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NASA NTRS1986

The dynamic behavior of plasmas observed near geosynchronous orbit

The behavior of plasmas observed by the ATS-6, ATS-5, and SCATHA spacecraft in the vicinity of synchronous orbit in the earth's magnetosphere is investigated. Two predominant features noted are the sudden appearance of injections, and the presence of marked magnetic field-aligned structure. Injections are geosynchronous manifestations of the global acceleration process producing the aurora. Field-aligned fluxes can be as much as two order of magnitude larger than perpendicular fluxes, and ions and electrons often display different field-aligned structure which changes with energy, suggesting field-aligned acceleration processes. Other observed phenomena include particle and field wave activity, and various kinds of plasma heating. Spacecraft charging events illustrate the effects of the hot magnetospheric plasma on material objects.

Mcilwain, C. E.↗

NASA NTRS1994

General analytic results for nonlinear waves and solitons in molecular clouds

We study nonlinear wave phenomena in self-gravitating fluid systems, with a particular emphasis on applications to molecular clouds. This paper presents analytical results for one spatial dimension. We show that a large class of physical systems can be described by theories with a 'charge density' q(rho); this quantity replaces the density on the right-hand side of the Poisson equation for the gravitational potential. We use this formulation to prove general results about nonlinear wave motions in self-gravitating systems. We show that in order for stationary waves to exist, the total charge (the integral of the charge density over the wave profile) must vanish. This 'no-charge' property for solitary waves is related to the capability of a system to be stable to gravitational perturbations for arbitrarily long wavelengths. We find necessary and sufficient conditions on the charge density for the existence of solitary waves and stationary waves. We study nonlinear wave motions for Jeans-type theories (where q(rho) = rho-rho(sub 0)) and find that nonlinear waves of large amplitude are confined to a rather narrow range of wavelengths. We also study wave motions for molecular clouds threaded by magnetic fields and show how the allowed range of wavelengths is affected by the field strength. Since the gravitational force in one spatial dimension does not fall off with distance, we consider two classes of models with more realistic gravity: Yukawa potentials and a pseudo two-dimensional treatment. We study the allowed types of wave behavior for these models. Finally, we discuss the implications of this work for molecular cloud structure. We argue that molecular clouds can support a wide variety of wave motions and suggest that stationary waves (such as those considered in this paper) may have already been observed.

Adams, Fred C.↗

NASA NTRS1997

Behavior of 2-Cell CPV Ni-H2 Battery During Pulse Discharge

A study was carried out to determine the transient voltage behavior of the 2-cell CPV nickel-hydrogen battery with the objective of using the results as a basis for mathematical modeling. The 2-cell CPV battery which is manufactured by Eagle Picher, Inc. for the GOES program yields 18.5 Ah at C/2 rate of discharge at 10 C with a mid-discharge voltage of 2.514 V. The capacity increased with decrease of temperature and a maximum capacity of 22 Ah was obtained at -5 C. The pulse tests consisted of obtaining the voltage profile in the first 20 milliseconds of the one minute pulse discharge at 37 A and pulse discharge was repeated as a function of state- of- charge. The pulse test at 10 C and 20 C provided voltage profiles with the expected decrease in voltage as the pulse was applied. The end of pulse voltage decreased with the state-of-charge. The battery voltage was above 2V at the end of the one-minute pulse at 8 % state-of-charge at 10 C. The voltage profile during the 37 A pulse discharge consists of an initial drop in voltage which was independent of the state of charge. The invariability in the value for the initial drop in voltage with state of charge is a very important observation. The results show that towards the end of discharge the dominant resistance is not ohmic in nature. It could be hypothesized from the nature of the voltage transients that the dominant mechanism towards the end of discharge is proton diffusion. The study also shows that the dominant resistance in the voltage plateau during discharge is activation polarization.

Vaidyanathan, Hari↗

NASA NTRS1998

Behavior of 2-Cell CPV Ni-H2 Battery During Pulse Discharge

A study was carried out to determine the transient voltage behavior of the 2-cell CPV nickel-hydrogen battery with the objective of using the results as a basis for mathematical modeling. The 2-cell CPV battery which is manufactured by Eagle Picher, Inc. for the GOES program yields 18.5 Ah at C/2 rate of discharge at 10 C with a mid-discharge voltage of 2.514 V. The capacity increased with decrease of temperature and a maximum capacity of 22 Ah was obtained at -5 C. The pulse tests consisted of obtaining the voltage profile in the first 20 milliseconds of the one minute pulse discharge at 37 A and pulse discharge was repeated as a function of state-of-charge. The pulse test at 10 C and 20 C provided voltage profiles with the expected decrease in voltage as the pulse was applied. The end of pulse voltage decreased with the state-of-charge. The battery voltage was above 2V at the end of the one-minute pulse at 8 % state-of-charge at 10 C. The voltage profile during the 37 A pulse discharge consists of an initial drop in voltage which was independent of the state of charge. The invariability in the value for the initial drop in voltage with state of charge is a very important observation. The results show that towards the end of discharge the dominant resistance is not ohmic in nature. It could be hypothesized from the nature of the voltage transients that the dominant mechanism towards the end of discharge is proton diffusion. The study also shows that the dominant resistance in the voltage plateau during discharge is activation polarization.

Vaidyanathan, Hari↗

NASA NTRS1997

Behavior of 2 Cell CPV NI-H2 Battery During Pulse Discharge

A study was carried out to determine the transient voltage behavior of the 2-cell CPV nickel-hydrogen battery with the objective of using the results as a basis for mathematical modeling. The 2-cell CPV battery which is manufactured by Eagle Picher, Inc. for the GOES program yields 18.5 Ah at C/2 rate of discharge at 10 C with a mid-discharge voltage of 2.514 V. The capacity increased with decrease of temperature and a maximum capacity of 22 Ah was obtained at - 5 C. The pulse test consisted of obtaining the voltage profile in the first 20 milliseconds of the one minute pulse discharge at 37 A and pulse discharge was repeated as a function of state-of-charge. The pulse test at 10 C and 20 C provided voltage profiles with the expected decrease in voltage as the pulse was applied. The end of pulse voltage decreased with the state-of-charge. The battery voltage was above 2V at the end of the one-minute pulse at 12% state-of-charge at 10 C. The voltage profile during the 37 A pulse discharge consists of an initial drop in voltage which was independent of the state of charge. The invariability in the value for the initial drop in voltage with state of charge is a very important observation and indicates that towards the end of discharge the dominant resistance is not ohmic in nature. It could be hypothesized from the nature of the voltage transients that the dominant mechanism towards the end of discharge is proton diffusion. The study also shows that the dominant resistance in the voltage plateau during discharge is activation polarization.

Gopalakrishna, M. Rao↗

NASA NTRS1982

Nonlinear longitudinal resonance interaction of energetic charged particles and VLF waves in the magnetosphere

The longitudinal resonance of waves and energetic electrons in the Earth's magnetosphere, and the possible role this resonance may play in generating various magnetospheric phenomena are studied. The derivation of time-averaged nonlinear equations of motion for energetic particles longitudinally resonant with a whistler mode wave propagating with nonzero wave normal is considered. It is shown that the wave magnetic forces can be neglected at lower particle pitch angles, while they become equal to or larger than the wave electric forces for alpha 20 deg. The time-averaged equations of motion were used in test particle simulation which were done for a wide range of wave amplitudes, wave normals, particle pitch angles, particle parallel velocities, and in an inhomogeneous medium such as the magnetosphere. It was found that there are two classes of particles, trapped and untrapped, and that the scattering and energy exchange for those two groups exhibit significantly different behavior.

Tkalcevic, S.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Impurities in silicon solar cells

Metallic impurities, both singly and in combinations, affect the performance of silicon solar cells. Czochralski silicon web crystals were grown with controlled additions of secondary impurities. The primary electrical dopants were boron and phosphorus. The silicon test ingots were grown under controlled and carefully monitored conditions from high-purity charge and dopant material to minimize unintentional contamination. Following growth, each crystal was characterized by chemical, microstructural, electrical, and solar cell tests to provide a detailed and internally consistent description of the relationships between silicon impurity concentration and solar cell performance. Deep-level spectroscopy measurements were used to measure impurity concentrations at levels below the detectability of other techniques and to study thermally-induced changes in impurity activity. For the majority of contaminants, impurity-induced performance loss is due to a reduction of the base diffusion length. From these observations, a semi-empirical model which predicts cell performance as a function of metal impurity concentration was formulated. The model was then used successfully to predict the behavior of solar cells bearing as many as 11 different impurities.

Hopkins, R. H.↗

NASA NTRS2005

A Dynamic Fountain Model for Lunar Dust

During the Apollo era of exploration it was discovered that sunlight was scattered at the terminators giving rise to horizon glow and streamers above the lunar surface. This was observed from the dark side of the Moon during sunset and sunrise by both surface landers and astronauts in orbit. These observations were quite unexpected, as the Moon was thought to be a pristine environment with a negligible atmosphere or exosphere. Subsequent investigations have shown that the sunlight was most likely scattered by electrostatically charged dust grains originating from the surface. It has since been demonstrated that this dust population could have serious implications for astronomical observations from the lunar surface. The lunar surface is electrostatically charged by the Moon s large-scale interaction with the local plasma environment and the photoemission of electrons due to solar ultra-violet (UV) light and X-rays. The like-charged surface and dust grains then act to repel each other, such that under certain conditions the dust grains are lifted above the surface. We present a dynamic fountain model which can explain how sub-micron dust is able to reach altitudes of up to approximately 100 km above the lunar surface. Previous static dust levitation models are most applicable to the heavier micron-sized grains in close proximity proximity to the surface, but they cannot explain the presence of extremely light grains at high altitudes. If we relax the static constraint applied to previous models, and instead assume that the grains are in constant motion (under the action of dynamic forces), a new picture emerges for the behavior of sub-micron lunar dust.

Stubbs, T. J.↗

NASA NTRS1983

Voyager observations of Saturnian ion and electron phase space densities

Voyager 1 and 2 low-energy charged particle (LECP) observations of 30-keV to 2-MeV electron and ion energy spectra and angular distributions have been used to calculate phase space densities at constant first and second adiabatic invariants in the Saturnian magnetosphere. The results are generally consistent with inward radial diffusion from an external source. The data obtained also indicate a source of ions located within the orbital distance of Enceladus capable of producing 10- to 40-MeV/Gauss ions as well as a source of electrons at about 3.5 Saturn radii which produces particles at 100 to 200 MeV/Gauss. Higher magnetic moment (200-400 MeV/Gauss) ions extend from the sunward boundary between a plasma mantle and the region of durable trapping at the Saturn radius; the behavior of the phase space density suggests inward diffusion of these particles from a source at the boundary. The identification of sources of low (10 to 200 MeV/Gauss) magnetic moment particles deep in the Saturnian magnetosphere is a new result of this work. Several analyses of the observed phase space densities in terms of time-independent radial diffusion are presented.

Armstrong, T. P.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Properties of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in the Northwest Photon Dominated Region of NGC 7023. I. PAH Size, Charge, Composition, and Structure Distribution

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission in the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph spectral map of the northwest photon dominated region (PDR) in NGC 7023 was analyzed exclusively using PAH spectra from the NASA Ames PAH IR Spectroscopic Database (www.astrochem.org/pahdb). The 5-15 micron spectrum at each pixel is fitted using a non-negative-least-squares fitting approach. The fits are of good quality, allowing decomposition of the PAH emission into four subclasses: size, charge, composition, and hydrogen adjacency (structure). Maps tracing PAH subclass distributions across the region paint a coherent astrophysical picture. Once past some 20 seconds of arc from HD 200775, the emission is dominated by the more stable, large, symmetric, compact PAH cations with smaller, neutral PAHs taking over along the lines-of-sight toward the more distant molecular cloud. The boundary between the PDR and the denser cloud material shows up as a distinct discontinuity in the breakdown maps. Noteworthy is the requirement for PANH cations to fit the bulk of the 6.2 and 11.0 micron features and the indication of PAH photo-dehydrogenation and fragmentation close to HD 200775. Decomposition of the spectral maps into "principal" subclass template spectra provides additional insight into the behavior of each subclass. However, the general applicability of this computationally more efficient approach is presently undetermined. This is the first time the spectra of individual PAHs are exclusively used to fit the 5-15 micron region and analyze the spatial behavior of the aromatic infrared bands, providing fundamental, new information about astronomical PAH subpopulations including their dependence on, and response to, changes in local conditions.

northwest photon↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Systems Health Management and Prognostics Approaches for Electric Aircrafts

As more and more electric vehicles emerge in our daily operation progressively, a very critical challenge lies in the prediction of remaining driving flying time/distance for the flying vehicles. This information is important, particularly in the case of auto vehicles, because such vehicles can become self-aware, autonomously compute its own capabilities, and identify how to best plan and successfully complete vehicular missions safely. In case of electric aircrafts, computing the remaining flying time is also safety-critical, since an aircraft that runs out of power (battery charge) while in the air will eventually lose control leading to catastrophe. To facilitate and solve the prediction problem, awareness of the current health state of the system is key, since it is necessary to perform condition-based predictions. To accurately predict the future state of any system, it is required to possess knowledge of its current health state and future operational conditions. Latest achievements of data-driven algorithms in regression of complex nonlinear functions and classification tasks have generated a growing interest in artificial intelligence for industrial applications. Complex multi-physics models as well as digital twins, once purely built on physics and corresponding simplified lumped parameter iterations, can now benefit from machine learning algorithms to mitigate the lack of understanding of some complex behavior. Given models of the current and future system behavior, a general approach of model-based prognostics can solve the prediction problem and further decision-making. A systematic prediction framework is implemented to identify all possible sources of uncertainty, quantify each of them individually, and mathematically estimate their combined effect on the system-level quantity of interest, in this case, the remaining flying time/distance of the unmanned aircraft. Note - This presentation contains all previously published information.

Systems Health Managent↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Health Monitoring and Prognostics for Electric Aircrafts

Systems Health Managent↗

NASA NTRS2004

SEP Time-to-Maximum (TTM) Studies and the Ionic Charge States of Solar Heavy Ions

1. We published a report on the TTM method and presented the results at the 28 International Cosmic Ray Conference. Included in this paper were our results on the energy-dependent charge state of Fe in the 200 1 April 15 ground- level event, the largest of Cycle 23. We showed that our results agreed well with direct measurements from SAMPEX in this event. We also presented results for the 2001 April 14 event, one of the largest impulsive events of Cycle 23. 2. We extracted TTM values for protons and ions of various energies in approx. 50 SEP events in Cycle 23, using time profiles measured by ACE, Wind, GOES, IMPS, SOHO, and SAMPEX. This event sample included many large gradual events, as well as several impulsive events. The TTM analyses typically yielded approx. 300 datapoints per event. 3. We used these data to make preliminary event classifications according to: (a) shapes of the rigidity and/or speed dependence of TTMs in each event; (b) behavior of proton TTMs compared to that of heavier ions; and (c) the behavior of Fe TTMs compared to that of lighter Z greater than I ions. 4. We cross-checked proton fluence and TTM values from 8 instruments on 6 satellites, so as to understand the origin of systematic instrument-to-instrument discrepancies. By also comparing the observed proton spectra, it was possible to extract correction factors to the nominal proton energy bins that removed or greatly reduced the instrument-to-instrument spread among proton TTMs. 5. We began comparisons of proton and He-4 TTM values in some particularly well measured, large SEP events measured by IMP8 in Cycles 21 and 22 when the instruments onboard were functioning better. It is hoped that these data will provide a better understanding of event-to-event variation in the functional dependence of TTMs on velocity and rigidity.

Tylka, Allan J.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Radial evolution of the solar wind turbulence with application to charged particle transport

The proposed research efforts funded by the Pioneer-Venus Guest Investigator Grant to the Bartol Research Institute center on a study of the radial and temporal variation of the large-scale interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and include a study of the radial variation of the observed north-south asymmetry of the IMF spiral based on the previous results of Bieber (1988). The preliminary results of Bieber demonstrated that at Earth orbit there exists an asymmetry between the yearly average winding angles of toward and away sector fields that can be as large as 10 degrees. The Bieber (1988) analysis employed the NSSDC omnitape data set of 1 AU measurements. When the observed asymmetry is related to the state of the solar magnetic dipole, it is possible to conclude that the IMF north of the heliospheric current sheet is more tightly wound than the IMF spiral south of the current sheet. The average difference in the winding angle as measured over a 21 year period spanning 1965 through 1985 was 3.1 degrees + 1.1 degrees. The Bieber analysis was able to rule-out several possible sources for the observed behavior including a possible asymmetry in the solar wind speed or the observed hemispherical dependence of solar rotation. The object of this research was to extend this previous result to include observations within the inner and outer heliosphere, to examine the radial dependence of the reported asymmetry, and to better resolve the possible source of the observations. The Pioneer-Venus Orbiter has proven to be the perfect monitor for the inner heliospheric observations. It has provided 9 years of continuous observations at a fixed heliocentric distance (except for those periods when the spacecraft was within the region of space where the magnetic field is influenced by the presence of the planet). Comparisons between the 1 AU observations recorded on the NSSDC omnitape and the 0.7 AU observations of the Pioneer-Venus Orbiter have greatly improved our understanding of the IMF winding angle asymmetry. Further comparison with outer heliospheric measurements have proven interesting, although less conclusive.

Smith, Charles W.↗

NASA NTRS2020

Prognostics for Systems Health Management - Model and Hybrid Based Approaches. Where are We Heading?

To facilitate and solve the prediction problem, awareness of the current state and health of the system is key, since it is necessary to perform condition-based system health predictions. To accurately predict the future state of any system, it is required to possess knowledge of its current health state and future operational conditional. In case of next generation electric aircrafts, computing remaining flying time is safety-critical, since an aircraft that runs out of power (battery charge) while in the air will eventually lose control leading to catastrophe. In order to tackle and solve the prediction problem, it is essential to have awareness of the current health state of the system, especially since it is necessary to perform condition-based predictions. To be able to predict the future state of the system, it is also required to possess knowledge of the current and future operational conditions and flight profiles for accurate estimation of end-of-discharge (EOD) for the batteries. Similar framework can be implemented to other complex systems and subsystems. Our research approach is to develop a system level health monitoring safety indicator which runs estimation and prediction algorithms to estimate remaining useful life predictions at system, subsystem swell as component levels. Given models of the current and future system behavior, a general approach of model-based prognostics is discussed as a solution to the prediction problem and further for decision making. Data driven prognostics approaches have been equally used with good results in the past, where respective approaches have their own challenges to tackle. This limits their applicability to complex real-world domains: (a) high complexity or incompleteness of physics-based models and (b) limited representativeness of the training dataset for data-driven models. With the advent of internet of things for data collection and increased use of ML algorithms, hybrid approaches are the next avenue to reduce the challenges and achieve better results. An hybrid framework for fusing information from physics-based performance models along with deep learning algorithms for prognostics of complex safety critical systems is presented. In this framework, we use physics-based performance models to infer unobservable model parameters related to the system's components health solving a calibration problem.

Prognostics↗

NASA NTRS2024

Highly Dynamic Gamma-Ray Emissions Are Common in Tropical Thunderclouds

Thunderstorms emit fluxes of gamma rays known as gamma-ray glows, sporadically observed by aircraft, balloons and from ground. Glows are observed as increased gamma-ray emissions by tens of percent up to two orders of magnitude above the background, sometimes abruptly terminated by lightning discharges. Glows are produced by the acceleration of energetic electrons in high electric field regions within thunderclouds, and contribute to charge dissipation. Glows are considered as quasi-stationary phenomena, with durations up to a few tens of seconds and spatial scales up to 10-20 kilometers. No measurement of the full extension in space and time of a gamma ray glow region and their occurring frequency has been reported so far. Here we show that tropical thunderclouds over ocean and coastal regions commonly emit gamma rays for hours over areas up to a few thousands of square kilometers. Emission is associated with deep convective cores; it is not uniform and continuous but shows characteristic timescales of 1-10 seconds and even sub-second for individual glows. The dynamics of gamma-glowing thunderclouds starkly contradicts the quasi-stationary picture of glows, but rather resembles that of a huge gamma-glowing «boiling pot» both in pattern and behavior.

M Marisaldi↗

NASA NTRS2002

The Statistical Mechanics of Ideal Homogeneous Turbulence

Plasmas, such as those found in the space environment or in plasma confinement devices, are often modeled as electrically conducting fluids. When fluids and plasmas are energetically stirred, regions of highly nonlinear, chaotic behavior known as turbulence arise. Understanding the fundamental nature of turbulence is a long-standing theoretical challenge. The present work describes a statistical theory concerning a certain class of nonlinear, finite dimensional, dynamical models of turbulence. These models arise when the partial differential equations describing incompressible, ideal (i.e., nondissipative) homogeneous fluid and magnetofluid (i.e., plasma) turbulence are Fourier transformed into a very large set of ordinary differential equations. These equations define a divergenceless flow in a high-dimensional phase space, which allows for the existence of a Liouville theorem, guaranteeing a distribution function based on constants of the motion (integral invariants). The novelty of these particular dynamical systems is that there are integral invariants other than the energy, and that some of these invariants behave like pseudoscalars under two of the discrete symmetry transformations of physics, parity, and charge conjugation. In this work the 'rugged invariants' of ideal homogeneous turbulence are shown to be the only significant scalar and pseudoscalar invariants. The discovery that pseudoscalar invariants cause symmetries of the original equations to be dynamically broken and induce a nonergodic structure on the associated phase space is the primary result presented here. Applicability of this result to dissipative turbulence is also discussed.

Shebalin, John V.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Switching Oxide Traps

We consider radiation-induced charge trapping in SiO2 dielectric layers, primarily from the point of view of CMOS devices. However, SiO2 insulators are used in many other ways, and the same defects occur in other contexts. The key studies, which determined the nature of the oxide charge traps, were done primarily on gate oxides in CMOS devices, because that was the main radiation problem in CMOS at one time. There are two major reviews of radiation-induced oxide charge trapping already in the literature, which discuss the subject in far greater detail than is possible here. The first of these was by McLean et al. in 1989, and the second, ten years later, was intended as an update, because of additional, new work that had been reported. Basically, the picture that has emerged is that ionizing radiation creates electron-hole pairs in the oxide, and the electrons have much higher mobility than the holes. Therefore, the electrons are swept out of the oxide very rapidly by any field that is present, leaving behind any holes that escape the initial recombination process. These holes then undergo a polaron hopping transport toward the Si/SiO2 interface (under positive bias). Near the interface, some fraction of them fall into deep, relatively stable, long-lived hole traps. The nature and annealing behavior of these hole traps is the main focus of this paper.

Oldham, Timothy R.↗