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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 523 records · Page 29
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1998

Multidisciplinary Design Technology Development: A Comparative Investigation of Integrated Aerospace Vehicle Design Tools

This research effort is a joint program between the Departments of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame. Three Principal Investigators; Drs. Renaud, Brockman and Batill directed this effort. During the four and a half year grant period, six Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. students and one Masters student received full or partial support, while four Computer Science and Engineering Ph.D. students and one Masters student were supported. During each of the summers up to four undergraduate students were involved in related research activities. The purpose of the project was to develop a framework and systematic methodology to facilitate the application of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (N4DO) to a diverse class of system design problems. For all practical aerospace systems, the design of a systems is a complex sequence of events which integrates the activities of a variety of discipline "experts" and their associated "tools". The development, archiving and exchange of information between these individual experts is central to the design task and it is this information which provides the basis for these experts to make coordinated design decisions (i.e., compromises and trade-offs) - resulting in the final product design. Grant efforts focused on developing and evaluating frameworks for effective design coordination within a MDO environment. Central to these research efforts was the concept that the individual discipline "expert", using the most appropriate "tools" available and the most complete description of the system should be empowered to have the greatest impact on the design decisions and final design. This means that the overall process must be highly interactive and efficiently conducted if the resulting design is to be developed in a manner consistent with cost and time requirements. The methods developed as part of this research effort include; extensions to a sensitivity based Concurrent Subspace Optimization (CSSO) MDO algorithm; the development of a neural network response surface based CSSO-MDO algorithm; and the integration of distributed computing and process scheduling into the MDO environment. This report overviews research efforts in each of these focus. A complete bibliography of research produced with support of this grant is attached.

Renaud, John E.↗
DOE OSTI2023

LANL: Missions and Student Opportunities [Slides]

At Los Alamos, we deliver science and technology to protect our nation and promote world stability. Our mission began by applying science and technology to address an international crisis. Today, we are responsible for a wide range of programs focused on national security that rely on our strong science and engineering capabilities. We offer unparalleled career opportunities in science, engineering, manufacturing, business, and more.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
NASA NTRS2009

The Art and Science of Systems Engineering

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established in 1958, and its Marshall Space Flight Center was founded in 1960, as space-related work was transferred from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal, where Marshall is located. With this heritage, Marshall contributes almost 50 years of systems engineering experience with human-rated launch vehicles and scientific spacecraft to fulfill NASA's mission exploration and discovery. These complex, highly specialized systems have provided vital platforms for expanding the knowledge base about Earth, the solar system, and cosmos; developing new technologies that also benefit life on Earth; and opening new frontiers for America's strategic space goals. From Mercury and Gemini, to Apollo and the Space Shuttle, Marshall's systems engineering expertise is an unsurpassed foundational competency for NASA and the nation. Current assignments comprise managing Space Shuttle Propulsion systems; developing environmental control and life support systems and coordinating science operations on the International Space Station; and a number of exploration-related responsibilities. These include managing and performing science missions, such as the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter slated to launch for the Moon in April 2009, to developing the Ares I crew launch vehicle upper stage and integrating the vehicle stack in house, as well as designing the Ares V cargo launch vehicle and contributing to the development of the Altair Lunar Lander and an International Lunar Network with communications nodes and other infrastructure.

Singer, Christopher E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Cassini science planning process

The mission design for Cassini-Huygens calls for a four-year orbital survey of the Saturnian system and the descent into the Titan atmosphere and eventual soft-landing of the Huygens probe. The Cassini orbiter tour consists of 76 orbits around Saturn with 44 close Titan flybys and 8 targeted icy satellite flybys. The Cassini orbiter spacecraft carries twelve scientific instruments that will perform a wide range of observations on a multitude of designated targets. The science opportunities, frequency of encounters, the length of the Tour, and the use of distributed operations pose significant challenges for developing the science plan for the orbiter mission. The Cassini Science Planning Process is the process used to develop and integrate the science and engineering plan that incorporates an acceptable level of science required to meet the primary mission objectives far the orbiter. The bulk of the integrated science and engineering plan will be developed prior to Saturn Orbit Insertion (Sol). The Science Planning Process consists of three elements: 1) the creation of the Tour Atlas, which identifies the science opportunities in the tour, 2) the development of the Science Operations Plan (SOP), which is the conflict-free timeline of all science observations and engineering activities, a constraint-checked spacecraft pointing profile, and data volume allocations to the science instruments, and 3) an Aftermarket and SOP Update process, which is used to update the SOP while in tour with the latest information on spacecraft performance, science opportunities, and ephemerides. This paper will discuss the various elements of the Science Planning Process used on the Cassini Mission to integrate, implement, and adapt the science and engineering activity plans for Tour.

Cassini↗
NASA NTRS2006

The Role of Project Science in the Chandra X-Ray Observatory

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory, one of NASA's Great Observatories, has an outstanding record of scientific and technical success. This success results from the efforts of a team comprising NASA, its contractors, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the instrument groups, and other elements of the scientific community, including thousands of scientists who utilize this powerful facility for astrophysical research. We discuss the role of NASA Project Science in the formulation, development, calibration, and operation of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In addition to representing the scientific community within the Project, Project Science performed what we term "science systems engineering". This activity encompasses translation of science requirements into technical requirements and assessment of the scientific impact of programmatic and technical trades. We briefly describe several examples of science systems engineering conducted by Chandra Project Science.

O'Dell, Stephen L.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Data-scarce surrogate modeling of shock-induced pore collapse process

Understanding the mechanisms of shock-induced pore collapse is of great interest in various disciplines in sciences and engineering, including materials science, biological sciences, and geophysics. However, numerical modeling of the complex pore collapse processes can be costly. To this end, a strong need exists to develop surrogate models for generating economic predictions of pore collapse processes. Here, in this work, we study the use of a data-driven reduced-order model, namely dynamic mode decomposition, and a deep generative model, namely conditional generative adversarial networks, to resemble the numerical simulations of the pore collapse process at representative training shock pressures. Since the simulations are expensive, the training data are scarce, which makes training an accurate surrogate model challenging. To overcome the difficulties posed by the complex physics phenomena, we make several crucial treatments to the plain original form of the methods to increase the capability of approximating and predicting the dynamics. In particular, physics information is used as indicators or conditional inputs to guide the prediction. In realizing these methods, the training of each dynamic mode composition model takes only around 30 s on CPU. In contrast, training a generative adversarial network model takes 8 h on GPU. Moreover, using dynamic mode decomposition, the final-time relative error is around 0.3% in the reproductive cases. We also demonstrate the predictive power of the methods at unseen testing shock pressures, where the error ranges from 1.3 to 5% in the interpolatory cases and 8 to 9% in extrapolatory cases.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Phase Stability and Electrochemical Performance of La-Site-Doped Li6La3Zr0.5Nb0.5Ta0.5Hf0.5O12 High-Entropy Garnets

We investigate La-site substitution in the high-entropy garnet Li6La3Zr0.5Nb0.5Ta0.5Hf0.5O12 (LLZNTH) using Ba2+, Sr2+, and Sm3+ to elucidate how dopant governs phase stability, Li-site distribution, and electrochemical behavior. X-ray diffraction shows that Sr2+ is incorporated homogeneously into the garnet lattice, whereas the larger Ba2+ and smaller Sm3+ ions partially exceed the structural tolerance, generating secondary phases. Nevertheless, the Sm-doped composition (x = 0.05) exhibits the highest room-temperature ionic conductivity (2.7 × 10–4 S cm–1). Neutron powder diffraction reveals that Sm substitution drives a redistribution of Li+ from the tetrahedral 24 d sites into the higher-mobility 96 h positions, enhancing the connectivity of the three-dimensional Li-ion migration network. A Sm-doping series (x = 0.01–0.05) further shows that only sufficiently high Sm levels induce this redistribution, whereas lower concentrations retain Li arrangements similar to the undoped garnet. Critical current density measurements demonstrate that La-site dopants also influence interfacial stability against Li metal, underscoring a trade-off between bulk transport enhancement and mechanical robustness. Collectively, these findings reveal that in high-entropy garnets improved ionic conductivity can originate not only from phase-pure structures but also from targeted modification of the Li sublattice, even when accompanied by secondary phases, offering a compositional design principle for garnet electrolytes.

Li, Chang [Mechanical Engineering, School of Scien↗
DOE OSTI2021

Stiff neural ordinary differential equations

Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) are a promising approach to learn dynamical models from time-series data in science and engineering applications. This work aims at learning neural ODEs for stiff systems, which are usually raised from chemical kinetic modeling in chemical and biological systems. We first show the challenges of learning neural ODEs in the classical stiff ODE systems of Robertson’s problem and propose techniques to mitigate the challenges associated with scale separations in stiff systems. We then present successful demonstrations in stiff systems of Robertson’s problem and an air pollution problem. The demonstrations show that the usage of deep networks with rectified activations, proper scaling of the network outputs as well as loss functions, and stabilized gradient calculations are the key techniques enabling the learning of stiff neural ODEs. The success of learning stiff neural ODEs opens up possibilities of using neural ODEs in applications with widely varying time-scales, such as chemical dynamics in energy conversion, environmental engineering, and life sciences.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Computational Theory Applied to Nanostructures (Final Report)

Within the nanoscale, phenomena occur that are characteristic of neither the atomic limit, nor the macroscopic limit. In particular, properties that are intensive at the macroscopic scale become size dependent at the nanoscale. These phenomena can have direct consequence for understanding and characterizing materials used in electronic, optical, and micro-mechanical applications related to energy science and technologies. To capitalize properly on predicting and understanding such phenomena in this nano regime, a deeper understanding of the quantum properties of materials will be required. The objective of our research program was to advance the field in computational modeling, analysis and understanding of materials at the nano scale, both in terms of dimensionality and quantum confinement. We employed a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from physics, materials science, chemical engineering and computer science. This research will provide new knowledge, computational techniques, and provide high-potential links across all these disciplines. Over sixty papers were published during the period in question. Ten of the papers were published in high impact journals such as Nano Letters, Nature Communications and Physical Review Letters.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Enhanced Tritium Retention in LiAlO2 Pellets via Engineered Glazes: Tritium Science Project

This project investigated the impact of adding a thin (10 – 50 µm) layer of amorphous glaze to the surface of a TPBAR pellet on its retention of helium, hydrogen (as a surrogate for tritium), and water (as a surrogate for tritiated water). The hypothesis was that the glaze would significantly reduce permeation of hydrogen species with a lesser impact on hindering helium permeation. A non-crystallizing soda-lime-silicate glass, known as SCN-1, was selected for this proof-of-concept study. It was found that continuous glaze layers of the desired thickness could be applied to the pellets with two or more dip coats, depending on the targeted thickness. At 330°C, the glaze was found to have a permeability that was lower than that of the pellet by a factor of ~10 6 , implying that a thin 10 – 50 µm layer can significantly increase pellet retention of hydrogen. Meanwhile, the permeation rate of helium through the glaze was found to be ~20 times higher than that of hydrogen or water. An unanticipated outcome of the study was that unglazed pellets were measured to have hydrogen diffusivities that are a factor of ~105 greater than the diffusivity value used in the TPBAR COMSOL model to achieve observed tritium retention rates. When the higher measured diffusivity was substituted into the model and the model was run with all tritium species in the pellet in the form of T 2 O at a partial pressure of 20 Pa in equilibrium with LiOT, the resulting retention was 50% after 500 days.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1984

Space Station accommodation engineering for Life Sciences Research Facilities

Exploratory studies conducted by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and several contractors in connection with defining the design requirements, parameters, and tradeoffs of the Life Sciences Research Facilities for nonhuman test subjects aboard the Space Station are reviewed. The major system discriminators which determine the size of the accommodation system are identified, along with a number of mission options. Moreover, characteristics of several vivarium concepts are summarized, focusing on the cost, size, variable-g capability, and the number of specimens accommodated. Finally, the objectives of the phase B studies of the Space Station Laboratory, which are planned for FY85, are described.

Hilchey, J.↗
NASA NTRS2003

How to Do Science From an Engineering Organization

MSFC's Space Environments Team performs engineering support for a number of NASA spaceflight projects by defining the space environment, developing design requirements, supporting the design process, and supporting operations. Examples of this type of support are given including meteoroid environment work for the Jovian Icy Moon Orbiter mission, ionizing radiation support for the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and astronomicaVgeophysica1 observation planning for International Space Station.

Suggs, Robert M.↗
NASA NTRS1998

The Near Solar Conjuction Experiment

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft was occulted by the solar disk on February 19, 1997. During the period between February 7 and March 3, 1997, the Near X-band telecommunications system was used to carry out a combination of engineering and radio science measurements through the solar corona.

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous NEAR solar corona X↗