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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 NTRS1990

A 4-node assumed-stress hybrid shell element with rotational degrees of freedom

An assumed-stress hybrid/mixed 4-node quadrilateral shell element is introduced that alleviates most of the deficiencies associated with such elements. The formulation of the element is based on the assumed-stress hybrid/mixed method using the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle. The membrane part of the element has 12 degrees of freedom including rotational or drilling degrees of freedom at the nodes. The bending part of the element also has 12 degrees of freedom. The bending part of the element uses the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory which takes into account the transverse shear contributions. The element formulation is derived from an 8-node isoparametric element. This process is accomplished by assuming quadratic variations for both in-plane and out-of-plane displacement fields and linear variations for both in-plane and out-of-plane rotation fields along the edges of the element. In addition, the degrees of freedom at midside nodes are approximated in terms of the degrees of freedom at corner nodes. During this process the rotational degrees of freedom at the corner nodes enter into the formulation of the element. The stress field are expressed in the element natural-coordinate system such that the element remains invariant with respect to node numbering.

Aminpour, Mohammad A.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Synthesis and analysis of a new class of six-degree-of-freedom parallel minimanipulators

A new class of six-degree-of-freedom parallel minimanipulators capable of providing high resolution and high-stiffness for fine position and force control in a hybrid serial-parallel manipulator system is presented. Positional resolution and stiffness of minimanipulators are improved using two-degree-of-freedom planar linkages as drivers. The minimanipulators are based on only three inextensible limbs, as opposed to most of the six-limbed parallel manipulators, which makes it possible to reduce its direct kinematics to solving a polynomial in a single variable and to diminish possibility of mechanical interference between limbs. The base-mounted minimanipulator actuators are characterized by high payload capacity, small actuator size, and low power dissipitation.

Tsai, Lung-Wen↗
NASA NTRS1992

An assumed-stress hybrid 4-node shell element with drilling degrees of freedom

An assumed-stress hybrid/mixed 4-node quadrilateral shell element is introduced that alleviates most of the deficiencies associated with such elements. The formulation of the element is based on the assumed-stress hybrid/mixed method using the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle. The membrane part of the element has 12 degrees of freedom including rotational or 'drilling' degrees of freedom at the nodes. The bending part of the element also has 12 degrees of freedom. The bending part of the element uses the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory which takes into account the transverse shear contributions. The element formulation is derived from an 8-node isoparametric element by expressing the midside displacement degrees of freedom in terms of displacement and rotational degrees of freedom at corner nodes. The element passes the patch test, is nearly insensitive to mesh distortion, does not 'lock', possesses the desirable invariance properties, has no hidden spurious modes, and for the majority of test cases used in this paper produces more accurate results than the other elements employed herein for comparison.

Aminpour, M. A.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Passive Capture Joint with Three Degrees of Freedom

A passive capture joint with three degrees of freedom is presented wherein two structural elements are joined together solely by moving the two elements into position, and which when joined together have rotation in all three axes. The inventive apparatus is comprised of two halves: (1) a joint ball mounted on a stem as in a common trailer hitch, and; (2) a socket. The socket consists of a base having an exterior wall and forming an interior chamber, the chamber having a top end and a bottom end, and an interior wall. The chamber is open at the top end, and forms a spherical cup at the bottom end. The socket base's interior chamber is sized to accept the joint ball. The base also forms at least one bore at an acute angle away from the interior chamber's open end. The bores have a first opening in the interior wall of the chamber, and a second opening in the exterior wall of the base. Retaining balls sized to fit within the bores, but to only partially pass through the first opening, are moveably housed within the bores. The retaining balls are moveably held in the first opening by a compression spring housed in the bore. As the joint ball is inserted in the chamber it forces the retaining balls back into the bore until the equator of the joint ball passes. Because the bore is at an acute angle to the chamber the joint ball cannot exit the chamber without the joint being unlocked. The joint is unlocked by rotating a locking ring which encircles the base and covers the second opening. The locking ring has a radial slot for each retaining ball, disposed angularly from the base, and sized to allow passage of the retaining ball in the radial direction when the locking ring is rotated to align the radial slot with the second opening.

Richard A Cloyd↗
NASA NTRS1994

Six-degree-of-freedom parallel minimanipulator with three inextensible limbs

A Six-Degree-of-Freedom Parallel-Manipulator having three inextensible limbs for manipulating a platform is described. The three inextensible limbs are attached via universal joints to the platform at non-collinear points. Each of the inextensible limbs is also attached via universal joints to a two-degree-of-freedom parallel driver such as a five-bar linkage, a pantograph, or a bidirectional linear stepper motor. The drivers move the lower ends of the limbs parallel to a fixed base and thereby provide manipulation of the platform. The actuators are mounted on the fixed base without using any power transmission devices such as gears or belts.

Tahmasebi, Farhad↗
NASA NTRS1989

A 17 degree of freedom anthropomorphic manipulator

A 17 axis anthropomorphic manipulator, providing coordinated control of two seven degree of freedom arms mounted on a three degree of freedom torso-waist assembly, is presented. This massively redundant telerobot, designated the Robotics Research K/B-2017 Dexterous Manipulator, employs a modular mechanism design with joint-mounted actuators based on brushless motors and harmonic drive gear reducers. Direct joint torque control at the servo level causes these high-output joint drives to behave like direct-drive actuators, facilitating the implementation of an effective impedance control scheme. The redundant, but conservative motion control system models the manipulator as a spring-loaded linkage with viscous damping and rotary inertia at each joint. This approach allows for real time, sensor-driven control of manipulator pose using a hierarchy of competing rules, or objective functions, to avoid unplanned collisions with objects in the workplace, to produce energy-efficient, graceful motion, to increase leverage, to control effective impedance at the tool or to favor overloaded joints.

Vold, Havard I.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Direct formulation of a 4-node hybrid shell element with rotational degrees of freedom

A simple 4-node assumed-stress hybrid quadrilateral shell element with rotational or 'drilling' degrees of freedom is formulated. The element formulation is based directly on a 4-node element rather than being derived from an 'internal' 8-node isoparametric element. The formulation is based on the principle of minimum complementary energy. The membrane part of the element has 12 degrees of freedom. The bending part of the element also has 12 degrees of freedom. The bending part of the element uses the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory which takes into account the transverse shear effects. Quadratic variations for both in-plane and out-of-plane displacement fields and linear variations for both in-plane and out-of-plane rotation fields are assumed along the edges of the element. The element passes the patch test, is nearly insensitive to mesh distortion, has no spurious modes, and is invariant with respect to node numbering.

Aminpour, Mohammad A.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Multiple degree of freedom object recognition using optical relational graph decision nets

Multiple-degree-of-freedom object recognition concerns objects with no stable rest position with all scale, rotation, and aspect distortions possible. It is assumed that the objects are in a fairly benign background, so that feature extractors are usable. In-plane distortion invariance is provided by use of a polar-log coordinate transform feature space, and out-of-plane distortion invariance is provided by linear discriminant function design. Relational graph decision nets are considered for multiple-degree-of-freedom pattern recognition. The design of Fisher (1936) linear discriminant functions and synthetic discriminant function for use at the nodes of binary and multidecision nets is discussed. Case studies are detailed for two-class and multiclass problems. Simulation results demonstrate the robustness of the processors to quantization of the filter coefficients and to noise.

Casasent, David P.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Charm degrees of freedom in hot matter from lattice QCD

We study the nature of charm degrees of freedom in hot strong interaction matter by performing lattice QCD calculations of the second and fourth-order cumulants of charm fluctuations, and their correlations with net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness fluctuations. We show that below the chiral crossover temperature thermodynamics of charm can be very well understood in terms of charmed hadrons. Above the chiral transition charm quarks show up as new degrees of freedom contributing to the partial charm pressure. However, up to temperatures as high as 175 MeV charmed hadron-like excitations provide a significant contribution to the partial charm pressure.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1992

Improved assumed-stress hybrid shell element with drilling degrees of freedom for linear stress, buckling, and free vibration analyses

An improved four-node quadrilateral assumed-stress hybrid shell element with drilling degrees of freedom is presented. The formulation is based on Hellinger-Reissner variational principle and the shape functions are formulated directly for the four-node element. The element has 12 membrane degrees of freedom and 12 bending degrees of freedom. It has nine independent stress parameters to describe the membrane stress resultant field and 13 independent stress parameters to describe the moment and transverse shear stress resultant field. The formulation encompasses linear stress, linear buckling, and linear free vibration problems. The element is validated with standard tests cases and is shown to be robust. Numerical results are presented for linear stress, buckling, and free vibration analyses.

Rengarajan, Govind↗
NASA NTRS1984

Six Degrees of Freedom Control with Each Hand?

For some time man has made six degree of freedom inputs to a pair of dextrous manipulators using both hands simultaneously by the use of the master/slave concept. The advent of the microprocessor has the potential to make the master/slave concept redundant by replacing the master with a mathematical model. All spacecraft to date, including the space shuttle, that were flown in six degrees of freedom were controlled by using both hands, the left hand controlling translation and the right rotation. Almost inevitably the same principle was applied to the CANADARM. At the instigation of NASA the development of a device whereby both translation and rotation could be combined allowing full control with one hand was developed. The development and testing of the device, and the extension of its application into spaceflight control are described. Also the concept of an adaptable workstation for multi-maniipulator and spacecraft flight control is discussed.

King, M. L.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Analytical model of a five degree of freedom magnetic suspension and positioning system

An analytical model of a five degree of freedom magnetic suspension and positioning system is presented. The suspended element is a cylinder which is composed of permanent magnet material and the magnetic actuators are air core electromagnets mounted in a planar array. The analytical model consists of an open loop representation of the suspension and positioning system with electromagnet currents as inputs and displacements and rates in inertial coordinates as outputs. The uncontrolled degree of freedom is rotation about the long axis of the suspended cylinder.

Groom, Nelson J.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Constraints on the maximal number of dark degrees of freedom from black hole evaporation, cosmic rays, colliders, and supernovae

A dark sector with a very large number of massive degrees of freedom is generically constrained by radiative corrections to Newton’s constant. However, there are caveats to this statement, especially if the degrees of freedom are light or massless. Here, we examine in detail and update a number of constraints on the possible number of dark degrees of freedom, including from black hole evaporation, from perturbations to systems including an evaporating black hole, from direct gravitational production at colliders, from high-energy cosmic rays, and from supernovae energy losses. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Ewasiuk, Chris (ORCID:0009000253197890)↗