, Grounding and Bonding, Thermal Control; Materials and Processes: Insulation, Processes, Process Variables; Manufacturing: Yield, Government and Industrial Survey, Analysis, Problem Areas and Suggested Solutions, Designs That Have Worked in High Voltage Equipment, Manufacturing Summary; and Tests: Performance, Insulation Tests, Materials Testing, Component and Equipment Tests, Performance Testing, Facility and Environment, Accelerated Life Test; Maintenance and Repair: Maintenance, Test Sets, Pilots and Crewmen, Air Logistic Centers, Design Problem Recommendations.

W G Dunbar↗
NASA NTRS1973

Synthesis of oscillating adaptive feedback systems

A synthesis theory is developed which allows system design to proceed from practical specifications on system command and/or disturbance response to a design which is very nearly optimal in terms of feedback sensor noise effects. The approach taken is to replace the nonlinear element by a mean square error minimizing approximation (dual-input describing function), and then use linear frequency domain synthesis techniques subject to additional constraints imposed by the limit cycle and the approximator. Synthesis techniques are also developed for a similar system using an externally excited oscillating signal with the above approach. The results remove the design of the systems considered from the realm of simulation and experimentation, permitting true synthesis and the optimization that accompanies it.

Smay, J. W.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Visual Cueing Effects Investigation for a Hovering Task

In simulators, as in actual aircraft, pilots conduct their missions according to perceived vehicle performance and spatial orientation from out-the-window (OTW) information. Ground-based flight simulations rely upon computer-generated OTW visual scenes. The realism and fidelity of a specific OTW simulation therefore has a significant impact on mission effectiveness. This study investigates effects of three visual parameters of the computer-generated image system (field-of-view, collimation, and resolution) on a disturbance-rejection hovering task. Pilots' performance and workload were studied under the following conditions: collimated optics vs. noncollimated optics, wide field-of-view (FOV) vs. narrow FOV, and higher resolution vs. lower resolution. Subjects were instructed to maintain a station-keeping position during disturbances while piloting an uncoupled four degrees-of-freedom (DOF) helicopter model, which had a satisfactory rate-command system in pitch and roll axes and ideal heading and altitude hold. Display collimation and FOV were found to have significant effects on pilots performance and subjective their subjective perception of visual cueing quality.

Chung, William W. Y.↗
NASA NTRS2008

Enabling and Enhancing Space Mission Success and Reduction of Risk through the Application of an Integrated Data Architecture

The engineering phases of design, development, test, and evaluation (DDT and E) and subsequent planning, preparation, and operation (Ops) of space vehicles in a complex and distributed environment requires massive and continuous flows of information across the enterprise and across temporal stages of the vehicle lifecycle. The resulting capabilities at each subsequent stage depend in part on the capture, preparation, storage, and subsequent provision of information from prior stages. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is currently designing a fleet of new vehicles that will replace the Space Shuttle and expand space operations and exploration capabilities. This includes the 2 stage human rated lift vehicle Ares 1 and its associated crew vehicle the Orion, and a service module; the heavy lift cargo vehicle, Ares 5, and an associated cargo stage known as the Earth Departure Stage; and a Lunar Lander vehicle that contains a descent stage, and ascent stage, and a habitation module. A variety of concurrent assorted ground operations infrastructure including software and facilities are also being developed, assorted technology and assembly designs and development for equipment such as EVA suits, life support systems, command and control technologies are also in the pipeline. The development is occurring in a distributed manner, with project deliverables being contributed by a large and diverse assortment of vendors and most space faring nations. Critical information about all of the components, software, and procedures must be shared during the DDT and E phases and then made readily available to the mission operations staff for access during the planning, preparation, and operations phases, and also need to be readily available for system to system interactions. The Constellation Data Systems Project (CxDS) is identifying the needs, and designing and deploying systems and processes to support these needs. This paper details the steps and processes that NASA is applying within the Constellation Program to manage this data and information, and to insure that the correct information is available, correctly annotated, and can be provisioned digitally to enhance response times, and support engineering analysis and anomaly resolution.

Brummett, Robert C.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Spaceport Command and Control System - Support Software Development

The Information Architecture Support (IAS) Team, the component of the Spaceport Command and Control System (SCCS) that is in charge of all the pre-runtime data, was in need of some report features to be added to their internal web application, Information Architecture (IA). Development of these reports is crucial for the speed and productivity of the development team, as they are needed to quickly and efficiently make specific and complicated data requests against the massive IA database. These reports were being put on the back burner, as other development of IA was prioritized over them, but the need for them resulted in internships being created to fill this need. The creation of these reports required learning Ruby on Rails development, along with related web technologies, and they will continue to serve IAS and other support software teams and their IA data needs.

Information Architecture↗
NASA NTRS2014

Technical Capability Upgrades to the NASA Langley Research Center 6 ft. by 6 ft. Thermal Vacuum Chamber

The 6 ft. by 6 ft. thermal vacuum chamber (TVAC), housed in Building 1250 at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), and managed by the Systems Integration and Test Branch within the Engineering Directorate, has undergone several significant modifications to increase testing capability, safety, and quality of measurements of articles under environmental test. Significant modifications include: a new nitrogen thermal conditioning unit for controlling shroud temperatures from -150degC to +150degC; two horizontal auxiliary cold plates for independent temperature control from -150degC to +200degC; a suite of contamination monitoring sensors for outgassing measurements and species identification; signal and power feed-throughs; new pressure gauges; and a new data acquisition and control commanding system including safety interlocks. This presentation will provide a general overview of the LaRC 6 ft. by 6 ft. TVAC chamber, an overview of the new technical capabilities, and illustrate each upgrade in detail, in terms of mechanical design and predicted performance. Additionally, an overview of the scope of tests currently being performed in the chamber will be documented, and sensor plots from tests will be provided to show chamber temperature and pressure performance with actual flight hardware under test.

Thornblom, Mark N.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration - 3 (ATD-3) Multi-Flight Common Route (MFCR) Concept of Operations Version 1.0

NASA's Multi Flight Common Route (MFCR) automation represents one element of those technologies focusing primarily on delay recovery in the en route phase of flight. Delay recovery is an attenuation of flight-time delay, accomplished by periodically revising weather-avoidance routing as the convective weather system evolves. MFCR is intended for use by Traffic Management Coordinators (TMCs) in Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs, or Centers) and traffic management specialists (TMSs) in the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC). MFCR leverages existing weather, airspace, and traffic data, as well as improvements in navigation, surveillance, communication, and digital information technologies, to build on existing ATM automation and address some of the shortcomings associated with strategic traffic flow management initiatives and weather forecasting uncertainties. These capabilities provide significant potential benefits in the form of time, fuel, and cost savings. The concept of operations described in this document describes MFCR functionality as delivered by NASA to the FAA in December 2017, including a list of potential enhancements that may be realized when the system is fielded.

conops↗
NASA NTRS2017

Management by Trajectory Trade Study of Roles and Responsibilities Between Participants and Automation Report

This report describes a trade study of roles and responsibilities associated with the Management by Trajectory (MBT) concept. The MBT concept describes roles, responsibilities, and information and automation requirements for providing air traffic controllers and managers the ability to quickly generate, evaluate and implement changes to an aircraft's trajectory. In addition, the MBT concept describes mechanisms for imposing constraints on flight operator preferred trajectories only to the extent necessary to maintain safe and efficient traffic flows, and the concept provides a method for the exchange of trajectory information between ground automation systems and the aircraft that allows for trajectory synchronization and trajectory negotiation. The participant roles considered in this trade study include: airline dispatcher, flight crew, radar controller, traffic manager, and Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) traffic management specialists. The proposed allocation of roles and responsibilities was based on analysis of several use cases that were developed for this purpose as well as for walking through concept elements. The resulting allocation of roles and responsibilities reflects both increased automation capability to support many aviation functions, as well as increased flexibility to assign responsibilities to different participants - in many cases afforded by the increased automation capabilities. Note that the selection of participants to consider for allocation of each function is necessarily rooted in the current environment, in that MBT is envisioned as an evolution of the National Airspace System (NAS), and not a revolution. A key feature of the MBT allocations is a vision for the traffic management specialist to take on a greater role. This is facilitated by the vision that separation management functions, in addition to traffic management functions, will be carried out as trajectory management functions. This creates an opportunity for flexibility, allowing the traffic management specialist to carry out tasks that today can only be carried out by the controller currently in contact with the aircraft. This additional tasking for the traffic management specialist comes with requirements for workload management. An increased role for the Data-side (D-side) controller relative to the Radar-side (R-side) controller is a potential approach to mitigating workload for the traffic management specialist, as the D-side controller would have similar ability to perform separation management functions in what today might be considered the "trajectory management" timeframe. This analysis did not distinguish between the D-side and R-side controllers since in many cases the R-side controller works unassisted.

Fernandes, Alicia D.↗
NASA NTRS2000

United States Air Force Wipe Solvent Testing

The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), as part of the Air Force Material Command, requested that NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) conduct testing and analyses in support of the United States Air Force Wipe Solvent Development Project. The purpose of the wipe solvent project is to develop an alternative to be used by Air Force flight line and maintenance personnel for the wipe cleaning of oxygen equipment. This report provides material compatibility, liquid oxygen (LOX) mechanical impact, autogenous ignition temperature (AIT), and gauge cleaning test data for some of the currently available solvents that may be used to replace CFC-113 and methyl chloroform. It provides data from previous WSTF test programs sponsored by the Naval Sea Systems Command, the Kennedy Space Center, and other NASA programs for the purpose of assisting WP AFB in identifying the best alternative solvents for validation testing.

Hornung, Steven D.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Spaceflight Operations Services Grid (SOSG) Prototype Implementation and Feasibility Study

Science Operations Services Grid is focusing on building a prototype grid-based environment that incorporates existing and new spaceflight services to enable current and future NASA programs with cost savings and new and evolvable methods to conduct science in a distributed environment. The Science Operations Services Grid (SOSG) will provide a distributed environment for widely disparate organizations to conduct their systems and processes in a more efficient and cost effective manner. These organizations include those that: 1) engage in space-based science and operations, 2) develop space-based systems and processes, and 3) conduct scientific research, bringing together disparate scientific disciplines like geology and oceanography to create new information. In addition educational outreach will be significantly enhanced by providing to schools the same tools used by NASA with the ability of the schools to actively participate on many levels in the science generated by NASA from space and on the ground. The services range from voice, video and telemetry processing and display to data mining, high level processing and visualization tools all accessible from a single portal. In this environment, users would not require high end systems or processes at their home locations to use these services. Also, the user would need to know minimal details about the applications in order to utilize the services. In addition, security at all levels is an underlying goal of the project. The Science Operations Services Grid will focus on four tools that are currently used by the ISS Payload community along with nine more that are new to the community. Under the prototype four Grid virtual organizations PO) will be developed to represent four types of users. They are a Payload (experimenters) VO, a Flight Controllers VO, an Engineering and Science Collaborators VO and an Education and Public Outreach VO. The User-based services will be implemented to replicate the operational voice, video, telemetry and commanding systems. Once the User-based services are in place, they will be analyzed to establish feasibility for Grid enabling. If feasible then each User-based service will be Grid enabled. The remaining non-Grid services if not already Web enabled will be so enabled. In the end, four portals will be developed one for each VO. Each portal will contain the appropriate User-based services required for that VO to operate.

Bradford, Robert N.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Development and use of computational techniques in Army Aviation research and development programs for crash resistant helicopter technology

During the 1960's over 30 full-scale aircraft crash tests were conducted by the Flight Safety Foundation under contract to the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) of the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command (AVSCOM). The purpose of these tests were to conduct crash injury investigations that would provide a basis for the formulation of sound crash resistance design criteria for light fixed-wing and rotary wing aircraft. This resulted in the Crash Survival Design Criteria Designer's Guide which was first published in 1967 and has been revised numerous times, the last being in 1989. Full-scale aircraft crash testing is an expensive way to investigate structural deformations of occupied spaces and to determine the decelerative loadings experienced by occupants in a crash. This gave initial impetus to the U.S. Army to develop analytical methods to predict the dynamic response of aircraft structures in a crash. It was believed that such analytical tools could be very useful in the preliminary design stage of a new helicopter system which is required to demonstrate a level of crash resistance and had to be more cost effective than full-scale crash tests or numerous component design support tests. From an economic point of view, it is more efficient to optimize for the incorporation of crash resistance features early in the design stage. However, during preliminary design it is doubtful if sufficient design details, which influence the exact plastic deformation shape of structural elements, will be available. The availability of simple procedures to predict energy absorption and load-deformation characteristics will allow the designer to initiate valuable cost, weight, and geometry tradeoff studies. The development of these procedures will require some testing of typical specimens. This testing should, as a minimum, verify the validity of proposed procedures for providing pertinent nonlinear load-deformation data. It was hoped that through the use of these analytical models, the designer could optimize aircraft design for crash resistance from both a weight and cost increment standpoint, thus enhancing the acceptance of the design criteria for crash resistance.

Burrows, Leroy T.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Kennedy Space Center's Command and Control System - "Toasters to Rocket Ships"

This slide presentation reviews the history of the development of the command and control system at Kennedy Space Center. From a system that could be brought to Florida in the trunk of a car in the 1950's. Including the development of larger and more complex launch vehicles with the Apollo program where human launch controllers managed the launch process with a hardware only system that required a dedicated human interface to perform every function until the Apollo vehicle lifted off from the pad. Through the development of the digital computer that interfaced with ground launch processing systems with the Space Shuttle program. Finally, showing the future control room being developed to control the missions to return to the moon and Mars, which will maximize the use of Commercial-Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware and software which was standards based and not tied to a single vendor. The system is designed to be flexible and adaptable to support the requirements of future spacecraft and launch vehicles.

Lougheed, Kirk↗
NASA NTRS1976

Multi-community command and control systems in law enforcement: An introductory planning guide

A set of planning guidelines for multi-community command and control systems in law enforcement is presented. Essential characteristics and applications of these systems are outlined. Requirements analysis, system concept design, implementation planning, and performance and cost modeling are described and demonstrated with numerous examples. Program management techniques and joint powers agreements for multicommunity programs are discussed in detail. A description of a typical multi-community computer-aided dispatch system is appended.

Sohn, R. L.↗