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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 379 records · Page 21

Synchrontron VUV and Soft X-Ray Radiation Effects on Aluminized Teflon FEP

Surfaces of the aluminized Teflon FEP multi-layer thermal insulation on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) were found to be cracked and curled in some areas at the time of the second servicing, mission in February 1997, 6.8 years after HST was deployed in low Earth orbit (LEO). As part of a test program to assess environmental conditions which would produce embrittlement sufficient to cause cracking of Teflon on HST, samples of Teflon FEP with a backside layer of vapor deposited aluminum were exposed to vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and soft x-ray radiation of various energies using facilities at the National Synchrotron Light Source. Brookhaven National Laboratory. Samples were exposed to synchrotron radiation of narrow energy bands centered on energies between 69 eV and 1900 eV. Samples were analyzed for ultimate tensile strength and elongation. Results will be compared to those of aluminized Teflon FEP retrieved from HST after 3.6 years and 6.8 years on orbit and will he referenced to estimated HST mission doses of VUV and soft x-ray radiation.

Dever, Joyce A.↗

Energetic Combustion Devices for Aerospace Propulsion and Power

Chemical reactions have long been the mainstay thermal energy source for aerospace propulsion and power. Although it is widely recognized that the intrinsic energy density limitations of chemical bonds place severe constraints on maximum realizable performance, it will likely be several years before systems based on high energy density nuclear fuels can be placed into routine service. In the mean time, efforts to develop high energy density chemicals and advanced combustion devices which can utilize such energetic fuels may yield worthwhile returns in overall system performance and cost. Current efforts in this vein are being carried out at NASA MSFC under the direction of the author in the areas of pulse detonation engine technology development and light metals combustion devices. Pulse detonation engines are touted as a low cost alternative to gas turbine engines and to conventional rocket engines, but actual performance and cost benefits have yet to be convincingly demonstrated. Light metal fueled engines also offer potential benefits in certain niche applications such as aluminum/CO2 fueled engines for endo-atmospheric Martian propulsion. Light metal fueled MHD generators also present promising opportunities with respect to electric power generation for electromagnetic launch assist. This presentation will discuss the applications potential of these concepts with respect to aero ace propulsion and power and will review the current status of the development efforts.

Litchford, Ron J.↗

Computer Technology for Industry

In this age of the computer, more and more business firms are automating their operations for increased efficiency in a great variety of jobs, from simple accounting to managing inventories, from precise machining to analyzing complex structures. In the interest of national productivity, NASA is providing assistance both to longtime computer users and newcomers to automated operations. Through a special technology utilization service, NASA saves industry time and money by making available already developed computer programs which have secondary utility. A computer program is essentially a set of instructions which tells the computer how to produce desired information or effect by drawing upon its stored input. Developing a new program from scratch can be costly and time-consuming. Very often, however, a program developed for one purpose can readily be adapted to a totally different application. To help industry take advantage of existing computer technology, NASA operates the Computer Software Management and Information Center (COSMIC)(registered TradeMark),located at the University of Georgia. COSMIC maintains a large library of computer programs developed for NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and other technology-generating agencies of the government. The Center gets a continual flow of software packages, screens them for adaptability to private sector usage, stores them and informs potential customers of their availability.

Source record↗

Solar Schematic

The home shown at right is specially designed to accommodate solar heating units; it has roof planes in four directions, allowing placement of solar collectors for best exposure to the sun. Plans (bottom) and complete working blueprints for the solar-heated house are being marketed by Home Building Plan Service, Portland, Oregon. The company also offers an inexpensive schematic (center) showing how a homeowner only moderately skilled in the use of tools can build his own solar energy system, applicable to new or existing structures. The schematic is based upon the design of a low-cost solar home heating system built and tested by NASA's Langley Research Center; used to supplement a warm-air heating system, it can save the homeowner about 40 percent of his annual heating bill for a modest investment in materials and components. Home Building Plan Service saved considerable research time by obtaining a NASA technical report which details the Langley work. The resulting schematic includes construction plans and simplified explanations of solar heat collection, collectors and other components, passive heat factors, domestic hot water supply and how to work with local heating engineers.

Source record↗

Shuttle Wing Leading Edge Root Cause NDE Team Findings and Implementation of Quantitative Flash Infrared Thermography

Comparison metrics can be established to reliably and repeatedly establish the health of the joggle region of the Orbiter Wing Leading Edge reinforced carbon carbon (RCC) panels. Using these metrics can greatly reduced the man hours needed to perform, wing leading edge scanning for service induced damage. These time savings have allowed for more thorough inspections to be preformed in the necessary areas with out affecting orbiter flow schedule. Using specialized local inspections allows for a larger margin of safety by allowing for more complete characterizations of panel defects. The presence of the t-seal during thermographic inspection can have adverse masking affects on ability properly characterize defects that exist in the joggle region of the RCC panels. This masking affect dictates the final specialized inspection should be preformed with the t-seal removed. Removal of the t-seal and use of the higher magnification optics has lead to the most effective and repeatable inspection method for characterizing and tracking defects in the wing leading edge. Through this study some inadequacies in the main health monitoring system for the orbiter wing leading edge have been identified and corrected. The use of metrics and local specialized inspection have lead to a greatly increased reliability and repeatable inspection of the shuttle wing leading edge.

Burke, Eric R.↗

Tracking Provenance of Earth Science Data

Tremendous volumes of data have been captured, archived and analyzed. Sensors, algorithms and processing systems for transforming and analyzing the data are evolving over time. Web Portals and Services can create transient data sets on-demand. Data are transferred from organization to organization with additional transformations at every stage. Provenance in this context refers to the source of data and a record of the process that led to its current state. It encompasses the documentation of a variety of artifacts related to particular data. Provenance is important for understanding and using scientific datasets, and critical for independent confirmation of scientific results. Managing provenance throughout scientific data processing has gained interest lately and there are a variety of approaches. Large scale scientific datasets consisting of thousands to millions of individual data files and processes offer particular challenges. This paper uses the analogy of art history provenance to explore some of the concerns of applying provenance tracking to earth science data. It also illustrates some of the provenance issues with examples drawn from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Data Processing System (OMIDAPS) run at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center by the first author.

Tilmes, Curt↗

The Digital Twin Paradigm for Future NASA and U.S. Air Force Vehicles

Future generations of NASA and U.S. Air Force vehicles will require lighter mass while being subjected to higher loads and more extreme service conditions over longer time periods than the present generation. Current approaches for certification, fleet management and sustainment are largely based on statistical distributions of material properties, heuristic design philosophies, physical testing and assumed similitude between testing and operational conditions and will likely be unable to address these extreme requirements. To address the shortcomings of conventional approaches, a fundamental paradigm shift is needed. This paradigm shift, the Digital Twin, integrates ultra-high fidelity simulation with the vehicle s on-board integrated vehicle health management system, maintenance history and all available historical and fleet data to mirror the life of its flying twin and enable unprecedented levels of safety and reliability.

Glaessgen, Edward H.↗

Towards a State Based Control Architecture for Large Telescopes: Laying a Foundation at the VLT

Large telescopes are characterized by a high level of distribution of control-related tasks and will feature diverse data flow patterns and large ranges of sampling frequencies; there will often be no single, fixed server-client relationship between the control tasks. the architecture is also challenged by the task of integrating heterogeneous subsystems which will be delivered by multiple different contractors. Due to the high number of distributed components, the control system needs to effectively detect errors and faults, impede their propagation, and accurately mitigate them in the shortest time possible, enabling the service to be restored. The presented Data-Driven Architecture is based on a decentralized approach with an end-to-end integration of disparate, independently developed software components. These components employ a high-performance standards-based communication middle-ware infrastructure, based on the Data Distribution Service. A set of rules and principles, based on JPL's State Analysis method and architecture, are use to constrain component-to component interactions, where the Control System and System Under Control are clearly separated. State Analysis provide a model-based process for capturing system and software requirements and design, greatly reducing the gap between the requirements on software specified by systems engineers and the implementation by software engineers. The method and architecture has been field tested at the Very Large Telescope, where it has been integrated into an operational system.

European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)↗

Enabling Earth Science Through Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing holds tremendous potential for missions across the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Several flight missions are already benefiting from an investment in cloud computing for mission critical pipelines and services through faster processing time, higher availability, and drastically lower costs available on cloud systems. However, these processes do not currently extend to general scientific algorithms relevant to earth science missions. The members of the Airborne Cloud Computing Environment task at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have worked closely with the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) mission to integrate cloud computing into their science data processing pipeline. This paper details the efforts involved in deploying a science data system for the CARVE mission, evaluating and integrating cloud computing solutions with the system and porting their science algorithms for execution in a cloud environment.

science data system↗

Restructuring Big Data to Improve Data Access and Performance in Analytic Services Making Research More Efficient for the Study of Extreme Weather Events and Application User Communities

By developing and enhancing various services and tools, the GES DISC provides users with the capability to access and visualize data, and to make comparisons of data from multiple sensor and models via a number of cross-discipline projects. Discovering Data via Faceted Web Interface Web interface to data products and services Search and Download mechanisms Dataset Landing Pages Accessing Data through Interoperable Services: GDS – GrADS Data Server OPeNDAP - Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol WMS – OGC service GIS connector – allowing IS tools to access data easier (coming soon) HTTPS -- direct online access Downloading Data Basics: Subset and egridding Service – Parameter, Spatial, Time, Vertical, Mean averaging, format conversion, and regridding for L3/L4 gridded data Swath Data Subsetter – Parameter, spatial subset of L2 /L1 data. Visualizing Data Online: Giovanni –Visualization and Analysis L3/L4 gridded data AIRS NRT Viewer – AIRS near-real-time DQVis – L2 data quality visualization

data cube↗

NASA ATD2/DIP SWIFT Update

This briefing includes real-time machine learning based services powered by SWIM and discussion of the opportunity to engage in NASA’s Digital Information Platform effort.

SWIFT↗

Probabilistic Modeling of Commercial Building Occupancy Patterns Using Location-Based Map Data: Preprint

Considering occupancy patterns is crucial to simulate buildings' energy use. Current energy models use inputs that simplify the actual diversity in occupancy into static occupancy patterns and are not able to represent the numerous variations in occupancy patterns between buildings and across different locations. Recently, inferring occupancy schedules from metered electricity consumption data was used to model occupancy in commercial buildings. However, the translation from metered data to occupancy schedules requires many assumptions that might not capture the reality, and the process is hindered by the availability of data from advanced metering infrastructure. With the development of information technologies, occupancy modeling should not be limited to traditional approaches. The prevalence of social networks and location services with real-time user feedback provides publicly accessible data via Maps Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) such as Google Maps, SafeGraph, Mapbox, Foursquare, etc. This paper presents an automated framework for modeling parametric occupancy patterns using such APIs to calibrate commercial district buildings' energy models. This process includes three main steps: data extraction and processing, parametric schedules generation, and schedules integration. We demonstrated this framework in districts where we used maps API to generate more accurate behavioral patterns for operations and electric vehicle charging events. We used these patterns to determine differences in energy use across key sociodemographic and spatial parameters. The presented method has the potential for worldwide applications. Users can utilize this framework to extract data for selected locations of interest to create more realistic behavioral patterns for commercial facilities across different districts.

building energy modeling↗

Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid (RIAPS)

A number of emerging trends will substantially alter the operation and control of the electric grid over the next several decades. These trends include ensuring resiliency under severe weather events, increasing integration of renewable electricity generation, supporting changing electricity demand patterns, and the improving cost effectiveness of distributed energy resources. To address these challenges, the future “Smart Grid” management will need to transition from centralized to coordinated distributed control paradigm. Reliable operation of the Smart Grid depends on distributed intelligence realized through software applications that run on distributed computing devices attached to the power system to collect data and collaboratively manage resources. However, much of the existing software for Smart Grid-enabled devices is either proprietary or developed with custom solutions, which limits interoperability among the heterogeneous devices and hinders the ability to manage system-level reliability, security, and resiliency requirements. Additionally, this approach makes Smart Grid applications hard to maintain, evolve, verify, and replace; resulting in high development and deployment costs. Further development of the Smart Grid requires a reusable software base-layer to move from hard-coded functionality to a plug-and-play architecture capable of managing system-level objectives and constraints in addition to providing consistent common services across heterogeneous devices and applications. Vanderbilt University, in collaboration with North Carolina State University and Washington State University has developed a foundation ‘software platform’ for developing and deploying robust, reliable, effective and secure software applications for the Smart Grid. The Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS) provides core services for building effective and powerful smart grid applications. It offers unique services for real-time data dissemination, fault tolerance, and coordination across apps distributed over the network.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Duluth Transit Authority Battery-Electric Bus Evaluation

Duluth Transit Authority (DTA) collaborated with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to evaluate a fleet of seven battery-electric buses (BEBs) in revenue service in Duluth, Minnesota. The focus of the evaluation was to compare performance and cost of the BEBs to that of conventional technology buses in similar service and track progress over time. DTA enlisted the help of the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) to manage the project and provide technical services with the BEB fleet and infrastructure. This report summarizes the results of the BEB evaluation and contains a combination of analyses performed by NREL and by CTE during the overall data collection period of December 2018 through February 2022.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Stratified processes to analyze SSME parts and subsystems using Weibull methodology

Due to the various parts found in a Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), analyzation of every part is not feasible or needed. Based on previous mathematical modeling experience of high velocity cryogenic equipment, the environmental traits of location of the part, temperature range, fluid velocity, pressure range, and elevation variation of fluid flow as being significant factors were determined. Six parts categories were developed. The part categories are: (1) fuel turbomachinery, (2) oxidizer, (3) combustion devices, (4) valves, (5) ducts, and (6) lines. Due to a suspicion that superficial failure modes exist, six status codes were developed. The codes are: (1) part is in service presently, (2) part is out-of-service due to its own failure, (3) part is out-of-service due to engine (or some other part failure), (4) part is out-of-service because it's retired/obsolete (time related), (5) never fired-scrapped due to own problem or part is store, and (6) part is out-of-service for repair. It was suggested that to properly model failure behavior of SSME parts that: (1) significant factors contributing to failure must be examined, (2) relatively precision based on real life data must be examined, and (3) alternative definitions of failure must be initialized by the engineers.

Gray, Lou Allen Bell↗

Forty and 80 GHz technology assessment and forecast including executive summary

The results of a survey to determine current demand and to forecast growth in demand for use of the 40 and 80 GHz bands during the 1980-2000 time period are given. The current state-of-the-art is presented, as well as the technology requirements of current and projected services. Potential developments were identified, and a forecast is made. The impacts of atmospheric attenuation in the 40 and 80 GHz bands were estimated for both with and without diversity. Three services for the 1980-2000 time period -- interactive television, high quality three stereo pair audio, and 30 MB data -- are given with system requirements and up and down-link calculations.

Mazur, D. G.↗

Improvements and Additions to NASA Near Real-Time Earth Imagery

For many years, the NASA Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) has worked closely with the Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (Earth Observing System) (LANCE) system to provide near real-time imagery visualizations of AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder), MLS (Microwave Limb Sounder), MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer), OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument), and recently VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) science parameters. These visualizations are readily available through standard web services and the NASA Worldview client. Access to near real-time imagery provides a critical capability to GIBS and Worldview users. GIBS continues to focus on improving its commitment to providing near real-time imagery for end-user applications. The focus of this presentation will be the following completed or planned GIBS system and imagery enhancements relating to near real-time imagery visualization.

near real time↗

How Time Inefficient and Uncertain are Paratransit Trips Compared to Car Trips

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) stipulates that paratransit mobility be comparable to public transit. However, with just under 5% of the population relying on public transportation, transit is not a representative benchmark. To highlight this inequality, we compare trip times by paratransit to counterfactual car-based travel. Using 2.5 years of demand data from the Denver Regional Transportation District's Access-a-Ride service, we compare paratransit trip times to counterfactual car-based trips for the same origin-destination pairs, controlling for various trip characteristics. Compared to car travel, the findings indicate high variability and uncertainty associated with paratransit trip times. For the same origin-destination pairs, the mean paratransit trip time is almost twice that of the mean car travel time, with a standard deviation for paratransit trip time fourfold that of the standard deviation for car trip time. For perspective, traveling an average of 10 mi during the 7-8 a.m. morning peak can take about 16 min by car with almost no variability, while that same trip can take an average of 25 min by paratransit, with 5% of trips being outside the 95% confidence interval and thus unpredictable. Paratransit trip time inefficiency tends to be particularly worse for females; older adults; those making trips between 9 and 11 a.m.; cash-paying customers; those making shorter trips; and those traveling during inclement weather, including cold temperatures. These findings suggest a need to re-assess using public transit as a benchmark for paratransit supply as regulated by the ADA.

accessible transportation and mobility↗