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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1988

Large planar maneuvers for articulated flexible manipulators

An articulated flexible manipulator carried on a translational cart is maneuvered by an active controller to perform certain position control tasks. The nonlinear dynamics of the articulated flexible manipulator are derived and a transformation matrix is formulated to localize the nonlinearities in the inertia matrix. Then a feeback linearization scheme is introduced to linearize the dynamic equations for controller design. Through a pole placement technique, a robust controller design is obtained by properly assigning a set of closed-loop desired eigenvalues to meet performance requirements. Numerical simulations for the articulated flexible manipulators are given to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed position control algorithms.

Huang, Jen-Kuang↗
NASA NTRS1994

Vibration suppression in flexible structures via the sliding-mode control approach

Sliding mode control became very popular recently because it makes the closed loop system highly insensitive to external disturbances and parameter variations. Sliding algorithms for flexible structures have been used previously, but these were based on finite-dimensional models. An extension of this approach for differential-difference systems is obtained. That makes if possible to apply sliding-mode control algorithms to the variety of nondispersive flexible structures which can be described as differential-difference systems. The main idea of using this technique for dispersive structures is to reduce the order of the controlled part of the system by applying an integral transformation. We can say that transformation 'absorbs' the dispersive properties of the flexible structure as the controlled part becomes dispersive.

Drakunov, S.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Graphic displays of vector magnetograph data

Graphic displays that have proved useful in dealing with vector magnetograph data are summarized in three settings: real-time control, analysis, and final presentation. Among the topics discussed are: flexible, implicit data-scaling; geometrical transformations; methods of comparing fields (e.g., transverse vs. longitudinal; observed vs. computed; one time vs. another); displaying the magnitude and direction of the transverse field; minimizing the display time of serial graphics devices; graphic file structure; and graphic interaction with operators and observers.

Rabin, D. M.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Small, Lightweight Welding-Current Indicator

Welding-current indicator made of surface-mounted components on flexible circuit board. Holds variety of components on surface. After assembly, flexible circuit wrapped to fit around transformer core. Surface-mounted devices make it unnecessary to drill holes in circuit board to accommodate component leads. Use of small surface-mounted devices result in lightweight, compact indicator circuit.

Huston, Steven W.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Study of design and control of remote manipulators. Part 2: Vibration considerations in manipulator design

An investigation is reported involving a mathematical procedure using 4 x 4 transformation matrices for analyzing the vibrations of flexible manipulators. Previous studies with the procedure are summarized and the method is extended to include flexible joints as well as links, and to account for the effects of various power transmission schemes. A systematic study of the allocation of structural material and the placement of components such as motors and gearboxes was undertaken using the analytical tools developed. As one step in this direction the variables which relate the vibration parameters of the arm to the task and environment of the arm were isolated and nondimensionalized. The 4 x 4 transformation matrices were also used to develop analytical expressions for the terms of the complete 6 x 6 compliance matrix for the case of two flexible links joined by a rotating joint, flexible about its axis of rotation.

Book, W. J.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Onboard multichannel demultiplexer/demodulator

An investigation performed for NASA LeRC by COMSAT Labs, of a digitally implemented on-board demultiplexer/demodulator able to process a mix of uplink carriers of differing bandwidths and center frequencies and programmable in orbit to accommodate variations in traffic flow is reported. The processor accepts high speed samples of the signal carried in a wideband satellite transponder channel, processes these as a composite to determine the signal spectrum, filters the result into individual channels that carry modulated carriers and demodulate these to recover their digital baseband content. The processor is implemented by using forward and inverse pipeline Fast Fourier Transformation techniques. The recovered carriers are then demodulated using a single digitally implemented demodulator that processes all of the modulated carriers. The effort has determined the feasibility of the concept with multiple TDMA carriers, identified critical path technologies, and assessed the potential of developing these technologies to a level capable of supporting a practical, cost effective on-board implementation. The result is a flexible, high speed, digitally implemented Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) bulk demultiplexer/demodulator.

Campanella, S. Joseph↗
NASA NTRS1989

Orthogonal canonical forms for second-order systems

The authors prove that a linear second-order system with arbitrary damping cannot be reduced to Hessenberg-triangular form by means of orthogonal transformations, while this reduction is always possible for the modal damping commonly assumed for models of flexible structures. The type of canonical form obtainable by means of orthogonal transformations acting on a second-order system is heavily dependent on the type of damping considered. If the damping matrix is merely positive semi-definite symmetric, it is generally not possible to obtain a reduction to Hessenberg-triangular form, while this reduction is trivial for zero or Rayleigh damping. If damping is modal, however, as is commonly assumed in structural models, the reduction exists and is nontrivial. Furthermore, reduction to triangular second-order Schur form is always possible for such damping: this canonical form appears likely to have applications to second-order system theory.

Williams, Trevor↗
NASA NTRS1999

Parallel Grid Manipulations in Earth Science Calculations

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Data Assimilation Office (DAO) at the Goddard Space Flight Center is moving its data assimilation system to massively parallel computing platforms. This parallel implementation of GEOS DAS will be used in the DAO's normal activities, which include reanalysis of data, and operational support for flight missions. Key components of GEOS DAS, including the gridpoint-based general circulation model and a data analysis system, are currently being parallelized. The parallelization of GEOS DAS is also one of the HPCC Grand Challenge Projects. The GEOS-DAS software employs several distinct grids. Some examples are: an observation grid- an unstructured grid of points at which observed or measured physical quantities from instruments or satellites are associated- a highly-structured latitude-longitude grid of points spanning the earth at given latitude-longitude coordinates at which prognostic quantities are determined, and a computational lat-lon grid in which the pole has been moved to a different location to avoid computational instabilities. Each of these grids has a different structure and number of constituent points. In spite of that, there are numerous interactions between the grids, e.g., values on one grid must be interpolated to another, or, in other cases, grids need to be redistributed on the underlying parallel platform. The DAO has designed a parallel integrated library for grid manipulations (PILGRIM) to support the needed grid interactions with maximum efficiency. It offers a flexible interface to generate new grids, define transformations between grids and apply them. Basic communication is currently MPI, however the interfaces defined here could conceivably be implemented with other message-passing libraries, e.g., Cray SHMEM, or with shared-memory constructs. The library is written in Fortran 90. First performance results indicate that even difficult problems, such as above-mentioned pole rotation- a sparse interpolation with little data locality between the physical lat-lon grid and a pole rotated computational grid- can be solved efficiently and at the GFlop/s rates needed to solve tomorrow's high resolution earth science models. In the subsequent presentation we will discuss the design and implementation of PILGRIM as well as a number of the problems it is required to solve. Some conclusions will be drawn about the potential performance of the overall earth science models on the supercomputer platforms foreseen for these problems.

Sawyer, W.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Getting a Cohesive Answer from a Common Start: Scalable Multidisciplinary Analysis through Transformation of a Systems Model

One of the challenges of systems engineering is in working multidisciplinary problems in a cohesive manner. When planning analysis of these problems, system engineers must trade between time and cost for analysis quality and quantity. The quality often correlates with greater run time in multidisciplinary models and the quantity is associated with the number of alternatives that can be analyzed. The trade-off is due to the resource intensive process of creating a cohesive multidisciplinary systems model and analysis. Furthermore, reuse or extension of the models used in one stage of a product life cycle for another is a major challenge. Recent developments have enabled a much less resource-intensive and more rigorous approach than hand-written translation scripts between multi-disciplinary models and their analyses. The key is to work from a core systems model defined in a MOF-based language such as SysML and in leveraging the emerging tool ecosystem, such as Query/View/Transformation (QVT), from the OMG community. SysML was designed to model multidisciplinary systems. The QVT standard was designed to transform SysML models into other models, including those leveraged by engineering analyses. The Europa Habitability Mission (EHM) team has begun to exploit these capabilities. In one case, a Matlab/Simulink model is generated on the fly from a system description for power analysis written in SysML. In a more general case, symbolic analysis (supported by Wolfram Mathematica) is coordinated by data objects transformed from the systems model, enabling extremely flexible and powerful design exploration and analytical investigations of expected system performance.

Operational QVT↗
NASA NTRS2012

Getting a Cohesive Answer from a Common Start: Scalable Multidisciplinary Analysis through Transformation of a System Model

One of the challenges of systems engineering is in working multidisciplinary problems in a cohesive manner. When planning analysis of these problems, system engineers must tradeoff time and cost for analysis quality and quantity. The quality is associated with the fidelity of the multidisciplinary models and the quantity is associated with the design space that can be analyzed. The tradeoff is due to the resource intensive process of creating a cohesive multidisciplinary system model and analysis. Furthermore, reuse or extension of the models used in one stage of a product life cycle for another is a major challenge. Recent developments have enabled a much less resource-intensive and more rigorous approach than handwritten translation scripts or codes of multidisciplinary models and their analyses. The key is to work from a core system model defined in a MOF-based language such as SysML and in leveraging the emerging tool ecosystem, such as Query-View- Transform (QVT), from the OMG community. SysML was designed to model multidisciplinary systems and analyses. The QVT standard was designed to transform SysML models. The Europa Hability Mission (EHM) team has begun to exploit these capabilities. In one case, a Matlab/Simulink model is generated on the fly from a system description for power analysis written in SysML. In a more general case, a symbolic mathematical framework (supported by Wolfram Mathematica) is coordinated by data objects transformed from the system model, enabling extremely flexible and powerful tradespace exploration and analytical investigations of expected system performance.

Cole, Bjorn↗
NASA NTRS2016

NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS): A U.S. Network of Data Centers Serving Earth Science Data: A Network Member of ICSU WDS

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been in operation since August 1994, and serving a diverse user community around the world with Earth science data from satellites, aircraft, field campaigns and research investigations. The ESDIS Project, responsible for EOSDIS is a Network Member of the International Council for Sciences (ICSU) World Data System (WDS). Nine of the 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), which are part of EOSDIS, are Regular Members of the ICSUWDS. This poster presents the EOSDIS mission objectives, key characteristics of the DAACs that make them world class Earth science data centers, successes, challenges and best practices of EOSDIS focusing on the years 2014-2016, and illustrates some highlights of accomplishments of EOSDIS. The highlights include: high customer satisfaction, growing archive and distribution volumes, exponential growth in number of products distributed to users around the world, unified metadata model and common metadata repository, flexibility provided to uses by supporting data transformations to suit their applications, near-real-time capabilities to support various operational and research applications, and full resolution image browse capabilities to help users select data of interest. The poster also illustrates how the ESDIS Project is actively involved in several US and international data system organizations.

Earth Science↗
NASA NTRS1985

Transonic calculations for a flexible supercritical wing and comparison with experiment

Pressure data measured on the flexible DAST ARW-2 wing are compared with results calculated using the transonic small perturbation code XTRAN3S. A brief description of the analysis is given and a recently developed grid coordinate transformation is described. Calculations are presented for the rigid and flexible wing for Mach numbers from 0.60 to 0.90 and dynamic pressures from 0 to 1000 psf. Calculated and measured static pressures and wing deflections are compared, and calculated static aeroelastic trends are given. Attempts to calculate the transonic instability boundary of the wing are described.

Bennett, R. M.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Transonic calculations for a flexible supercritical wing and comparison with experiment

Pressure data measured on the flexible DAST ARW-2 wing are compared with results calculated using the transonic small perturbation code XTRAN3S. A brief description of the analysis is given and a recently-developed grid coordinate transformation is described. Calculations are presented for the rigid and flexible wing for Mach numbers from 0.60 to 0.90 and dynamic pressures from 0 to 1000 psf. Calculated and measured static pressures and wing deflections are compared, and calculated static aeroelastic trends are given. Attempts to calculate the transonic instability boundary of the wing are described.

Bennett, R. M.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Fast Transformation of Temporal Plans for Efficient Execution

Temporal plans permit significant flexibility in specifying the occurrence time of events. Plan execution can make good use of that flexibility. However, the advantage of execution flexibility is counterbalanced by the cost during execution of propagating the time of occurrence of events throughout the flexible plan. To minimize execution latency, this propagation needs to be very efficient. Previous work showed that every temporal plan can be reformulated as a dispatchable plan, i.e., one for which propagation to immediate neighbors is sufficient. A simple algorithm was given that finds a dispatchable plan with a minimum number of edges in cubic time and quadratic space. In this paper, we focus on the efficiency of the reformulation process, and improve on that result. A new algorithm is presented that uses linear space and has time complexity equivalent to Johnson s algorithm for all-pairs shortest-path problems. Experimental evidence confirms the practical effectiveness of the new algorithm. For example, on a large commercial application, the performance is improved by at least two orders of magnitude. We further show that the dispatchable plan, already minimal in the total number of edges, can also be made minimal in the maximum number of edges incoming or outgoing at any node.

Tsamardinos, Ioannis↗
NASA NTRS1990

Transformational part-count in layered octahedral-tetrahedral truss configurations

The number of component part (nodes, struts and panels) termed part count, is an important factor in the design, manufacture, and assembly of modular space structures. Part count expressions are presented for a variety of profiles derived from the layered octahedral-tetrahedral truss configuration. Referred to as the tetrahedral truss in the NASA projects, this specific geometry has been used in several missions. The general expressions presented here transforms to others as one profile changes to another. Such transformational part count relations provide a measure of flexibility and generality, and may be useful when dealing with a wider range of geometric configurations.

Lalvani, Haresh↗
NASA NTRS1988

Experiences with serial and parallel algorithms for channel routing using simulated annealing

Two algorithms for channel routing using simulated annealing are presented. Simulated annealing is an optimization methodology which allows the solution process to back up out of local minima that may be encountered by inappropriate selections. By properly controlling the annealing process, it is very likely that the optimal solution to an NP-complete problem such as channel routing may be found. The algorithm presented proposes very relaxed restrictions on the types of allowable transformations, including overlapping nets. By freeing that restriction and controlling overlap situations with an appropriate cost function, the algorithm becomes very flexible and can be applied to many extensions of channel routing. The selection of the transformation utilizes a number of heuristics, still retaining the pseudorandom nature of simulated annealing. The algorithm was implemented as a serial program for a workstation, and a parallel program designed for a hypercube computer. The details of the serial implementation are presented, including many of the heuristics used and some of the resulting solutions.

Brouwer, Randall Jay↗