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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 415 records · Page 23

Evaluation of Fuzzy Rulemaking for Expert Systems for Failure Detection

Computer aids in expert systems were proposed to diagnose failures in complex systems. It is shown that the fuzzy set theory of Zadeh offers a new perspective for modeling for humans thinking and language use. It is assumed that real expert human operators of aircraft, power plants and other systems do not think of their control tasks or failure diagnosis tasks in terms of control laws in differential equation form, but rather keep in mind a set of rules of thumb in fuzzy form. Fuzzy set experiments are described.

Laritz, F.↗

Preliminary design study of hydrogen and ammonia resistojets for prime and auxiliary thrusters

Designs of high performance resistojets for primary and auxiliary propulsion are described.Thruster power for the primary propulsion application was in the 2 to 3 kW range while auxiliary propulsion power per thruster was 0.15 to 0.25 kW. Propellants considered were hydrogen and ammonia. The report described design techniques used to forecast the temperature and energy flux distributions using mathematical modeling by personal microcomputer. BASIC language is used throughout to give the designer rapid interaction and control. Both designs integrate compact first stage coils with concentric tubular heaters. The hybrid heater design allows better thruster power matching with the spacecraft power bus. Projected specific impulse levels were 760 to 830 s for hydrogen and 380 to 410 s for ammonia.

Page, Russell J.↗

IMP: A performance code

IMP (Integrated Mission Program) is a simulation language and code used to model present and future Earth, Moon, or Mars missions. The profile is user controlled through selection from a large menu of events and maneuvers. A Fehlberg 7/13 Runge-Kutta integrator with error and step size control is used to numerically integrate the differential equations of motion (DEQ) of three spacecraft, a main, a target, and an observer. Through selection, the DEQ's include guided thrust, oblate gravity, atmosphere drag, solar pressure, and Moon gravity effects. Guide parameters for thrust events and performance parameters of velocity changes (Delta-V) and propellant usage (maximum of five systems) are developed as needed. Print, plot, summary, and debug files are output.

Dauro, Vincent A., Sr.↗

Individual differences in airline captains' personalities, communication strategies, and crew performance

Aircrew effectiveness in coping with emergencies has been linked to captain's personality profile. The present study analyzed cockpit communication during simulated flight to examine the relation between captains' discourse strategies, personality profiles, and crew performance. Positive Instrumental/Expressive captains and Instrumental-Negative captains used very similar communication strategies and their crews made few errors. Their talk was distinguished by high levels of planning and strategizing, gathering information, predicting/alerting, and explaining, especially during the emergency flight phase. Negative-Expressive captains talked less overall, and engaged in little problem solving talk, even during emergencies. Their crews made many errors. Findings support the theory that high crew performance results when captains use language to build shared mental models for problem situations.

Orasanu, Judith↗

Human Mars Mission Performance Crew Taxi Profile

Using the results from Integrated Mission Program (IMP), a simulation language and code used to model present and future Earth Moon, or Mars missions, this report presents six different case studies of a manned Mars mission. The mission profiles, timelines, propellant requirements, feasibility and perturbation analysis is presented for two aborted, two delayed rendezvous, and two normal rendezvous cases for a future Mars mission.

Duaro, Vince A.↗

Scientific Programming Using Java and C: A Remote Sensing Example

This paper presents results of a project to port code for processing remotely sensed data from the UNIX environment to Windows. Factors considered during this process include time schedule, cost, resource availability, reuse of existing code, rapid interface development, ease of integration, and platform independence. The approach selected for this project used both Java and C. By using Java for the graphical user interface and C for the domain model, the strengths of both languages were utilized and the resulting code can easily be ported to other platforms. The advantages of this approach are discussed in this paper.

Prados, Donald↗

Optimal Planning and Problem-Solving

CTAEMS MDP Optimal Planner is a problem-solving software designed to command a single spacecraft/rover, or a team of spacecraft/rovers, to perform the best action possible at all times according to an abstract model of the spacecraft/rover and its environment. It also may be useful in solving logistical problems encountered in commercial applications such as shipping and manufacturing. The planner reasons around uncertainty according to specified probabilities of outcomes using a plan hierarchy to avoid exploring certain kinds of suboptimal actions. Also, planned actions are calculated as the state-action space is expanded, rather than afterward, to reduce by an order of magnitude the processing time and memory used. The software solves planning problems with actions that can execute concurrently, that have uncertain duration and quality, and that have functional dependencies on others that affect quality. These problems are modeled in a hierarchical planning language called C_TAEMS, a derivative of the TAEMS language for specifying domains for the DARPA Coordinators program. In realistic environments, actions often have uncertain outcomes and can have complex relationships with other tasks. The planner approaches problems by considering all possible actions that may be taken from any state reachable from a given, initial state, and from within the constraints of a given task hierarchy that specifies what tasks may be performed by which team member.

Clemet, Bradley↗

SimCheck: An Expressive Type System for Simulink

MATLAB Simulink is a member of a class of visual languages that are used for modeling and simulating physical and cyber-physical systems. A Simulink model consists of blocks with input and output ports connected using links that carry signals. We extend the type system of Simulink with annotations and dimensions/units associated with ports and links. These types can capture invariants on signals as well as relations between signals. We define a type-checker that checks the wellformedness of Simulink blocks with respect to these type annotations. The type checker generates proof obligations that are solved by SRI's Yices solver for satisfiability modulo theories (SMT). This translation can be used to detect type errors, demonstrate counterexamples, generate test cases, or prove the absence of type errors. Our work is an initial step toward the symbolic analysis of MATLAB Simulink models.

Roy, Pritam↗

Continental Spatio-Temporal Data Analysis with Linear Spectral Mixture Model Using FOSS

This work demonstrates the development and implementation of a Fully Constrained Least Squares (FCLS) unmixing model developed in C++ programming language with OpenCV package and boost C++ libraries in the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX). Visualization of the results is supported by GRASS GIS and statistical analysis is carried in R in a Linux system environment. FCLS was first tested on computer simulated data with Gaussian noise of various signal-to-noise ratio, and Landsat data of an agricultural scenario and an urban environment using a set of global end members of substrate (soils, sediments, rocks, and non-photosynthetic vegetation), vegetation that includes green photosynthetic plants and dark objects which encompasses absorptive substrate materials, clear water, deep shadows, etc. For the agricultural scenario, a spectrally diverse collection of 11 scenes of Level 1 terrain corrected, cloud free Landsat-5 TM data of Fresno, California, USA were unmixed and the results were validated with the corresponding ground data. To study an urbanized landscape, a clear sky Landsat-5 TM data were unmixed and validated with coincident World View-2 abundance maps (of 2 m spatial resolution) for an area of San Francisco, California, USA. The results were evaluated using descriptive statistics, correlation coefficient, RMSE, probability of success, boxplot and bivariate distribution function. Finally, FCLS was used for sub-pixel land cover analysis of the monthly WELD (Wen-enabled Landsat data) repository from 2008 to 2011 of North America. The abundance maps in conjunction with DMSP-OLS nighttime lights data were used to extract the urban land cover features and analyze their spatial-temporal growth.

Landsat Satellites↗

A NICER View of the Massive Pulsar PSR J0740+6620 Informed by Radio Timing and XMM-Newton Spectroscopy

We report on Bayesian estimation of the radius, mass, and hot surface regions of the massive millisecond pulsar PSR J0740+6620, conditional on pulse-profile modeling of Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer X-ray Timing Instrument event data. We condition on informative pulsar mass, distance, and orbital inclination priors derived from the joint North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves and Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment/Pulsar wideband radio timing measurements of Fonseca et al. We use XMM-Newton European Photon Imaging Camera spectroscopic event data to inform our X-ray likelihood function. The prior support of the pulsar radius is truncated at 16 km to ensure coverage of current dense matter models. We assume conservative priors on instrument calibration uncertainty. We constrain the equatorial radius and mass of PSR J0740+6620 to be-+12.390.981.30km and-+2.0720.0660.067Me respectively, each reported as the posterior credible interval bounded by the 16% and 84% quantiles, conditional on surface hot regions that are non-overlapping spherical caps of fully ionized hydrogen atmosphere with uniform effective temperature; a posteriori, the temperature is=-+TlogK5.99100.060.05([])for each hot region. All software for the X-ray modeling framework is open-source and all data, model, and sample information is publicly available, including analysis notebooks and model modules in the Python language. Our marginal likelihood function of mass and equatorial radius is proportional to the marginal joint posterior density of those parameters(within the prior support)and can thus be computed from the posterior samples.

Millisecond pulsars↗

Computers formed by the problems rather than problems deformed by the computers.

Description of an approach to computer programming which tries to minimize the time required for retranslation from the computer language into the language of the original process. A notion of a programmable network is introduced which allows the abstract machines that are a model of the processes in the user's mind to be put into a rigorous and simple form. Each process is then modeled as a particular finite-state machine, a circulating page loose system being employed as an architecture for implementing these finite-state machines. An experiment is discussed in which the use of abstract machines as a language for modeling processes, in conjunction with the use of a self-organizing computer, decreases user effort, eliminates the need for compilation, facilitates debugging, and decreases computer time.

Schaffner, M. R.↗

The Loyal Opposition Comments on Plan Domain Description Languages

In this paper we take a critical look at PDDL 2.1 as designers and users of plan domain description languages. We describe planning domains that have features which are hard to model using PDDL 2.1. We then offer some suggestions on domain description language design, and describe how these suggestions make modeling our chosen domains easier.

Frank, Jeremy↗

A new simulation model building process for use in dynamic systems integration research

A framework to build simulation models for aircraft dynamic systems integration is described. The objective of the framework is increased simulation model fidelity and reduced time required to develop and modify these models. The equations of motion for an elastic aircraft and their impact on the framework are discussed in broad terms. A software tool which automatically generates FORTRAN routines for tabular data lookups, the language used to develop a simulation model, and the structures for passing information into a simulation are discussed. A simulation variable nomenclature is presented. The framework has been applied to build an open-loop F/A-18 simulation model. This example model is used to illustrate model reduction issues. Current deficiencies in the framework are identified as areas for future research.

Arbuckle, P. Douglas↗

Formalizing and Analyzing Requirements with FRET

Formal verification and simulation are powerful tools to validate requirements against complex systems. Requirements are developed in early stages of the software lifecycle and are typically written in ambiguous natural language. There is a gap between such requirements and formal notations that can be used by verification tools, and lack of support for proper association of requirements with software artifacts for verification. We propose to write requirements in an intuitive, structured natural language with formal semantics, and to support formalization and model/code verification as a smooth, well-integrated process. To this end, we have developed an end-to-end, open source requirements analysis framework that checks Simulink models against requirements written structured natural language.

Mavridou, Anastasia↗

Developing a Multi-Lingual Autocoding Interface for the MAVERIC-II Dynamics Simulator

Simulation model development in certain high-level languages such as Python, MATLAB, or Simulink are unparalleled by their convenience and rapid turnover time. However, legacy simulation engines often depend on more traditional languages such as FORTRAN or C/C++. The NASA Marshall Aerospace Vehicle Representation in C version II (MAVERIC-II) is a modular, legacy-derived computer program used for high-fidelity, 6 degree-of-freedom (6dof) simulation for aerospace vehicle flights and analyses of guidance and control performance with built-in mathematical modeling of environmental effects such as wind, atmosphere, and gravity as well as dispersion capability for Monte Carlo analysis. MAVERIC-II is modular in the sense that each component software element of the simulation engine may be supplanted for a higher or lower fidelity version. The design flow of the development of these models is often performed in high-level languages as mentioned previously, which must then be translated into C or C++ code to be integrated into MAVERIC-II. We propose a unified method of autocoding and interfacing between several languages and MAVERIC-II, which may be generalized further to any type of 6dof simulation engine.

Mason Nixon↗

HiRel: Hybrid Automated Reliability Predictor (HARP) integrated reliability tool system, (version 7.0). Volume 2: HARP tutorial

The Hybrid Automated Reliability Predictor (HARP) integrated Reliability (HiRel) tool system for reliability/availability prediction offers a toolbox of integrated reliability/availability programs that can be used to customize the user's application in a workstation or nonworkstation environment. The Hybrid Automated Reliability Predictor (HARP) tutorial provides insight into HARP modeling techniques and the interactive textual prompting input language via a step-by-step explanation and demonstration of HARP's fault occurrence/repair model and the fault/error handling models. Example applications are worked in their entirety and the HARP tabular output data are presented for each. Simple models are presented at first with each succeeding example demonstrating greater modeling power and complexity. This document is not intended to present the theoretical and mathematical basis for HARP.

Rothmann, Elizabeth↗

Semantic definitions of space flight control center languages using the hierarchical graph technique

In this paper a method is described by which the semantic definitions of the Goddard Space Flight Control Center Command Languages can be specified. The semantic modeling facility used is an extension of the hierarchical graph technique, which has a major benefit of supporting a variety of data structures and a variety of control structures. It is particularly suited for the semantic descriptions of such types of languages where the detailed separation between the underlying operating system and the command language system is system dependent. These definitions were used in the definition of the Systems Test and Operation Language (STOL) of the Goddard Space Flight Center which is a command language that provides means for the user to communicate with payloads, application programs, and other ground system elements.

Zaghloul, M. E.↗

Model-Drive Architecture for Agent-Based Systems

The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach uses a platform-independent model to define system functionality, or requirements, using some specification language. The requirements are then translated to a platform-specific model for implementation. An agent architecture based on the human cognitive model of planning, the Cognitive Agent Architecture (Cougaar) is selected for the implementation platform. The resulting Cougaar MDA prescribes certain kinds of models to be used, how those models may be prepared and the relationships of the different kinds of models. Using the existing Cougaar architecture, the level of application composition is elevated from individual components to domain level model specifications in order to generate software artifacts. The software artifacts generation is based on a metamodel. Each component maps to a UML structured component which is then converted into multiple artifacts: Cougaar/Java code, documentation, and test cases.

Gradanin, Denis↗