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At least 523 records · Page 29

Using an onion like neutron scattering instrument model to quickly optimize design parameters

When designing a neutron scattering instrument, one of the major challenges is the many parameters, generally interdependent, within the optimization. In this work we describe an approach using McStas 1-3 to quickly get a good overview of how changes in instrument parameters will impact neutron scattering instrument performance.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Operation at Reduced Atmospheric Pressure and Concept of Reliability Redundancy for Optimized Design of Insulation Systems

Electrified transportation is calling for insulation design criteria that is adequate to provide elevated levels of power density, power dynamics and reliability. Increasing voltage levels are expected to cause accelerated intrinsic and extrinsic aging effects which will not be easily predictable at the design stage due to a lack of suitable modeling. Designing reliable insulation systems would require finding solutions able to control accelerated aging due to an unpredictable increase of intrinsic stresses and the onset of extrinsic stresses as partial discharges. This paper proposes the concept of reliability redundancy for the insulation design of aerospace electrical asset components, which is also validated at lower-than-standard atmospheric pressure. The principle is that extrinsic-aging-free design might be achieved upon determining the aging stress or abnormal service stresses distribution and being sure that aging will not generate conditions that can incept extrinsic aging (partial discharges) during operation life. However, such information is never, in practice, fully available to insulation system designers. Hence, especially in critical applications such as electrified aircraft, aerospace, and combat ships a further level of reliability should be added to a partial-discharge-free design, which can consist of the use of corona-resistant materials and/or of life models able to consider the accelerated aging effect of partial discharges (or any other type of extrinsic-accelerated aging factor). Innovative life modeling considering both extrinsic and intrinsic aging stresses, insulating material testing to estimate model parameters, and a metric for quantifying the extent of corona (or partial discharge) resistance can lead to establishing feasibility and limit conditions for optimized or fully reliability-redundant design. It is shown in the paper that if an extrinsic-aging-free design is not feasible, and it is therefore replaced by a redundant design, a further level of reliability redundancy can be provided by effective condition monitoring plans.

Montanari, Gian Carlo↗

On optimal design for the blade-root/hub interface in jet engines

Two major problems identified with the design of the blade-root/hub interface are discussed. The first is the so-called friction contact problem which has two special features: unilateral contact and Coulomb's friction. One of the difficulties in this problem is that the portions of contact and sticking/sliding surfaces are not known a priori. The second is the shape optimization problem which is characterized either by the minimization of the maximum contact pressure or by the minimization of the equivalent stress on the boundary. Design variables are the shapes of the blade-root and the hub. It is noted that friction contact and shape optimization problems are strongly coupled in the present design problem.

Kikuchi, N.↗

Design Optimization for X-Ray Telescopes

The capability of future X-ray telescopes depends on the quality of their Point Spread Function (PSF) and the size of their field of view. Traditional designs, such as Wolter, and Wolter-Schwarzschild telescopes are stigmatic on the optical axis but their PSF degrades rapidly off-axis. At the optimal focal surface, their PSFs can be significantly improved. We present a simple optimization process for Wolter (W), Wolter-Schwarzschild (WS) and Hyperboloid-Hyperboloid (HH) telescopes that substantially improves the off-axis PSF for either narrow or wide field of view applications. In this paper, we will compare the optical performance of conventional and optimized W-, WS-, and HH-telescopes for a wide range of telescope diameters that can be used to build up future x-ray telescopes.

Saha, Timo T.↗

Design Optimization for X-Ray Telescopes

The capability of future X-ray telescopes depends on the quality of their Point Spread Function (PSF) and the size of their field of view. Traditional designs, such as Wolter, and Wolter-Schwarzschild telescopes are stigmatic on the optical axis but their PSF degrades rapidly off-axis. At the optimal focal surface, their PSFs can be significantly improved. We present a simple optimization process for Wolter (W), Wolter-Schwarzschild (WS) and Hyperboloid-Hyperboloid (HH) telescopes that substantially improves the off-axis PSF for either narrow or wide field of view applications. In this paper, we will compare the optical performance of conventional and optimized W-, WS-, and HH-telescopes for a wide range of telescope diameters that can be used to build up future x-ray telescopes.

Saha, Timo T.↗

Design Optimization for X-ray Telescopes

The capability of future X-ray telescopes depends on the quality of their Point Spread Function (PSF) and the size of their field of view. Traditional designs, such as Wolter, and Wolter-Schwarzschild telescopes are stigmatic on the optical axis but their PSF degrades rapidly off-axis. At the optimal focal surface, their PSFs can be significantly improved. We present a simple optimization process for Wolter (W), Wolter-Schwarzschild (WS) and Hyperboloid-Hyperboloid (HH) telescopes that substantially improves the off-axis PSF for either narrow or wide field of view applications. In this paper, we will compare the optical performance of conventional and optimized W-, WS-, and HH-telescopes for a wide range of telescope diameters that can be used to build up future x-ray telescopes.

Timo T Saha↗

Structural Design Optimization of Doubly-Fed Induction Generators Using GeneratorSE

A wind turbine with a larger rotor swept area can generate more electricity, however, this increases costs disproportionately for manufacturing, transportation, and installation. This poster presents analytical models for optimizing doubly-fed induction generators (DFIGs), with the objective of reducing the costs and mass of wind turbine drivetrains. The structural design for the induction machine includes models for the casing, stator, rotor, and high-speed shaft developed within the DFIG module in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's wind turbine sizing tool, GeneratorSE. The mechanical integrity of the machine is verified by examining stresses, structural deflections, and modal properties. The optimization results are then validated using finite element analysis (FEA). The results suggest that our analytical model correlates with the FEA in some areas, such as radial deflection, differing by less than 20 percent. But the analytical model requires further development for axial deflections, torsional deflections, and stress calculations.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

A framework for simultaneous aerodynamic design optimization in the presence of chaos

Integrating existing solvers for unsteady partial differential equations into a simultaneous optimization method is challenging due to the forward-in-time information propagation of classical time-stepping methods. This paper applies the simultaneous single-step one-shot optimization method to a reformulated unsteady constraint that allows for both forward- and backward-in-time information propagation. Especially in the presence of chaotic and turbulent flow, solving the initial value problem simultaneously with the optimization problem often scales poorly with the time domain length. The new formulation relaxes the initial condition and instead solves a least squares problem for the discrete partial differential equations. This enables efficient one-shot optimization that is independent of the time domain length, even in the presence of chaos.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Dual wing, swept forward swept rearward wing, and single wing design optimization for high performance business airplanes

An investigation was performed to compare closely coupled dual wing and swept forward swept rearward wing aircraft to corresponding single wing 'baseline' designs to judge the advantages offered by aircraft designed with multiple wing systems. The optimum multiple wing geometry used on the multiple wing designs was determined in an analytic study which investigated the two- and three-dimensional aerodynamic behavior of a wide range of multiple wing configurations in order to find the wing geometry that created the minimum cruise drag. This analysis used a multi-element inviscid vortex panel program coupled to a momentum integral boundary layer analysis program to account for the aerodynamic coupling between the wings and to provide the two-dimensional aerodynamic data, which was then used as input for a three-dimensional vortex lattice program, which calculated the three-dimensional aerodynamic data. The low drag of the multiple wing configurations is due to a combination of two dimensional drag reductions, tailoring the three dimensional drag for the swept forward swept rearward design, and the structural advantages of the two wings that because of the structural connections permitted higher aspect ratios.

Rhodes, M. D.↗

Optimal design of a thermally stable composite optical bench

The Lidar Atmospheric Sensing Experiment will be performed aboard an ER-2 aircraft; the lidar system used will be mounted on a lightweight, thermally stable graphite/epoxy optical bench whose design is presently subjected to analytical study and experimental validation. Attention is given to analytical methods for the selection of such expected laminate properties as the thermal expansion coefficient, the apparent in-plane moduli, and ultimate strength. For a symmetric laminate in which one of the lamina angles remains variable, an optimal lamina angle is selected to produce a design laminate with a near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion. Finite elements are used to model the structural concept of the design, with a view to the optical bench's thermal structural response as well as the determination of the degree of success in meeting the experiment's alignment tolerances.

Gray, C. E., Jr.↗

Optimal design of GaAs-based concentrator space solar cells for 100 AMO, 80 deg C operation

Using a detailed computer code and reasonable values of electrical and optical material parameters from current published literature, parameter optimization studies were performed on three configurations of GaAs-based concentrator solar cells for 100 AMO, 80 C operation. These studies show the possibility of designing GaAs-based solar cells with efficiencies exceeding 22% at 100 AMO 80 C and probable efficiency degradation of less than 15% after a 70% reduction in diffusion length in each cell region.

Goradia, C.↗

Reliability Sensitivity Analysis and Design Optimization of Composite Structures Based on Response Surface Methodology

This report discusses the development and application of two alternative strategies in the form of global and sequential local response surface (RS) techniques for the solution of reliability-based optimization (RBO) problems. The problem of a thin-walled composite circular cylinder under axial buckling instability is used as a demonstrative example. In this case, the global technique uses a single second-order RS model to estimate the axial buckling load over the entire feasible design space (FDS) whereas the local technique uses multiple first-order RS models with each applied to a small subregion of FDS. Alternative methods for the calculation of unknown coefficients in each RS model are explored prior to the solution of the optimization problem. The example RBO problem is formulated as a function of 23 uncorrelated random variables that include material properties, thickness and orientation angle of each ply, cylinder diameter and length, as well as the applied load. The mean values of the 8 ply thicknesses are treated as independent design variables. While the coefficients of variation of all random variables are held fixed, the standard deviations of ply thicknesses can vary during the optimization process as a result of changes in the design variables. The structural reliability analysis is based on the first-order reliability method with reliability index treated as the design constraint. In addition to the probabilistic sensitivity analysis of reliability index, the results of the RBO problem are presented for different combinations of cylinder length and diameter and laminate ply patterns. The two strategies are found to produce similar results in terms of accuracy with the sequential local RS technique having a considerably better computational efficiency.

Rais-Rohani, Masoud↗

Variational Methods in Design Optimization and Sensitivity Analysis for Two-Dimensional Euler Equations

Variational methods (VM) sensitivity analysis employed to derive the costate (adjoint) equations, the transversality conditions, and the functional sensitivity derivatives. In the derivation of the sensitivity equations, the variational methods use the generalized calculus of variations, in which the variable boundary is considered as the design function. The converged solution of the state equations together with the converged solution of the costate equations are integrated along the domain boundary to uniquely determine the functional sensitivity derivatives with respect to the design function. The application of the variational methods to aerodynamic shape optimization problems is demonstrated for internal flow problems at supersonic Mach number range. The study shows, that while maintaining the accuracy of the functional sensitivity derivatives within the reasonable range for engineering prediction purposes, the variational methods show a substantial gain in computational efficiency, i.e., computer time and memory, when compared with the finite difference sensitivity analysis.

Ibrahim, A. H.↗

A simple method of calculating Stirling engines for engine design optimization

A calculation method is presented for a rhombic drive Stirling engine with a tubular heater and cooler and a screen type regenerator. Generally the equations presented describe power generation and consumption and heat losses. It is the simplest type of analysis that takes into account the conflicting requirements inherent in Stirling engine design. The method itemizes the power and heat losses for intelligent engine optimization. The results of engine analysis of the GPU-3 Stirling engine are compared with more complicated engine analysis and with engine measurements.

Martini, W. R.↗

Design optimization of semiconductor piezoresistors with Schottky diode contacts

A modeling theory is developed to predict the performance of piezoresistors which incorporate Schottky diode electrical contacts. This new theory allows the design of high performance gauges which can be fabricated using NonLithographically-Based Microfabrication (NLBM) techniques. These semiconductor piezoresistors can be designed in customizable sizes and fabricated in parallel in order to integrate position sensing into MEMS flexural positioners. Customizable nanopositioning platforms will enable advances in a range of nano-scale fabrication and metrology applications. A semiconductor piezoresistor with Schottky diode contacts was fabricated and attached to a titanium flexure. This device is shown to match predicted electrical performance within about 8% and to show a gauge factor of 116, within 2% of the predicted value. Performance limits for Schottky diode semiconductor piezoresistors are identified to be about 127dB full noise dynamic range for a quarter bridge over a 10kHz sensor bandwidth on a 600µm width titanium flexure, making them ideal for sensing on meso-/micro-scale flexural positioners. Methods of reaching these performance bound are suggested and their impact on the sensor dynamic range are studied.

42 ENGINEERING↗