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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 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2016

Numerical Simulation of Bolide Entry with Ground Footprint Prediction

As they decelerate through the atmosphere, meteors deposit mass, momentum and energy into the surrounding air at tremendous rates. Trauma from the entry of such bolides produces strong blast waves that can propagate hundreds of kilometers and cause substantial terrestrial damage even when no ground impact occurs. We present a new simulation technique for airburst blast prediction using a fully-conservative, Cartesian mesh, finite-volume solver and investigate the ability of this method to model far- field propagation over hundreds of kilometers. The work develops mathematical models for the deposition of mass, momentum and energy into the atmosphere and presents verification and validation through canonical problems and the comparison of surface overpressures, and blast arrival times with actual results in the literature for known bolides. The discussion also examines the effects of various approximations to the physics of bolide entry that can substantially decrease the computational expense of these simulations. We present parametric studies to quantify the influence of entry-angle, burst-height and other parameters on the ground footprint of the airburst, and these values are related to predictions from analytic and handbook-methods.

Simulation↗
NASA NTRS2016

Canonical Statistical Model for Maximum Expected Immission of Wire Conductor in an Aperture Enclosure

Prediction of the maximum expected electromagnetic pick-up of conductors inside a realistic shielding enclosure is an important canonical problem for system-level EMC design of space craft, launch vehicles, aircraft and automobiles. This paper introduces a simple statistical power balance model for prediction of the maximum expected current in a wire conductor inside an aperture enclosure. It calculates both the statistical mean and variance of the immission from the physical design parameters of the problem. Familiar probability density functions can then be used to predict the maximum expected immission for deign purposes. The statistical power balance model requires minimal EMC design information and solves orders of magnitude faster than existing numerical models, making it ultimately viable for scaled-up, full system-level modeling. Both experimental test results and full wave simulation results are used to validate the foundational model.

Computational electromagnetics↗
NASA NTRS2019

Weighted Least-Squares Cell-Average Gradient Construction Methods for the VULCAN-CFD Second-Order Accurate Unstructured-Grid Cell-Centered Finite-Volume Solver

The ability to solve the equations governing the hypersonic turbulent flow of a real gas on unstructured grids using a spatially-elliptic, 2nd-order accurate, cell-centered, finite-volume method has been recently implemented in the VULCAN-CFD code. The construction of cell-average gradients using a weighted linear least-squares method and the use of these gradients in the construction of the inviscid fluxes is the focus of this paper. A comparison of least-squares stencil construction methodologies is presented and approaches to augment the number of cells participating in the stencil while preserving accuracy are explored. Due to our interest in hypersonic flow, a robust multidimensional cell-average gradient limiter procedure that is consistent with the stencil used to construct the cell-average gradients is described and investigated. Canonical problems are computed to illustrate the challenges and investigate the accuracy, robustness and convergence behavior of the cell-average gradient methods on unstructured cell-centered finite-volume grids. Finally, thermally perfect, chemically frozen, Mach 8 turbulent flow of air around a blunt wedge is computed to demonstrate the robustness and convergence behavior of the new method for constructing stencils of use in a weighted linear least-squares gradient method for a hypersonic flow.

White, Jeffery A.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Efficient and Robust Weighted Least-Squares Cell-Average Gradient Construction Methods for the Simulation of Scramjet Flows

The ability to solve the equations governing the hypersonic turbulent flow of a real gas on unstructured grids using a spatially-elliptic, 2nd-order accurate, cell-centered, finite-volume method has been recently implemented in the VULCAN-CFD code. The construction of cell-average gradients using a weighted linear least-squares method and the use of these gradients in the construction of the inviscid fluxes is the focus of this paper. A comparison of least-squares stencil construction methodologies is presented and approaches designed to minimize the number of cells used to augment/stabilize the least-squares stencil while preserving accuracy are explored. Due to our interest in hypersonic flow, a robust multidimensional cell-average gradient limiter procedure that is consistent with the stencil used to construct the cellaverage gradients is described. Canonical problems are computed to illustrate the challenges and investigate the accuracy, robustness and convergence behavior of the cell-average gradient methods on unstructured cell-centered finite-volume grids. Finally, thermally perfect, chemically frozen, Mach 7.8 turbulent flow of air through a scramjet engine flowpath is computed and compared with experimental data to demonstrate the robustness, accuracy and convergence behavior of the preferred gradient method for a realistic 3-D geometry on a non-hex-dominant grid.

White, Jeffery A.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Effect of Reduced Pressure on the Characteristics of Spreading Flames

Flame spread over solid fuels is a canonical problem in fire science, due to its direct implications on material flammability and importance in fire development. In a microgravity environment, such as onboard a spacecraft, flames can behave very differently than on Earth. This is concerning for spaceflight life safety, especially in higher-oxygen environments. Due to the difficulties associated with microgravity testing, low-pressure environments have been proposed as an alternative to approximately replicate the burning behavior of solid fuels observed in reduced gravity conditions because of similar diffusion and heat transfer mechanisms. However, the roles played by gravity and pressure on flame length, standoff distance, and flame spread rate vary with the burning configuration. In concurrent flame spread, the buoyant flow enhances the spread rate by bringing the flame closer to the fuel surface and increasing the heating of the solid fuel. In opposed flame spread, the sample is preheated by the flame ahead of the flame leading edge, which is strongly affected by the surrounding flow field. In this work, we consider flames spreading over thin cotton samples in both downward (opposed) and upward (concurrent) configurations to investigate the effect of pressure (30-100 kPa) on flame characteristics, such as spread rate and standoff distance. A small forced flow is induced upward so that the flames are exposed to a mixed (forced and free) flow. By reducing pressure, flames become less bright, their standoff distance increases, and their spread rates decrease similar to what is observed in low-gravity environments. These results could in help understanding the differences between flames spreading at low pressure and low gravity environments for these similar, yet very different, spreading configurations. They could also provide more information about potential Earth-based flammability testing of materials for spacecraft applications.

fire safety↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The effect of reduced pressure on the characteristics of spreading flames

Flame spread over solid fuels is a canonical problem in fire science, due to its direct implications on material flammability and importance in fire development. In a microgravity environment, such as onboard a spacecraft, flames can behave very differently than on Earth. This is concerning for spaceflight life safety, especially in higher-oxygen environments. Due to the difficulties associated with microgravity testing, low-pressure environments have been proposed as an alternative to approximately replicate the burning behavior of solid fuels observed in reduced gravity conditions because of similar diffusion and heat transfer mechanisms. However, the roles played by gravity and pressure on flame length, standoff distance, and flame spread rate vary with the burning configuration. In concurrent flame spread, the buoyant flow enhances the spread rate by bringing the flame closer to the fuel surface and increasing the heating of the solid fuel. In opposed flame spread, the sample is preheated by the flame ahead of the flame leading edge, which is strongly affected by the surrounding flow field. In this work, we consider flames spreading over thin cotton samples in both downward (opposed) and upward (concurrent) configurations to investigate the effect of pressure (30-100 kPa) on flame characteristics, such as spread rate and standoff distance. A small forced flow is induced upward so that the flames are exposed to a mixed (forced and free) flow. By reducing pressure, flames become less bright, their standoff distance increases, and their spread rates decrease similar to what is observed in low-gravity environments. These results could in help understanding the differences between flames spreading at low pressure and low gravity environments for these similar, yet very different, spreading configurations. They could also provide more information about potential Earth-based flammability testing of materials for spacecraft applications.

fire safety↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Deep Neural Network Based Unsteady Flamelet Progress Variable Approach in a Supersonic Combustor

Higher dimensional flamelet manifolds are essential in capturing the coupled effects of pressure gradients and unsteady chemical kinetics observed in supersonic combustion applications. Previous studies have validated the feasibility of using deep neural networks as an alternative to computation-ally intensive multidimensional flamelet table storage and lookup. This approach has demonstrated a significant reduction in memory footprint and enabled the use of larger dimensional tabulated manifolds for supersonic combustion in canonical problems. In this study, the Unsteady Flamelet Progress Variable (UFPV)-ANN model implemented in the VULCAN-CFD code is validated by the Burrows-Kurkov supersonic mixing/combustion configuration. The well characterized experimental problem consists of hydrogen injection into a supersonic vitiated crossflow that results in a lifted flame structure. The initial model consists of a 4-dimensional table where the independent variables Z, C, Xst, P are tabulated using an unsteady flamelet code with boundary conditions corresponding to the vitiated air conditions. The results show the development of a lifted flame structure and over-all acceptable agreement with finite-rate chemistry (FRC) simulation and the experimental data. Moreover, direct mapping between the independent variables and the flamelet table is replaced by a deep neural network for significant memory reduction. The results indicate that the UFPV-ANN approach can retrieve the same solution as the memory intensive lookup table approach.

Flamelet↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Wall-Modeled Large-Eddy Simulations of Jet Noise in Flight Conditions

A campaign of wall-modeled large-eddy simulations (WMLES) using structured curvilinear overlapping grids has been performed with the Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to predict jet noise for single-stream axisymmetric round jets. The simulations address the new Prediction Uncertainty Reduction (PUR) technical challenge within the context of NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology (CST) project. The focus of this effort is to generate a simulation database for single-stream axisymmetric round nozzles at several operating points both for static (no ambient co-flow), and in-flight (M ͚ =0.3 co-flow) conditions. The operating conditions range in jet exit Mach number from 0.38 to 1.1 with nozzle temperature ratios (NTR) from 0.84 to 2.7. The effect of the flight-stream on far-field noise sound spectra is assessed. Comparison of LES predictions to microphone array measurements demonstrate good agreement within the resolved frequency range. A dip in the predicted low frequency noise spectra for observers between 120° and 145° is observed. This dip is smaller for lower Mach numbers and seems to be correlated to the Mach wave radiation angle. The Mach 1.1 jet shows broadband-shock associated noise. While the onset of BBSN appears to be captured correctly in WMLES, some differences in its magnitude and the prominent frequency at which it occurs persist between the experiment and the simulations. The effect of the outer nozzle boundary layer state created by the co-flow is assessed and shows to be important for accurate comparisons with experiments. A change of 2.5dB between a slip-wall condition and a artificially thickened turbulent boundary layer was observed. In addition, simulations were performed with an alternative nozzle geometry that includes a internal plug and has twice the nozzle exit diameter. These two configurations resulted in very comparable spectra which is consistent with experimental observations. A generally stronger deviation from experimental results is observed for in-flight cases compared to static conditions. The applicability and correct usage of acoustic analogies used for far-field propagation with strong turbulent co-flows needs to be investigated more systematically using canonical problems to improve comparisons between experiments and WMLES. This is especially true for coherent noise sources seen in BBSN.

CST↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Opposed-flow Spreading Flames: Effect of Sub-atmospheric Pressure on Spread and Burning Rates

Flame spread over solid fuels is a canonical problem in fire science, due to its direct implications on material flammability and importance in fire development. Flames in a microgravity environment can behave very differently than on Earth, posing additional risks for spaceflight life safety. Sub-atmospheric pressures in ground-based experiments have been proposed to approximately replicate the burning behavior of solid fuels in reduced gravity conditions because of similar effects on heat and mass transfer mechanisms from the flame to the solid. In opposed-flow flame spread, the solid fuel is heated by the flame ahead of its leading edge, and this process is strongly affected by the ambient conditions. In this work, we consider flames spreading over flat thin acrylic samples exposed to a forced flow of 20 cm/s, and pressures between 30 and 100 kPa. When radiation losses and chemical kinetic effects are neglected, experimental and theoretical results suggest an independence of the spread rate on pressure. However, the spread rate shows a decreasing trend with lower pressure in the range 30-60 kPa. The mass burning rate, calculated from the samples weight measured before and after the experiments, shows a similar trend. The flame length, on the other hand, shows a non-monotonic behavior, reaching a maximum at 60 kPa. Additionally, gas emissions measured during the experiments are used to estimate the heat release rate of the spreading flames. The comparison of the heat release rate obtained from the measured emissions and the estimated mass burning rates, suggests that chemical kinetics is not driving the decrease in flame spread observed at low pressures, whereas radiation losses could be responsible in analogy to what has been observed in micro and partial gravity studies. These results could provide more information to guide future Earth-based material flammability testing for spacecraft applications.

fire↗
NASA NTRS2023

Evaluation of Voronoi Meshes for Large Eddy Simulations of High Lift Aerodynamics

Numerical sensitivity to 3 different Voronoi seeding methods is investigated for Large Eddy Simulations (LES). A second order accurate, non-dissipative finite volume discretization is used to systematically investigate the effects of different polyhedral Voronoi mesh types using a sequence of three canonical problems with increasing complexity. First, inviscid isentropic vortex propagation is studied to demonstrate the substantial reduction of errors for rhombic dodecahedron and truncated octahedral cell types over Cartesian hexagonal cells of identical spacing. Furthermore, the reduction of errors induced at cell-size transitions (grid-coarsening interfaces) due to Lloyd smoothing iterations is quantified. It is shown that by utilizing an appropriate viscous flux discretization, a constant coefficient subgrid scale model is sufficient for non-linear stability at the 2:1 cell-size transitions on polyhedral grids, although some further error reduction does occur when smoothing is utilized. Next, forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence at an asymptotically large Reynolds number is studied to demonstrate the non-dissipative character of the inviscid flux discretization, and the non-linear robustness and accuracy offered by the viscous flux discretization using a subgrid scale model for all three Voronoi grid types. Finally,Wall-Modeled Large Eddy Simulations (WMLES) are performed to study the high-lift aerodynamics on the McDonnell Douglas 30P30N multi-element airfoil at two distinct grid levels and for two distinct Voronoi cell types. The formulation is shown to predict the aerodynamic loading with high accuracy at all angles of attack when sufficient resolution is reached, and the hexagonal prism grid topology, while computationally more expensive, has higher effective resolution compared to the Cartesian grid topology with the same spacing.

TTT↗
NASA NTRS2023

Evaluation of Voronoi Meshes for Large Eddy Simulations of High Lift Aerodynamics

Numerical sensitivity to 3 different Voronoi seeding methods is investigated for Large Eddy Simulations (LES). A second order accurate, non-dissipative finite volume discretization is used to systematically investigate the effects of different polyhedral Voronoi mesh types using a sequence of three canonical problems with increasing complexity. First, inviscid isentropic vortex propagation is studied to demonstrate the substantial reduction of errors for rhombic dodecahedron and truncated octahedral cell types over Cartesian hexagonal cells of identical spacing. Furthermore, the reduction of errors induced at cell-size transitions (grid-coarsening interfaces) due to Lloyd smoothing iterations is quantified. It is shown that by utilizing an appropriate viscous flux discretization, a constant coefficient subgrid scale model is sufficient for non-linear stability at the 2:1 cell-size transitions on polyhedral grids, although some further error reduction does occur when smoothing is utilized. Next, forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence at an asymptotically large Reynolds number is studied to demonstrate the non-dissipative character of the inviscid flux discretization, and the non-linear robustness and accuracy offered by the viscous flux discretization using a subgrid scale model for all three Voronoi grid types. Finally, Wall-Modeled Large Eddy Simulations (WMLES) are performed to study the high-lift aerodynamics on the McDonnell Douglas 30P30N multi-element airfoil at two distinct grid levels and for two distinct Voronoi cell types. The formulation is shown to predict the aerodynamic loading with high accuracy at all angles of attack when sufficient resolution is reached, and the hexagonal prism grid topology, while computationally more expensive, has higher effective resolution compared to the Cartesian grid topology with the same spacing.

TTT↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Phased Microphone Array on Aircraft Fuselage

This paper studies some challenging features for phased microphone arrays on aircraft fuselage, including the effects of sound scattering such as refraction by nonuniform boundary layer flows, reflection by curved surfaces, and diffraction by sharp edges and smooth geometry. The objective is to show if and how source locations and source amplitudes can be accurately captured by the array data analysis, in the presence of these features. The study starts with canonical problems to separately examine the individual features, making use of their respective analytical solutions, which provide exact results for all quantities needed for the array data processing. To simulate realistic flight environments, a generic aircraft geometry is then utilized, involving multiple scattering mechanisms and multiple noise sources to model aircraft engine noise. For this application, numerical solutions are computed to provide noise propagation and scattering from the sources to the microphones, as well as the quantities needed for array data analysis. The study reveals the effects of various features on fuselage-mounted arrays and provides guidelines to account for these effects in array data analysis.

Yueping Guo↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Unsteady CFD Simulations of a Compression Corner Geometry Using Wall-Modeled LES Methods in Loci/CHEM

As computing technology continues to improve, simulating unsteady aerodynamic environments on launch vehicle geometries becomes more viable. For NASA’s Space Launch System, the flowfield is characterized by large regions of unsteady turbulent wall-bounded flow. Simulating these unsteady wall-bounded environments is of interest to the SLS Aerodynamics team. Wall-modeled LES methods are currently the best approach for simulating these environments in engineering applications. Less-expensive computationally than fully-resolved methods while maintaining many of the benefits in simulating unsteady environments. Before applying these methods blindly to large geometries, best practices can first be applied and understood on smaller canonical problems.

Bryson Frank↗
NASA NTRS1992

Canonical transformations for space trajectory optimization

Canonical transformations are developed between the Cartesian coordinates, equinoctial elements, trajectory variables, and orbital elements for coplanar space trajectory optimization problems. The canonical transformations permit the state and adjoint or their solution, transversality conditions, the optimal control, and integrals of the motion, to be transformed between any of the common sets of coordinates for planar space trajectory optimization problems. Variations on the canonical transformations shown are straightforward to develop given the group properties of the canonical transformations.

Haissig, Christine M.↗
NASA NTRS1962

The Restricted Three-Body-Problem as a Perturbation of Euler's Problem of Two Fixed Centers and Its Application to Lunar Trajectories

The restricted Three-Body-Problem considers the motion of an infinitesimal mass under the gravitational attraction of two finite masses, which revolve about their common center of gravity in coplanar circles. It is well known that Euler's problem of two fixed centers, consisting of the motion of an infinitesimal mass under the gravitational attraction of two finite masses fixed in space, can be solved by elliptic functions. The idea presented here is to take the solution of Euler's problem as the solution of the restricted Three-Body-Problem by allowing the initial values to be functions of time now. Differential equations for the perturbed initial values are established. These equations can be given in closed form by using the fact that the transformation to the perturbed initial values of Euler's problem is canonical. Thus, an approximation can be obtained for the solution of the restricted Three-Body-Problem. The method can also be used to represent classes of neighboring trajectories for guidance purposes.

Euler equation↗
DOE OSTI2025

Spectrally Stabilized Interface Capturing Formulation and Implementation in Nek5000/NekRS

This report documents the formulation of a novel level-set method for incompressible two-phase flows in the continuous Galerkin (CG) high order spectral element framework. The overall method hinges on a novel implementation of the spectral vanishing viscosity (SVV) operator for the stabilization of linear/non-linear hyperbolic problems. The multidimensional SVV convolution kernels, which in essence, have a similar effect as a high pass filter applied to the derivatives, are formulated by exploiting the tensor product form, analogous to the construction of the usual stiffness matrix system. The resulting kernels are directionally decoupled and ensure a linear, symmetric positive definite, elliptic matrix operator. The SVV formulation is demonstrated to provide a robust stabilizing mechanism through challenging linear and non-linear hyperbolic problems, including problems pertinent to the level-set formulation. The two-phase framework conceptualized herein is based on the conservative level-set (CLS) method which represents the interface between the fluids by the 0.5 iso-contour of the smoothed Heaviside function. The CLS method is augmented with a preconditioning procedure for interface normals using the signed distance function which precludes the manifestation of spurious oscillations in the vicinty of the interface. Further, the existing mixed explicit-implicit approach for the solution of Navier-Stokes equations in Nek5000, as described in Tomboulides et al, is augmented with a pressure coefficient splitting approach for the Poisson equation, which greatly accelerated the convergence of pressure solver for two-phase systems with large density ratio. The robustness and accuracy of the overall two-phase method is demonstrated through canonical challenging problems involving high density and viscosity ratios, with and without surface tension. The two-phase formulation is wholly implemented in Nek5000 and the SVV stabilization method is implemented in NekRS, which is the essential precursor to the two-phase framework, undergoing active development.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

HARD: A performance portable radiation hydrodynamics code based on FleCSI framework

Hydrodynamics And Radiation Diffusion (HARD) is an open-source application for high-performance simulations of compressible hydrodynamics with radiation-diffusion coupling. Built on the FleCSI (Bergen et al., 2021 [1]) (Flexible Computational Science Infrastructure) framework, HARD expresses its computational units as tasks whose execution can be orchestrated by multiple back-end runtimes, including Legion (Bauer et al., 2012 [2]), MPI (Forum, 1994 [3]), and HPX (Kaiser et al., 2020 [4]). Node-level parallelism is handled through Kokkos (Edwards et al., 2014 [5]), providing a single-source, portable code base that runs efficiently on laptops, small homogeneous clusters, and the largest heterogeneous supercomputers currently available. To ensure scientific reliability, HARD includes a regression test suite that automatically reproduces canonical verification problems such as the Sod and LeBlanc shock tubes, and the Sedov blast wave, comparing numerical solutions against known analytical results. The project is distributed under an OSI-approved license, hosted on GitHub, and accompanied by reproducible build scripts and continuous integration workflows. This combination of performance portability, verification infrastructure, and community-focused development makes HARD a sustainable platform for advancing radiation hydrodynamics research across multiple domains.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗