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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2010

Current Applications of OMI Tropospheric NO2 Data for Air Quality and a Look to the Future

Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Tropospheric NO2 products are being used to enhance the ability to monitor changes in NO2 air quality, update emission inventories, and evaluate regional air quality models. Trends in tropospheric column NO2 have been examined over the eastern United States in relation to emissions changes mandated by regulatory actions. Decreases of 20 to 40 percent over the period 2005 to 2008 were noted, largely in response to major emission reductions at power plants. The OMI data have been used to identify regions in which the opposite trend has been found. We have also used OMI NO2 in efforts to improve emission inventories for NOx emissions from soil. Lightning NOx emissions have been added to CMAQ, the US Environmental Protection Agency's regional air quality model. Evaluation of the resulting NO2 columns in the model is being conducted using the OMI NO2 observations. Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) together with the OMI NO2 data comprise a valuable tool for monitoring and predicting air quality. Looking to the future, we expect that the combination of Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) (morning) and OMI (afternoon) data sets obtained through use of the same retrieval algorithms will substantially increase the possibility of successful integration of satellite information into regional air quality forecast models. Farther down the road, we anticipate the Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) platform to supply data possibly on an hourly basis, allowing much more comprehensive analysis of air quality from space.

Pickering, Kenneth E.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Multiscale and Multiphysics Modeling of Additive Manufacturing of Advanced Materials

The objective of this proposed project is to research and develop a prediction tool for advanced additive manufacturing (AAM) processes for advanced materials and develop experimental methods to provide fundamental properties and establish validation data. Aircraft structures and engines demand materials that are stronger, useable at much higher temperatures, provide less acoustic transmission, and enable more aeroelastic tailoring than those currently used. Significant improvements in properties can only be achieved by processing the materials under nonequilibrium conditions, such as AAM processes. AAM processes encompass a class of processes that use a focused heat source to create a melt pool on a substrate. Examples include Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication and Direct Metal Deposition. These types of additive processes enable fabrication of parts directly from CAD drawings. To achieve the desired material properties and geometries of the final structure, assessing the impact of process parameters and predicting optimized conditions with numerical modeling as an effective prediction tool is necessary. The targets for the processing are multiple and at different spatial scales, and the physical phenomena associated occur in multiphysics and multiscale. In this project, the research work has been developed to model AAM processes in a multiscale and multiphysics approach. A macroscale model was developed to investigate the residual stresses and distortion in AAM processes. A sequentially coupled, thermomechanical, finite element model was developed and validated experimentally. The results showed the temperature distribution, residual stress, and deformation within the formed deposits and substrates. A mesoscale model was developed to include heat transfer, phase change with mushy zone, incompressible free surface flow, solute redistribution, and surface tension. Because of excessive computing time needed, a parallel computing approach was also tested. In addition, after investigating various methods, a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Model (SPH Model) was developed to model wire feeding process. Its computational efficiency and simple architecture makes it more robust and flexible than other models. More research on material properties may be needed to realistically model the AAM processes. A microscale model was developed to investigate heterogeneous nucleation, dendritic grain growth, epitaxial growth of columnar grains, columnar-to-equiaxed transition, grain transport in melt, and other properties. The orientations of the columnar grains were almost perpendicular to the laser motion's direction. Compared to the similar studies in the literature, the multiple grain morphology modeling result is in the same order of magnitude as optical morphologies in the experiment. Experimental work was conducted to validate different models. An infrared camera was incorporated as a process monitoring and validating tool to identify the solidus and mushy zones during deposition. The images were successfully processed to identify these regions. This research project has investigated multiscale and multiphysics of the complex AAM processes thus leading to advanced understanding of these processes. The project has also developed several modeling tools and experimental validation tools that will be very critical in the future of AAM process qualification and certification.

Liou, Frank↗
NASA NTRS1993

GEWEX Water Vapor Project (GVaP)

The goal of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Water Vapor Project (GVaP) is to improve the understanding of water vapor in meteorological, hydrological, and climatological processes through improving knowledge of water vapor and its variability on all scales. This goal clearly requires a multiscale observing strategy. A pilot project was deemed the most appropriate first step toward achieving this goal. An implementation plan was developed for this pilot phase. The four research components of the pilot phase are presented here.

Starr, David↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Energy landscape in Ni-Co-Cr and related alloys

Among multi-principal element alloys, the NiCoCr middle-entropy alloy has an outstanding combination of strength and ductility at both low and elevated temperatures. Equiatomic NiCoCr is a single-phase alloy with the face centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure. A low stacking fault energy in the fcc matrix is a cause of a relatively low creep in this alloy. The hexagonal close-packed (hcp) structure differs from the fcc by a stacking of atomic layers. The energy difference between the hcp and fcc structures is known to correlate with the stacking fault energy in the fcc phase. We compute formation and relative structural energies versus composition in the Ni-Co-Cr ternary and related quaternary systems, discuss possibilities of compositional adjustments, and compare theoretical predictions with experiment. We acknowledge funding by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) via Transformational Tools and Technologies (TTT) Project.

Multiscale↗
NASA NTRS2019

GPS Based Autonomous Navigation Study for the Lunar Gateway

This paper describes and predicts the performance of a conceptual autonomous GPS-based navigation system for NASA's planned lunar Gateway. This system is based on the flight-proven Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) GPS navigation system, augmented with an earth-pointed high-gain antenna and with an option for an atomic clock. High-fidelity simulations, calibrated against MMS flight data and making use of GPS transmitter patterns from the GPS Antenna Characterization Experiment (ACE) project are developed for operation of the system in the Gateway Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). The results indicate that GPS can provide an autonomous, realtime navigation capability with comparable, or superior, performance to traditional Deep Space Network approach with eight hours of tracking per day.

Winternitz, Luke B.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Radiative transfer theory for polarimetric remote sensing of pine forest

The radiative transfer theory is applied to interpret polarimetric radar backscatter from pine forest with clustered vegetation structures. The scattering function of each cluster is calculated by incorporating the phase interference of scattered fields from each component. The resulting phase matrix is used in the radiative transfer equations to evaluate the polarimetric backscattering coefficients from random medium layers embedded with vegetation clusters. Upon including multiscale structures (trunks, primary and secondary branches, and needles), polarimetric radar responses from pine forest for different frequencies and looking angles are interpreted and simulated. Preliminary results are shown to be in good agreement with the measured backscattering coefficients at the Landes maritime pine forest during the MAESTRO-1 experiment.

Hsu, C. C.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Simulations and Visualizations of Hurricane Sandy (2012) as Revealed by the NASA CAMVis

Storm Sandy first appeared as a tropical storm in the southern Caribbean Sea on Oct. 22, 2012, moved northeastward, turned northwestward, and made landfall near Brigantine, New Jersey in late October. Sandy devastated surrounding areas, caused an estimated damage of $50 billion, and became the second costliest tropical cyclone (TC) in U.S. History surpassed only by Hurricane Katrina (2005). To save lives and mitigate economic damage, a central question to be addressed is to what extent the lead time of severe storm prediction such as Sandy can be extended (e.g., Emanuel 2012; Kerr 2012). In this study, we present 10 numerical experiments initialized at 00 and 1200 UTC Oct. 22-26, 2012, with the NASA coupled advanced global modeling and visualization systems (CAMVis). All of the predictions realistically capture Sandy's movement with the northwestward turn prior to its landfall. However, three experiments (initialized at 0000 UTC Oct. 22 and 24 and 1200 UTC Oct. 22) produce larger errors. Among the 10 experiments, the control run initialized at 0000 UTC Oct. 23 produces a remarkable 7-day forecast. To illustrate the impact of environmental flows on the predictability of Sandy, we produce and discuss four-dimensional (4-D) visualizations with the control run. 4-D visualizations clearly demonstrate the following multiscale processes that led to the sinuous track of Sandy: the initial steering impact of an upper-level trough (appearing over the northwestern Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico), the blocking impact of systems to the northeast of Sandy, and the binary interaction with a mid-latitude, upper-level trough that appeared at 130degrees west longitude on Oct. 23, moved to the East Coast and intensified during the period of Oct. 29-30 prior to Sandy's landfall.

visualizations↗
NASA NTRS2020

Bioinspired multilayered cellular composites with enhanced energy absorption and shape recovery

Inspired by the multiscale configuration of the microstructure of cork, the paper describes the design, 3D printing, and evaluation of a new type of multilayered cellular composite (MCC) structure composed of hard brittle and soft flexible phases. The mechanical behavior of 3D printed MCC structures have been investigated both experimentally and numerically. The experiments show that the MCC structure absorbs four times the amount of energy of a conventional cellular configuration under compressive strains up to 70%. Finite element simulations and 2D digital image correlation (DIC) also show that the multilayered architecture provides a more uniform strain distribution and higher stress transfer efficiency, with a resulting progressive failure mode rather than a catastrophic one. Cyclic loading tests demonstrate that the MCC structure also possesses exceptional shape recoverability under compressive deformations up to 40%. These remarkable performance characteristics result from synergies between the properties of the two constituent materials and the chosen multilayered cellular microstructure. The soft phase, in particular, plays a pivotal role in absorbing elastic energy during loading and then releasing the stored energy while unloading. The volume fraction of the soft phase is also essential to control energy absorption and the transition of failure modes. The deformation mechanisms demonstrated here are robust and applicable to other architected cellular materials across multiple length scales and suggest new ways to design lightweight and high-resilience structural materials.

bioinspired composites↗
NASA NTRS1997

Tracking of Ice Edges and Ice Floes by Wavelet Analysis of SAR Images

This paper demonstrates the use of wavelet transforms in the tracking of sequential ice features in the ERS-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, especially in situations where feature correlation techniques fail to yield reasonable results. Examples include the evolution of the St. Lawrence polynya and summer sea ice change in the Beaufort Sea. For the polynya, the evolution of the region of young ice growth surrounding a polynya can be easily tracked by wavelet analysis due to the large backscatter difference between the young and old ice. Also within the polynya, a 2D fast Fourier transform (FFT) is used to identify the extent of the Langmuir circulation region, which is coincident with the wave-agitated frazil ice growth region, where the sea ice experiences its fastest growth. Therefore, the combination of wavelet and FFT analysis of SAR images provides for the large-scale monitoring of different polynya features. For summer ice, previous work shows that this is the most difficult period for ice trackers due to the lack of features on the sea ice cover. The multiscale wavelet analysis shows that this method delineates the detailed floe shapes during this period, so that between consecutive images, the floe translation and rotation can be estimated.

Liu, Antony K.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Magnetospheric Multiscale Overview and Science Objectives

Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS), a NASA four-spacecraft constellation mission launched on March 12, 2015, will investigate magnetic reconnection in the boundary regions of the Earth's magnetosphere, particularly along its dayside boundary with the solar wind and the neutral sheet in the magnetic tail. The most important goal of MMS is to conduct a definitive experiment to determine what causes magnetic field lines to reconnect in a collisionless plasma. The significance of the MMS results will extend far beyond the Earth's magnetosphere because reconnection is known to occur in interplanetary space and in the solar corona where it is responsible for solar flares and the disconnection events known as coronal mass ejections. Active research is also being conducted on reconnection in the laboratory and specifically in magnetic-confinement fusion devices in which it is a limiting factor in achieving and maintaining electron temperatures high enough to initiate fusion. Finally, reconnection is proposed as the cause of numerous phenomena throughout the universe such as comet-tail disconnection events, magnetar flares, supernova ejections, and dynamics of neutron-star accretion disks. The MMS mission design is focused on answering specific questions about reconnection at the Earth's magnetosphere. The prime focus of the mission is on determining the kinetic processes occurring in the electron diffusion region that are responsible for reconnection and that determine how it is initiated; but the mission will also place that physics into the context of the broad spectrum of physical processes associated with reconnection. Connections to other disciplines such as solar physics, astrophysics, and laboratory plasma physics are expected to be made through theory and modeling as informed by the MMS results.

Space plasma physics↗
NASA NTRS2009

A Multiscale Modeling System: Developments, Applications, and Critical Issues

The foremost challenge in parameterizing convective clouds and cloud systems in large-scale models are the many coupled dynamical and physical processes that interact over a wide range of scales, from microphysical scales to the synoptic and planetary scales. This makes the comprehension and representation of convective clouds and cloud systems one of the most complex scientific problems in Earth science. During the past decade, the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud System Study (GCSS) has pioneered the use of single-column models (SCMs) and cloud-resolving models (CRMs) for the evaluation of the cloud and radiation parameterizations in general circulation models (GCMs; e.g., GEWEX Cloud System Science Team 1993). These activities have uncovered many systematic biases in the radiation, cloud and convection parameterizations of GCMs and have led to the development of new schemes (e.g., Zhang 2002; Pincus et al, 2003; Zhang and Wu 2003; Wu et al. 2003; Liang and Wu 2005; Wu and Liang 2005, and others). Comparisons between SCMs and CRMs using the same large-scale forcing derived from field campaigns have demonstrated that CRMs are superior to SCMs in the prediction of temperature and moisture tendencies (e.g., Das et al. 1999; Randall et al 2003b; Xie et al. 2005).

Tao, Wei-Kuo↗
NASA NTRS2008

Multiscale Computer Simulation of Failure in Aerogels

Aerogels have been of interest to the aerospace community primarily for their thermal properties, notably their low thermal conductivities. While such gels are typically fragile, recent advances in the application of conformal polymer layers to these gels has made them potentially useful as lightweight structural materials as well. We have previously performed computer simulations of aerogel thermal conductivity and tensile and compressive failure, with results that are in qualitative, and sometimes quantitative, agreement with experiment. However, recent experiments in our laboratory suggest that gels having similar densities may exhibit substantially different properties. In this work, we extend our original diffusion limited cluster aggregation (DLCA) model for gel structure to incorporate additional variation in DLCA simulation parameters, with the aim of producing DLCA clusters of similar densities that nevertheless have different fractal dimension and secondary particle coordination. We perform particle statics simulations of gel strain on these clusters, and consider the effects of differing DLCA simulation conditions, and the resultant differences in fractal dimension and coordination, on gel strain properties.

Good, Brian S.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Windowed and Wavelet Analysis of Marine Stratocumulus Cloud Inhomogeneity

To improve radiative transfer calculations for inhomogeneous clouds, a consistent means of modeling inhomogeneity is needed. One current method of modeling cloud inhomogeneity is through the use of fractal parameters. This method is based on the supposition that cloud inhomogeneity over a large range of scales is related. An analysis technique named wavelet analysis provides a means of studying the multiscale nature of cloud inhomogeneity. In this paper, the authors discuss the analysis and modeling of cloud inhomogeneity through the use of wavelet analysis. Wavelet analysis as well as other windowed analysis techniques are used to study liquid water path (LWP) measurements obtained during the marine stratocumulus phase of the First ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) Regional Experiment. Statistics obtained using analysis windows, which are translated to span the LWP dataset, are used to study the local (small scale) properties of the cloud field as well as their time dependence. The LWP data are transformed onto an orthogonal wavelet basis that represents the data as a number of times series. Each of these time series lies within a frequency band and has a mean frequency that is half the frequency of the previous band. Wavelet analysis combined with translated analysis windows reveals that the local standard deviation of each frequency band is correlated with the local standard deviation of the other frequency bands. The ratio between the standard deviation of adjacent frequency bands is 0.9 and remains constant with respect to time. This ratio defined as the variance coupling parameter is applicable to all of the frequency bands studied and appears to be related to the slope of the data's power spectrum. Similar analyses are performed on two cloud inhomogeneity models, which use fractal-based concepts to introduce inhomogeneity into a uniform cloud field. The bounded cascade model does this by iteratively redistributing LWP at each scale using the value of the local mean. This model is reformulated into a wavelet multiresolution framework, thereby presenting a number of variants of the bounded cascade model. One variant introduced in this paper is the 'variance coupled model,' which redistributes LWP using the local standard deviation and the variance coupling parameter. While the bounded cascade model provides an elegant two- parameter model for generating cloud inhomogeneity, the multiresolution framework provides more flexibility at the expense of model complexity. Comparisons are made with the results from the LWP data analysis to demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of these models.

Gollmer, Steven M.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Genesis of Hurricane Sandy (2012) Simulated with a Global Mesoscale Model

In this study, we investigate the formation predictability of Hurricane Sandy (2012) with a global mesoscale model. We first present five track and intensity forecasts of Sandy initialized at 00Z 22-26 October 2012, realistically producing its movement with a northwestward turn prior to its landfall. We then show that three experiments initialized at 00Z 16-18 October captured the genesis of Sandy with a lead time of up to 6 days and simulated reasonable evolution of Sandy's track and intensity in the next 2 day period of 18Z 21-23 October. Results suggest that the extended lead time of formation prediction is achieved by realistic simulations of multiscale processes, including (1) the interaction between an easterly wave and a low-level westerly wind belt (WWB) and (2) the appearance of the upper-level trough at 200 hPa to Sandy's northwest. The low-level WWB and upper-level trough are likely associated with a Madden-Julian Oscillation.

multiscale processes↗
NASA NTRS2019

Toward Improving Short-Term Predictions of Fine Particulate Matter Over the United States Via Assimilation of Satellite Aerosol Optical Depth Retrievals

This study develops a new approach to improve simulations of the particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter smaller than 2.5μm (PM2.5) in the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model via assimilation of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aerosol optical depth(AOD) retrievals using the Grid point Statistical Interpolation (GSI) system. In contrast to previous studies that only consider errors due to transport, our computation of the background error covariance matrix incorporates uncertainties in anthropogenic emissions. To understand the impact of this approach, three experiments (one background and two assimilations) are performed over the contiguous United States(CONUS) from 15 July to 14 August 2014. The background CMAQ experiment significantly underestimates both the MODIS AOD and surface PM2.5levels. MODIS AOD assimilation pushes both the CMAQ AOD and surface PM2.5distributions toward the observed distributions, but CMAQ still underestimates the observations. Averaged over CONUS, the two assimilation experiments with and without including the anthropogenic emission uncertainties improve the correlation coefficient between the model and independent observations of PM2.5 by ~67% and ~48%, respectively, and reduces the mean bias by ~38% and~10%, respectively. The assimilation improves the model performance everywhere over CONUS, except the New York and Wisconsin, where CMAQ overestimates the observed PM2.5during nighttime after assimilation likely because of overcorrection of aerosol mass concentrations by the AOD assimilation. Future work should incorporate uncertainties in other processes (biomass burning and biogenic emissions, deposition, chemistry, transport, and boundary conditions) to further enhance the value of assimilating spaceborne AOD retrievals.

Assimilation↗
NASA NTRS2013

Epidermal Homeostasis and Radiation Responses in a Multiscale Tissue Modeling Framework

The surface of skin is lined with several thin layers of epithelial cells that are maintained throughout life time by a small population of stem cells. High dose radiation exposures could injure and deplete the underlying proliferative cells and induce cutaneous radiation syndrome. In this work we propose a multiscale computational model for skin epidermal dynamics that links phenomena occurring at the subcellular, cellular, and tissue levels of organization, to simulate the experimental data of the radiation response of swine epidermis, which is closely similar to human epidermis. Incorporating experimentally measured histological and cell kinetic parameters, we obtain results of population kinetics and proliferation indexes comparable to observations in unirradiated and acutely irradiated swine experiments. At the sub-cellular level, several recently published Wnt signaling controlled cell-cycle models are applied and the roles of key components and parameters are analyzed. Based on our simulation results, we demonstrate that a moderate increase of proliferation rate for the survival proliferative cells is sufficient to fully repopulate the area denuded by high dose radiation, as long as the integrity of underlying basement membrane is maintained. Our work highlights the importance of considering proliferation kinetics as well as the spatial organization of tissues when conducting in vivo investigations of radiation responses. This integrated model allow us to test the validity of several basic biological rules at the cellular level and sub-cellular mechanisms by qualitatively comparing simulation results with published research, and enhance our understanding of the pathophysiological effects of ionizing radiation on skin.

Hu, Shaowen↗
NASA NTRS2020

A Multiscale Cohesive Law for Carbon Fiber Networks

Better predictive models of mechanical failure in low-weight heat shield composites would aid material certification for missions with aggressive atmospheric entry conditions. Here, we develop such a model for the rapid engineering analysis of the failure limits of phenolic impregnated carbon ablator (PICA) - a leading heat shield material whose structural component is a carbon fiber network. We hypothesize inelastic deformation failure mechanisms and model their behavior using molecular dynamics simulations to calculate the binding energy. We then upscale this binding energy to the macroscale using a renormalization argument. The approach delivers insightful and reasonably accurate macroscale predictions that compare favorably to experiments. In application, the model is validated for a particular variety of PICA by comparison to experiment and would then be used to study design scenarios in different entry conditions.

W. SCHILL↗
NASA NTRS1987

Multiscale turbulence effects in underexpanded supersonic jets

A modified version of the multiscale turbulence model of Hanjalic has been applied to the problem of underexpanded supersonic jets. In particular, the shock-cell decay resulting from shock-mixing layer interactions has been studied for both mildly interacting and strongly resonant jet conditions. A version of the Hanjalic model which accounts for nonequilibrium energy transfer between two spectral scales of turbulence was incorporated into an existing shock-capturing, parabolized Navier-Stokes computational model in order to perform numerical experiments. Results are presented for nominal initial jet Mach numbers of 2.0, 1.4, and 1.0 and are compared to experiments and to predictions made using single-scale models. The results show significant effects of multi-spectral turbulent energy transfer on the predicted shock-cell decay particularly for the lower jet Mach numbers.

Abdol-Hamid, Khaled S.↗