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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 55 records · Page 3

O-Ring-Testing Fixture

Fixture tests O-rings for sealing ability under dynamic conditions after extended periods of compression. Hydraulic cylinder moves plug in housing. Taper of 15 degrees on plug and cavity of housing ensures that gap created between O-ring under test and wall of cavity. Secondary O-rings above and below test ring maintain pressure applied to test ring. Evaluates effects of variety of parameters, including temperature, pressure, rate of pressurization, rate and magnitude of radial gap movement, and pretest compression time.

Turner, James E.↗

Analytical studies of hypersonic viscous dissociated flows

This project primarily dealt with integral boundary-layer solution techniques that are directly applicable to the problem of determining aerodynamic heating rates of hypersonic vehicles like X-33 in the vicinity of stagnation points, windward centerlines, and swept-wing leading edges. The analyses include effects of finite-rate gas chemistry across the boundary layer and finite-rate catalysis of atom recombination at the surface. A new approach for combining the insight afforded by integral boundary-layer analysis with comprehensive (and expensive) computational fluid dynamic (CFD) flowfield solutions of the thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations was developed. The approach extracts CFD derived quantities at the wall and at the boundary layer edge for inclusion in a post-processing boundary-layer analysis. The post-processed data base allows a designer at a workstation to ask and answer the following questions: (1) How much does the heating change if one uses a thermal protection system (TPS) with different catalytic properties than was used in the original CFD solution? (2) How does the heating change when one moves the interface of two different TPS materials with different catalytic efficiencies for the purpose of reducing vehicle weight and expense? The answer to the second question is particularly critical, because abrupt changes from low catalytic efficiency to high catalytic efficiency can lead to localized increase in heating which exceeds the usually conservative estimate provided by a fully catalytic wall assumption. A secondary issue that was addressed involves the prediction of heating levels in the vicinity of sharp corners that are transverse to or aligned with the flow. An example of the first case is heating at the edge of the COMET reentry module. An example of the second case is heating along the side edge of a deflected body flap on an SSV. The difficulty of putting grids in the vicinity of such corners with continuously varying metric coefficients causes problems in CFD predictions. A preliminary theory for prediction that says the heating at the corner is X percent of the heating N boundary-layer thicknesses inboard was developed. This will prove useful to analytically evaluate the possible benefits of rounding the edges of these configurations and defining how much rounding is sufficient.

Inger, George R.↗

Reinventing the Design Process: Teams and Models

The future of space mission designing will be dramatically different from the past. Formerly, performance-driven paradigms emphasized data return with cost and schedule being secondary issues.

Design↗

Advanced thrust chamber technology for in-space propulsion system

Two new concepts, the afterburning technique and the spray optimization method for the purpose of upgrading the combustion efficiency and C efficiency, are examined to assess the technical merits and hurdles that need to be resolved. Details of combustion and aerodynamic processes of monomethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxides in a toroidal shaped combustion chamber of a variable thrust engine, devised with a wall impingement cooling system and the secondary injection of an oxidizer from the chamber wall for an afterburning, are investigated for the selected secondary injection conditions. With an appropriate injection condition, the combustion efficiency was found to be almost 23 percent higher than that of an engine without afterburning.

Chiu, H. H.↗

Secondary instability of high-speed flows and the influence of wall cooling and suction

The periodic streamwise modulation of the supersonic and hypersonic boundary layers by a two-dimensional first-mode or second-mode wave makes the resulting base flow susceptible to a broad-band spanwise-periodic three-dimensional type of instability. The principal parametric resonance of this instability (subharmonic) has been analyzed using Floquet theory. The effect of Mach number and the effectiveness of wall cooling or wall suction in controlling the onset, the growth rate, and the vortical structure of the subharmonic secondary instability are assessed for both a first-mode and a second-mode primary wave.

El-Hady, Nabil M.↗

The response of tissue-equivalent proportional counters to heavy ions

The paper presents a theoretical model for the response of a tissue-equivalent proportional counter (TEPC) irradiated with charged particles. Heavy ions and iron ions in particular constitute a significant part of radiation in space. TEPCs are used for all space shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) missions to estimate the dose and radiation quality (in terms of lineal energy) inside spacecraft. The response of the tissue-equivalent proportional counters shows distortions at the wall/cavity interface. In this paper, we present microdosimetric investigation using Monte Carlo track structure calculations to simulate the response of a TEPC to charged particles of various LET (1 MeV protons, 2.4 MeV alpha particles, 46 MeV/nucleon 20Ne, 55 MeV/nucleon 20Ne, 45 MeV/nucleon 40Ar, and 1.05 GeV/nucleon 56Fe). Data are presented for energy lost and energy absorbed in the counter cavity and wall. The model calculations are in good agreement with the results of Rademacher et al. (Radiat. Res. 149, 387-389, 1998), including the study of the interface between the wall and the sensitive region of the counter. It is shown that the anomalous response observed at large event sizes in the experiment is due to an enhanced entry of secondary electrons from the wall into the gas cavity.

NASA Discipline Radiation Health↗

End-wall boundary layer prediction for axial compressors

An integral boundary layer procedure was developed for the computation of viscous and secondary flows along the annulus walls of an axial compressor. The procedure is an outgrowth and extension of the pitch-averaged methods of Mellor and Horlock. In the present work secondary flow theory is used to develop approximations for the velocity profiles inside a rotating blade row and for the blade force deficit terms in the momentum integral equations. The computer code based on this procedure was iteratively coupled to a quasi-one-dimensional model for the external inviscid flow. Computed results are compared with measurements in a compressor cascade.

Sockol, P. M.↗

End-wall boundary layer prediction for axial compressors

An integral boundary layer procedure has been developed for the computation of viscous and secondary flows along the annulus walls of an axial compressor. The procedure is an outgrowth and extension of the pitch-averaged methods of Mellor and Horlock. In the present work secondary flow theory is used to develop approximations for the velocity profiles inside a rotating blade row and for the blade force deficit terms in the momentum integral equations. The computer code based on this procedure has been iteratively coupled to a quasi-one-dimensional model for the external inviscid flow. Computed results are compared with measurements in a compressor cascade.

Sockol, P. M.↗

Effects of blade loading and rotation on compressor rotor wake in end wall regions

This study was carried out to understand the effects of blade loading and rotation on the rotor end wall flow structure, including the wake. The measurements were taken with a stationary three sensor hot wire located at the exit of a compressor rotor. The signal was ensemble averaged to derive all the three components of velocity and six components of stresses at the exit. Measurements were made at two different rotational speeds (1753 and 1010 rpm) and at two differing blade loadings at several radii near the hub and the annulus wall. The wake decay in the annulus wall region is found to be much more rapid than the mid span regions. Furthermore, both the loading and rotation of the blade have appreciable influence on the end wall flow and wake structure. Interaction of the annulus and hub wall boundary layers (and secondary flow resulting from these) have appreciable influence on the wake structure in the endwall regions.

Lakshminarayana, B.↗

Time-dependent viscous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations - The finite difference Galerkin formulation and streamfunction algorithms

Numerical techniques are developed to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for unsteady incompressible flow. The extension of the finite-difference Galerkin (FDG) method of Stephens et al. (1984) to the continuous-time case in two or three space dimensions is explained, and the numerical implementation of the method is discussed with particular attention to the staggered-MAC-grid primitive-variable discretization, the application of discrete mass balance to avoid problems inherent in FDG schemes, the direct interpretation of the FDG expansion variables as a discrete streamfunction, and a mass-balance approach to two-dimensional problems with throughflow or obstacles. Numerical results are presented graphically for the evolution of asymptotic steady flow in a driven cavity at Reynolds number 400, 1000, or 3200; good agreement with published experimental data is demonstrated, with accurate predictions of secondary-vortex formation from wall bubble recirculations at Reynolds number 1000.

Goodrich, John W.↗

Plasma produced by impacts of fast dust particles on a thin film

The thin-film impact plasma detector was pioneered by Berg for detecting small cosmic dust particles and measuring their approximate velocities in a time-of-flight configuration. While Berg's device was highly successful in establishing the flux of interplanetary dust, the accuracy of measuring the velocities of individual particles was a moderate 18 percent in magnitude and 27 degrees in angle. A much greater accuracy of less than or equal to 1 percent in determining the velocity components appears desirable in order to associate a particle with its parent body. In order to meet that need, research was initiated to determine if a thin-film detector can be designed to provide such accurate velocity measurements. Previous laboratory investigations of the impact plasma uncovered two difficulties: (1) solid or liquid spray is ejected from a primary impact crater and strikes neighboring walls where it produces secondary impact craters and plasma clouds; as a result, both quantity and time of detection of the plasma can vary significantly with the experiment configuration. Particles from an accelerator rarely have speeds v greater than or equal to 10-15 km/s, while cosmic dust particles typically impact at v = 10-72 km/s. The purpose of the tests discussed in this paper was to resolve the two difficulties mentioned. That is, the experiment configuration was designed to reduce the contribution of plasma from secondary impacts. In addition, most particles with v less than or equal to 25 km/s and all particles with v less than or equal to 10 km/s were eliminated from the beam.

Auer, Siegfried↗

Forced mixer lobes in ejector designs

Forced mixer lobes in augmentor primary ejectors obtain a 100-percent increase in pumping over conventional design, together with nearly complete mixing in very short mixing ducts, through the generation of large scale axial vorticity in the mixing duct. The vorticity causes rapid mixing of the primary and secondary flows with low losses; since mixing length is minimized, wall friction losses are reduced, allowing more secondary flow to be pumped for a given total pressure in the primary flow. Analytical results are presented that are judged to have significant implications for future ejector test work.

Presz, W. M., Jr.↗

Forced convective heat transfer in curved diffusers

Measurements of the velocity characteristics of the flows in two curved diffusers of rectangular cross section with C and S-shaped centerlines are presented and related to measurements of wall heat transfer coefficients along the heated flat walls of the ducts. The velocity results were obtained by laser-Doppler anemometry in a water tunnel and the heat transfer results by liquid crystal thermography in a wind tunnel. The thermographic technique allowed the rapid and inexpensive measurement of wall heat transfer coefficients along flat walls of arbitrary boundary shapes with an accuracy of about 5 percent. The results show that an increase in secondary flow velocities near the heated wall causes an increase in the local wall heat transfer coefficient, and quantify the variation for maximum secondary-flow velocities in a range from 1.5 to 17 percent of the bulk flow velocity.

Rojas, J.↗

Visualization study of flow in axial flow inducer.

A visualization study of the flow through a three ft dia model of a four bladed inducer, which is operated in air at a flow coefficient of 0.065, is reported in this paper. The flow near the blade surfaces, inside the rotating passages, downstream and upstream of the inducer is visualized by means of smoke, tufts, ammonia filament, and lampblack techniques. Flow is found to be highly three dimensional, with appreciable radial velocity throughout the entire passage. The secondary flows observed near the hub and annulus walls agree with qualitative predictions obtained from the inviscid secondary flow theory.

Lakshminarayana, B.↗

Characteristics of mean velocity in the annulus wall region at the exit of turbomachinery rotor passage

This paper reports the experimental study of the three-dimensional characteristics of the mean velocity in the annulus-wall boundary layer and wake mixing region of a moderately loaded compressor rotor blade. The measurements reported were obtained using a three-sensor hot-wire probe at the exit of the rotor. They consisted of tangential surveys at several axial and radial locations downstream of the compressor rotor blade passage. The variation of the streamwise, normal, and radial velocity profiles and their decay characteristics are derived from this data. The measurements reveal the highly complex and three-dimensional nature of the annulus-wall flow field and the nature of the interaction of the annulus-wall boundary layer, the blade boundary layers and wake, and the secondary flow associated with the annulus-wall region.

Davino, R.↗

Flow Characterization of the NASA Langley Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel, Test Section 2: Computational Results

This is an abstract for an invited paper at the AIAA Aviation Conference, June 2021. The work described here is part of an effort of coordinated experiments in the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel (UPWT) facility at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) and matching CFD simulations. The primary goal of the work is to assess the productivity and true predictive accuracy of CFD, absent any guidance from experiment, in the high supersonic speed range as compared to experiments performed at the NASA LaRC’s UPWT facility. This report concerns CFD simulation of the primary flow-path in the empty wind tunnel, including the settling chamber, nozzle, test section, and some of the tunnel downstream of the test section. The Mach number in the test section ranges from M~2.4 to M~4.6, and the required area ratio variation is achieved by translation of a nozzle block which constricts the area of a loosely S-shaped throat. Flow past protuberances in the settling chamber and into this S-bend throat are predicted by CFD to generate streamwise vorticity that may, or may not, persist through the throat and into the test section as coherent vortices. Some flow conditions are notably unsteady at frequencies well below those of turbulence, due to unsteady separated flow ahead of the nozzle block. The bulk flow moves at velocities ranging from 'walking speed' in the settling chamber to M~4.6 in the test section. Heat transfer to the settling chamber walls and buoyancy are significant at high Mach number. Subtle variations in surface curvature in the nozzle generate Mach waves that propagate into the test section. CFD of the empty tunnel serves two purposes. Firstly, the full-tunnel simulations are used to provide upstream boundary conditions for CFD of vehicle aerodynamics which are generally performed in a domain confined to the wind tunnel test section; these companion studies are addressed in other papers. Secondly, it is a challenging test for CFD to resolve all of the empty tunnel flow phenomena relevant to flow in the test section. It requires a more complete definition of geometry than was originally anticipated. In addition, it requires good spatial and temporal accuracy, and turbulence modeling that performs well on specific phenomena such as corner flows. The boundary conditions and solution algorithms must perform well from incompressible to almost hypersonic speeds. The final state of the pre-test CFD was a product of an iterative self-improvement process. The initial simulations of the empty tunnel were deficient in many respects, but hints to those deficiencies were recognized in the solutions, and remedies were implemented. Possible further improvements will be studied in the post-test phase when comparisons with experimental data are possible. The CFD was performed by five separate collaborative teams using four different flow solvers: FUN3D, Overflow, Star-CCM+ and USM3D. The level of effort of these teams varied significantly, but each made important contributions to the goals of the work. A concerted effort to use uncertainty quantification methods (UQ) in CFD is also a goal of this work. To this end, variations in CFD results due to grid refinement, turbulence modeling, and boundary conditions have been characterized. Code-to-code variation is another means of assessing CFD uncertainty. All CFD solvers predict similarity among the primary flow features; these include the variation of Mach number due to changes in Reynolds number, and the bulk flow angularity due to tunnel-wall curvature. All CFD solvers also predict similar trends in secondary flows, such as the downwash in the side-wall boundary layers. Three of the high-spatial resolution simulations give similar predictions of a complex secondary flow phenomena, streamwise vortices generated in the S-bend throat that persist into the side-wall boundary layers of the test section. Two of the highest-resolution simulations, run with the same turbulence model in different CFD solvers, gave encouragingly similar predictions of a complex tertiary flow phenomenon, small transient "sprites" of upwash flows, resulting from vortices that presumably originate in the separated flow near the leading edge of the nozzle block. While the CFD was done in a "blind pre-test" mode, requests from the experimental team for CFD results pertaining to unsteadiness and total temperature variations in the test section resulted in CFD runs that included a cooled wall in settling chamber. This then led to a change in the standard practice for running the Overflow results, which would not have occurred without this "release" of this experimental information. CFD was also used to guide some measurements. The paper will focus on establishing the consensus among CFD results and understanding differences among those results. Initial findings from the efforts to characterize CFD uncertainty have been done and will be included in the paper.

Robert Edward Childs↗

A Theoretical Evaluation of Secondary Atomization Effects on Engine Performance for Aluminum Gel Propellants

A one-dimensional model of a gel-fueled rocket combustion chamber has been developed. This model includes the processes of liquid hydrocarbon burnout, secondary atomization. aluminum ignition, and aluminum combustion. Also included is a model of radiative heat transfer from the solid combustion products to the chamber walls. Calculations indicate that only modest secondary atomization is required to significantly reduce propellant burnout distances, aluminum oxide residual size and radiation heat wall losses. Radiation losses equal to approximately 2-13 percent of the energy released during combustion were estimated. A two-dimensional, two-phase nozzle code was employed to estimate radiation and nozzle two-phase flow effects on overall engine performance. Radiation losses yielded a 1 percent decrease in engine I(sub sp). Results also indicate that secondary atomization may have less effect on two-phase losses than it does on propellant burnout distance and no effect if oxide particle coagulation and shear induced droplet breakup govern oxide particle size. Engine I(sub sp) was found to decrease from 337.4 to 293.7 seconds as gel aluminum mass loading was varied from 0-70 wt percent. Engine I(sub sp) efficiencies, accounting for radiation and two-phase flow effects, on the order of 0.946 were calculated for a 60 wt percent gel, assuming a fragmentation ratio of 5.

Mueller, D. C.↗

Flow and heat transfer in a curved channel

Flow and heat transfer in a curved channel of aspect ratio 6 and inner- to outer-wall radius ratio 0.96 were studied. Secondary currents and large longitudinal vortices were found. The heat-transfer rates of the outer and inner walls were independently controlled to maintain a constant wall temperature. Heating the inner wall increased the pressure drop along the channel length, whereas heating the outer wall had little effect. Outer-wall heat transfer was as much as 40 percent greater than the straight-channel correlation, and inner-wall heat transfer was 22 percent greater than the straight-channel correlation.

Brinich, P. F.↗