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At least 55 records · Page 3

Solar array drive system

A solar array drive system consisting of a solar array drive mechanism and the corresponding solar array drive electronics is being developed. The principal feature of the solar array drive mechanism is its bidirectional capability which enables its use in mechanical redundancy. The solar array drive system is of a widely applicable design. This configuration will be tested to determine its acceptability for generic mission sets. Foremost of the testing to be performed is the testing for extended duration.

Berkopec, F. D.↗

Wabble gear drive mechanism

The wabble gear principle was applied in the design of a driving mechanism for controlling spacecraft solar panels. The moving elements, other than the output gear, are contained within a hermetically sealed package to prevent escape of lubricants and ingestion of contaminant particles. The driving gear contains one more tooth than the output gear on a concave, conical pitch surface of slightly larger apex angle. The two gears mesh face to face such that engagement takes place at one point along the circumference. The driving gear is not permitted to rotate by virtue of its attachment through the bellows which permits flexure in the pitch and yaw position, but not in roll. As the bearing carrier rotates, the inclined mounting of the bearing causes the driving gear to perform a wabbling, irrotational motion. This wabbling motion causes the contact point between the output gear and the driving gear to traverse around the circumference of the gears once per revolution of the bearing carrier.

Winiarski, F. J.↗

Evaluation of a high performance fixed-ratio traction drive

The results of a test program to evaluate a compact, high performance, fixed ratio traction drive are presented. This transmission, the Nasvytis Multiroller Traction Drive, is a fixed ratio, single stage planetary with two rows of stepped planet rollers. Two versions of the drive were parametrically tested back-to-back at speeds to 73,000 rpm and power levels to 180 kW (240 hp). Parametric tests were also conducted with the Nasvytis drive retrofitted to an automotive gas turbine engine. The drives exhibited good performance, with a nominal peak efficiency of 94 to 96 percent and a maximum speed loss due to creep of approximately 3.5 percent.

Loewenthal, S. H.↗

Evaluation of a high performance fixed-ratio traction drive

The results of a test program to evaluate a compact, high performance, fixed-ratio traction drive are presented. This transmission, the Nasvytis Multiroller Traction Drive, is a fixed-ratio, single-stage planetary with two rows of stepped planet-rollers. Two versions of the drive were parametrically tested back-to-back at speeds to 73,000 rpm and power levels to 180 kW (240 hp). Parametric tests were also conducted with the Nasvytis drive retrofitted to an automotive gas turbine engine. The drives exhibited good performance, with a nominal peak efficiency of 94 to 96 percent and a maximum speed loss due to creep of approximately 3.5 percent.

Loewenthal, S. H.↗

Traction drive for cryogenic boost pump

Two versions of a Nasvytis multiroller traction drive were tested in liquid oxygen for possible application as cryogenic boost pump speed reduction drives for advanced hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines. The roller drive, with a 10.8:1 reduction ratio, was successfully run at up to 70,000 rpm input speed and up to 14.9 kW (20 hp) input power level. Three drive assemblies were tested for a total of about three hours of which approximately one hour was at nominal full speed and full power conditions. Peak efficiency of 60 percent was determined. There was no evidence of slippage between rollers for any of the conditions tested. The ball drive, a version using balls instead of one row of rollers, and having a 3.25:1 reduction ratio, failed to perform satisfactorily.

Meyer, S.↗

Advances in traction drive technology

Traction drives are traced from early uses as main transmissions in automobiles at the turn of the century to modern, high-powered traction drives capable of transmitting hundreds of horsepower. Recent advances in technology are described which enable today's traction drive to be a serious candidate for off-highway vehicles and helicopter applications. Improvements in materials, traction fluids, design techniques, power loss and life prediction methods will be highlighted. Performance characteristics of the Nasvytis fixed-ratio drive are given. Promising future drive applications, such as helicopter main transmissions and servo-control positioning mechanisms are also addressed.

Loewenthal, S. H.↗

Design of traction drives

Traction drives are among the simplest of all speed-changing mechanisms. Because of their simplicity and their ability to smoothly and continuously adjust speed, they are excellent choices for many drive system applications. They have been used in industrial service for more than 100 years. Today's traction drives have power capacities which rival the best gear and belt drives due to modern traction fluids and highly fatigue-resistant bearing steels. This report summarizes methods to analyze and size traction drives. Lubrication principles, contact kinematics, stress, fatigue life, and performance prediction methods are presented. The effects of the lubricant's traction characteristics on life and power loss are discussed. An example problem is given which illustrates the effects of spin on power loss. Loading mechanism design and the design of nonlubricated friction wheels and rings are also treated.

Loewenthal, S. H.↗

Motor Drive Technologies for the Power-by-Wire (PBW) Program: Options, Trends and Tradeoffs

Power-By-Wire (PBW) is a program involving the replacement of hydraulic and pneumatic systems currently used in aircraft with an all-electric secondary power system. One of the largest loads of the all-electric secondary power system will be the motor loads which include pumps, compressors and Electrical Actuators (EA's). Issues of improved reliability, reduced maintenance and efficiency, among other advantages, are the motivation for replacing the existing aircraft actuators with electrical actuators. An EA system contains four major components. These are the motor, the power electronic converters, the actuator and the control system, including the sensors. This paper is a comparative literature review in motor drive technologies, with a focus on the trends and tradeoffs involved in the selection of a particular motor drive technology. The reported research comprises three motor drive technologies. These are the induction motor (IM), the brushless dc motor (BLDCM) and the switched reluctance motor (SRM). Each of the three drives has the potential for application in the PBW program. Many issues remain to be investigated and compared between the three motor drives, using actual mechanical loads expected in the PBW program.

Elbuluk, Malik E.↗

Handbook on Face Gear Drives with a Spur Involute Pinion

The use of face gears in power transmission and drive systems has a significant number of benefits. Face gears allow a variety of new transmission arrangements as well as high reduction ratio capability. This leads to drive system weight reduction and improvements in performance. In this work, basic information about the design and analysis of face gear drives is presented. The work considers face gears in mesh with spur involute pinions for both intersecting axes and offset drives. Tooth geometry, kinematics, generation of face gears with localized bearing contact by cutting and grinding, avoidance of tooth undercutting, avoidance of tooth pointing, tooth contact analysis, and algorithms for the simulation of meshing and contact arc all topics which are discussed. In addition, applications of face gear drives are presented. Included are design uses in aerospace applications such as helicopter transmissions, split-torque face gear arrangements, comparisons of face gears with bevel gears, and general design considerations.

Litvin, F. L.↗

Crack Driving Forces in a Multilayered Coating System for Ceramic Matrix Composite Substrates

The effects of the top coating thickness, modulus and shrinkage strains on the crack driving forces for a baseline multilayer Yttria-Stabilized-Zirconia/Mullite/Si thermal and environment barrier coating (TEBC) system for SiC/SiC ceramic matrix composite substrates are determined for gas turbine applications. The crack driving forces increase with increasing modulus, and a low modulus thermal barrier coating material (below 10 GPa) will have no cracking issues under the thermal gradient condition analyzed. Since top coating sintering increases the crack driving forces with time, highly sintering resistant coatings are desirable to maintain a low tensile modulus and maintain a low crack driving force with time. Finite element results demonstrated that an advanced TEBC system, such as ZrO2/HfO2, which possesses improved sintering resistance and high temperature stability, exhibited excellent durability. A multi-vertical cracked structure with fine columnar spacing is an ideal strain tolerant coating capable of reducing the crack driving forces to an acceptable level even with a high modulus of 50 GPa.

Ghosn, Louis J.↗

Energy Considerations of Hypothetical Space Drives

The energy requirements of hypothetical, propellant-less space drives are compared to rockets. This serves to provide introductory estimates for potential benefits and to suggest analytical approaches for further study. A "space drive" is defined as an idealized form of propulsion that converts stored potential energy directly into kinetic energy using only the interactions between the spacecraft and its surrounding space. For Earth-to-orbit, the space drive uses 3.7 times less energy. For deep space travel, energy is proportional to the square of delta-v, whereas rocket energy scales exponentially. This has the effect of rendering a space drive 150-orders-of-magnitude better than a 17,000-s Specific Impulse rocket for sending a modest 5000 kg probe to traverse 5 ly in 50 years. Indefinite levitation, which is impossible for a rocket, could conceivably require 62 MJ/kg for a space drive. Assumption sensitivities and further analysis options are offered to guide further inquires.

Millis, Marc G.↗

Drive system for the retraction/extension of variable diameter rotor systems

A drive system for a variable diameter rotor (VDR) system includes a plurality of rotor blade assemblies with inner and outer rotor blade segments. The outer blade segment being telescopically mounted to the inner blade segment. The VDR retraction/extension system includes a drive housing mounted at the root of each blade. The housing supports a spool assembly, a harmonic gear set and an electric motor. The spool assembly includes a pair of counter rotating spools each of which drive a respective cable which extends through the interior of the inboard rotor blade section and around a pulley mounted to the outboard rotor blade section. In operation, the electric motor drives the harmonic gear set which rotates the counter rotating spools. Rotation of the spools causes the cables to be wound onto or off their respective spool consequently effecting retraction/extension of the pulley and the attached outboard rotor blade section relative the inboard rotor blade section. As each blade drive system is independently driven by a separate electrical motor, each independent VDR blade assembly is independently positionable.

Gmirya, Yuriy↗

Predicting the Impacts of Intravehicular Displays on Driving Performance with Human Performance Modeling

A challenge facing the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), as well as international safety experts, is the need to educate car drivers about the dangers associated with performing distraction tasks while driving. Researchers working for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have developed a technique for predicting the increase in mental workload that results when distraction tasks are combined with driving. They implement this technique using human performance modeling. They have predicted workload associated with driving combined with cell phone use. In addition, they have predicted the workload associated with driving military vehicles combined with threat detection. Their technique can be used by safety personnel internationally to demonstrate the dangers of combining distracter tasks with driving and to mitigate the safety risks.

Mitchell, Diane Kuhl↗

Using X-Ray Computed Tomography to Catalog Rock Fragments in Apollo Drive Tube 73002

Overview: The Apollo missions collected 382 kg of rock, regolith, and core samples from six locations on the nearside of the Moon. Approximately 84% by mass of the Apollo collection remains in pristine condition within the curation facility at Johnson Space Center (i.e., never allocated, continuously stored in dry-N2 purged cabinets, exposure history restricted to Teflon, stainless steel, and Al-metal). Although most Apollo samples have been well characterized, there are several types of samples that have remained wholly or largely unstudied since their return, and/or that have been cu-rated under special conditions, e.g., frozen samples, samples stored in He-purged environment, and previously unopened drive tubes. NASA solicited proposals for the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Pro-gram (ANGSA), and 9 teams were selected to study a subset of the unopened and frozen samples [1]. The first sample opened as part of the ANGSA pro-gram was drive tube 73002. This was originally a ~30 cm long, 4 cm diameter drive tube collected on a land-slide deposit near Lara Crater at the Apollo 17 landing site. It was part of a ~60 cm long double drive tube collected, and the bottom half of the tube (73001) was sealed under vacuum on the Moon [2]. Prior to opening sample 73002, the sample was imaged with a high resolution X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) scan of the entire tube [3], which provided invaluable information during the dissection process [4]. In addition to the pre-dissection XCT scans, individual >4 mm particles were separated from the 73002 regolith during processing and scanned at high resolution by XCT. Here we pre-sent the initial lithologic classification of 134 individual >4 mm rock fragments separated from the 73002 core during the dissection process. Methodology: Drive tube 73002 was manually dissected in 0.5 cm depth intervals in three passes (Fig. 1) [4,5]. Each interval from pass 1 and 2 was sieved to <1 mm and >1 mm size fractions, and >1 mm particles were further manually subdivided into 1-2, 2-4, 4-10, and >10 mm size fractions. Pass 3 was not sieved, but >10 mm clasts were separated manually. Each 4-10 mm and >10 mm fragment was individually weighed, triply bagged in Teflon, and scanned by XCT. There are 60 rock fragments in Pass 1, 64 rock fragments in Pass 2 (from the 4-10 mm and >10 mm size fractions), and 8 rock fragments from Pass 3 (>10 mm size fraction). Each individually bagged rock fragment was scanned using the 180 kV nano-focus transmission source on the Nikon XTH 320 XCT system at NASA Johnson Space Center [6]. Scanning conditions varied considerably for individual particles, in large part be-cause of the large variation in size (0.008-19.623 g). All scans fell within the following range of scan conditions: 2.8-20.6 um voxel size; 90-155 kV voltage; 18-39 uA current; 1891-3141 projections; and 902-2000 slices. Results and Discussion: The 132 rock fragments from sample 73002 fall into the following general cat-gories: agglutinates (n = 6); basalts (13); impact melts (5); impact melt breccias (IMB; 42); regolith breccias (62); and soil breccias (4); see Figure 2 for representative examples of each lithology. Within most of these broad lithologic groups are recognizable subgroups. For example, a significant portion of regolith breccia fragments contain some agglutinate-like glass (n = 9) or are dilithologic (7) because they contain a single large clast (~50% or more by volume). Subgroups can be based on similarities to previously identified lunar lithologies, such as high-Ti basalts (9) and VLT basalts (4; Fig. 3), or based on commonly seen features within the fragments, such as poikilitic ilmenite IMB (10), ilmenite-lath IMB (12), or vesicular IMB (11) “groups”. Particles in the same “group” are not necessarily intended to be genetically related, but rather identify particles that are similar and that follow-up studies can classify in more detail [7]. Conclusion: Identification of lithologies based on XCT is a powerful tool, but a more absolute classification will sometimes require additional textural information from thin sections (e.g., glassy-matrix regolith vs. impact-melt vs. granulitic breccia) or quantitative mineral compositions (e.g., basalt vs. monomict breccia).

R A Zeigler↗

Concept Design of a 1.4 MW Drive for Rotor Loss Minimization in a Partially Superconducting Motor

Partially superconducting machines with cryocooler-cooled rotors are a potential near-term technology that can achieve the motor performance needed by future fixed wing electric aircraft. For this type of machine, minimizing cryogenic heat load is one of the keys for enabling high machine performance. Rotor eddy current loss is often the most difficult cryogenic heat load to mitigate due to current ripple from the motor drive. This paper presents the concept design for a 20 kW/kg, 99.5% efficient motor drive that has sufficiently low current ripple to enable high performance partially superconducting machines by minimizing eddy current loss in the rotor. The motor drive concept design uses a resonant, interleaved, and multilevel topology to achieve these high-performance metrics with little current ripple. Rotor magnetic loss analysis using NASA’s 1.4 MW High Efficiency Megawatt Motor (HEMM) is used in the design process to down select the motor drive topology and show that the final design generates less than 5 W of magnetic loss in the rotor.

Cryogenic↗

Drive turbine systems for 20-inch turbofan simulators. 1: Duct turbine design

A study was made to evolve the turbine drive systems for 20-inch turbofan engine simulators. The fan designs used in the simulators included single-stage and two-stage configurations that covered a wide range of rotative speed and power requirement. The objective assumed for the study was to evolve one core turbine design that could drive all of the single-stage fans and, when operated in combination with one duct turbine design, drive all of the two-stage fans. The duct turbine power output is then needed to determine the make-up power required of the core turbine over the range of two-stage fan operating conditions. The duct turbine design analysis is reported and includes the selection of the duct turbine velocity diagram, a description of the blade design, and a determination of its off-design performance. Adjustable stators were found to be quite advantageous to the duct turbine off-design operation. The use of adjustable stators enabled the duct turbine to accommodate fan mass flow at all operating points and caused the duct turbine power output to increase as the total power requirement increased. This in turn resulted in a core turbine make-up power requirement that was not significantly greater than that required for driving the single-stage fans.

Whitney, W. J.↗

Antenna drive system for the Nimbus satellite

This paper describes a two-axis drive system for pointing a high-gain antenna. Motion about each axis is provided by identical drive mechanisms. The drive is unique in that only three gear passes are required to obtain the necessary 900:1 gear reduction. The drive system is a primary element of an experiment that will provide a real-time data link between Nimbus and certain ground stations. In this experiment data are transmitted from Nimbus to the applications technology satellite, which relays the data to ground stations.

G. J. Wedlake↗

Basic principles of variable speed drives

An understanding of the principles which govern variable speed drive operation is discussed for successful drive application. The fundamental factors of torque, speed ratio, and power as they relate to drive selection are discussed. The basic types of variable speed drives, their operating characteristics and their applications are also presented.

Loewenthal, S. H.↗