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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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Reaction heat is used for removal of water formed at the hydrogen fuel electrode in a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell. A portion of the heat inherent in the fuel cell current generation reaction is used to transfer excess water into water vapor and cause it to be exhausted from the cell by a porous vapor transport membrane adjoining a vapor cavity.
Performance characteristics and handling qualities of current generation counter-insurgency aircraft in low speed STOL flight regime
Electron beam-plasma interactions, cyclotron harmonic instabilities, paramagnetic and semiconductor materials, and harmonic current generation
Flow graph techniques application to AC network worst case analysis, obtaining sensitivity function by splitting network elements into voltage and current generators
Extravehicular attitude control using bioelectric currents generated in muscle tissue by head motion
Photovoltaic characteristics have been measured on solar cells irradiated by 1 MeV electrons to fluences ranging from 1 x 10 to the 13th power e/sq cm to 1 x 10 to the 16th power e/sq cm, for cell temperatures ranging from 123 K to 473 K and for illumination intensities ranging from 5m W/sq cm to 1830m W/sq cm. Empirical equations have been derived from these measurements to describe the behavior of light generated current, open circuit voltage and I-V curve shape over various portions of these temperature/illumination ranges. Both 10 ohms/cm and 17 ohms/cm n-p silicon solar cells were tested, and similar analytical expressions were formulated for easy comparison between the two resistivities.
An apparatus for measuring the thermoelectric properties of materials under high pressure is described that includes a pair of force transmitting assemblies constructed of thermally and electrically conductive material positioned between the ram and anvil of a press. Each force transmitting assembly has a small diameter pressing portion for contacting a face of the sample so that the sample can be squeezed between them. Each assembly also includes a heat exchanger to maintain the sample face at a controlled temperature, and an electrical conductor to carry current generated by the sample. A sleeve of thermally and electrically insulative material closely surrounds the pressing portions of the two assemblies.
The progress of aircraft design technology, described in this booklet in words and pictures, is illustrated in a wall display in the Visitors' Center of the Langley Research Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Hampton, Virginia. The display presents, in miniature but highly detailed and accurate models, a broad panorama of aeronautical development. It begins with the Wright brothers' "Flyer" of 1903 and ends with the current generation of jet transports. In model form, and to a common scale, the aircraft described in this booklet take on added dimension and emphasis. Many of the models in the Langley display were built and contributed by members of the Tidewater Branch of the International Plastic Modelers Society, an international group of scale-model enthusiasts. Certain of the models, for which no commercial kits existed, had to be fabricated completely; that work was done by several talented individuals in the Langley Research Center. A few of the models were donated specifically for the display by the manufacturers of the full-scale aircraft.
It is shown that three-dimensional and time-dependent boundary layer flows can be calculated in a reasonable amount of time with the current generation of computers. The physical problems used to illustrate this have a wide application, and are the following: (1) oscillating flows over cylinders with both the wall and the inviscid flow oscillating, and (2) time-dependent and three-dimensional flow over a rotating airfoil in forward flight.
A description of the joint design, materials, equipment, qualification testing, inspection methods, and applications involved in performing induction brazing on hyperbolic propellants tubing at Kennedy Space Center. Induction brazing is a form of brazing in which the energy is transmitted to the workpiece by electrical induction; the eddy currents generated in the metal produce heat by resistance losses. Since induction heating is fast and highly localized, undesirable heat effects are minimized and the resulting braze is of high quality.
A measurement technique employing the scanning electron microscope is described in which values of the true bulk diffusion length are obtained. It is shown that surface recombination effects can be eliminated through the application of highly doped surface field layers. The influence of high injection level effects and low-high junction current generation on the resulting measurement was investigated. Close agreement is found between the diffusion lengths measured by this method and those obtained using a penetrating radiation technique.
The present work describes a measuring technique employing the scanning electron microscope in which values of the true bulk diffusion length are obtained. It is shown that surface recombination effects can be eliminated through application of highly doped surface field layers. The effects of high injection level and low-high junction current generation are investigated. Results obtained with this technique are compared to those obtained by a penetrating radiation (X-ray) method, and a close agreement is found. The SEM technique is limited to cells that contain a back surface field layer.
Free fall in an external static gravitational field of a composite test body consisting of electromagnetically interacting charged particles is analyzed using the TH-epsilon-mu formalism developed by Lightman and Lee (1973). The Lightman and Lee calculation that was carried out to 'post-Coulombian' order is extended to 'post-post-Coulombian' order, and violations of the weak equivalence principle are found which result from the magnetostatic self-energy of the test body. The current generation of Eotvos experiments is shown to test the cited formalism at first order in the external gravitational potential to an accuracy of 4 by 10 to the -10th power for electrostatic energies and 6 by 10 to the -6th power for magnetostatic energies. It is concluded that although the formalism can be tested to an accuracy of 0.04 for electrostatic energies at second order in the gravitational potential, a significant second-order test for magnetostatic energies would require Eotvos experiments accurate to better than one part in 10 to the 15th power.
We review the status of theoretical work on magnetospheric convection in the lower auroral zone and at midlatitudes, and compare with various observed features, such as ionospheric electric fields and plasma flows, the form of the plasmasphere, and the distribution of plasma-sheet particles. We present preliminary results from a new series of computerized convection models, which follow the time evolution of the inner magnetosphere (L less than around 10), self-consistently including ionospheric currents and Birkeland currents, as well as the currents generated in a model plasma sheet with a realistic energy spectrum. We find that the model plasma sheet's inner edge quickly becomes rather sharp. Computed electric field distributions resemble those obtained earlier for a simple single-energy plasma sheet.
A method is provided for the fabrication of a photovoltaic device which possesses an efficient collector system for the conduction of the current generated by incident photons to the external circuitry of the device.
The use of a 1 MHz range code and a narrow-passband IF filter reduces waveform distortion error by a factor of as much as 20. Along with this improvement in ranging precision, ranging accuracy is enhanced by nullifying many errors caused by equipment vagaries. The IF filter and concomitant modification of ranging system software (and in the case of the planetary ranging assembly, hardware) are the most cost-effective way of improving the current generation ranging system.
The short-circuit current generated by the electron beam of a scanning electron microscope when it impinges on the N-P junction of a solar cell is known to be dependent on the configuration used to investigate the cell's response, and the situation for one specific configuration is analyzed. This configuration is the case in which the highly collimated electron beam strikes the edge of a planar junction a variable distance away from the edge of the depletion layer. An earlier treatment is generalized to encompass the ohmic contact at the back surface. The analysis employing Fourier and Wiener-Hopf techniques shows that it is impractical to determine the bulk diffusion length of a solar cell by a SEM used in the studied configuration unless the ohmic contact is partially removed.
A summary and intercomparison of recent inner radiation zone electron data are presented. The morphology of the inner radiation zone is described and the data compared with the current generation of inner zone trapped electron models. An analytic representation of the inner zone equatorial pitch angle distribution is presented. This model was based upon data from eight satellites and was used to reduce all data to the form of equatorial flux. Although no Starfish-free high energy electron measurements were available from the inner portion of the inner radiation zone, it was found that the AE-6 model provided a good description of the present solar maximum environment.