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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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39 records · Page 3

Uneven Inflation Load Share Trends in Clusters

The use of parachute clusters for payload recovery is still seeing widespread use ever since the early days of WWII. By involving the (near) simultaneous deployment of several smaller and identical canopies connected to the payload, cluster systems offer flexibility in tailoring to needed descent rates and load management, as well as providing robustness against individual canopy deployment or opening failure. Their downside, of course, resides in the possibility of differing inflation rates by each cluster member as caused by deployment variability, canopy-to-canopy interference, etc. Such variability leads to the lead-lag phenomenon, which causes uneven loading among the parachutes, often times leaving a single canopy to take up a significant portion of the system’s inflation loads. Herein we investigate how serious such an effect can be in terms of the number N of cluster members, underinflation drag of the lagging canopies, inflation swiftness of the leader in comparison to the laggards’, disreefing cutter activation staggering and pre-disreefing drag area. Two new metrics are used to highlight load share unevenness, namely, the peak and average leader canopy riser load in comparison to the leader’s drag during no-lead-lag; and leader peak load, as compared to total peak load. Results are calculated from data collected in NASA’s Orion/CPAS test program, as well as from simple algebraic expressions informing leader drag as sustained in different cluster systems (i.e., of different N) and varying leader inflation time relative to the laggards. Generally, using large-N cluster systems confers better load sharing among canopies. However, and in deployments where significant lead-lag occur, large-N systems may feature greater leader overload excursions, oftentimes in excess of 50% the no-lead-lag levels. These excursions are particularly made worse when cutter activation among the members are far from simultaneous and the laggards’ pre-disreefing drag area is small in comparison to the leader’s.

parachutes↗

Thermodynamics of radiation induced amorphization and thermal annealing of Dy 2 Sn 2 O 7 pyrochlore

Thermodynamics and annealing behavior of swift heavy ion amorphized Dy 2 Sn 2 O 7 pyrochlore were studied. Its amorphization enthalpy, defined as the total energetic difference between the irradiation amorphized and undamaged Dy 2 Sn 2 O 7 states, was determined to be 283.6 ± 6.5 kJ/mol by high temperature oxide melt drop solution calorimetry. It has been an enigma that stannate and some other pyrochlores do not follow the general r A /r B -radiation resistance relation seen in most pyrochlore systems. In this paper, we use the amorphization enthalpy, which reflects all the complex chemical and structural characteristics, as a more effective parameter to correlate the radiation damage resistance of pyrochlores with their compositions. It successfully explains the superior radiation damage resistance of the stannate pyrochlores compared with titanate pyrochlores. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) reveals a strong exothermic event starting at 978 K, which is attributed to long-range recrystallization based on X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, similar to the effect previously observed in Dy 2 Ti 2 O 7 . A second pronounced heat event beginning at ~1148 K, which results from local structural rearrangement, is clearly decoupled from the first event for irradiated Dy 2 Sn 2 O 7 . Both the heat releases measured by DSC on heating to 1023 and 1473 K, and the excess enthalpies of the annealed samples indicate that the recovery to the original, ordered state was not fully achieved up to even 1473 K, despite XRD showing the apparent restoration of crystalline pyrochlore structure. The remaining metastability may be attributed to local disorder in the form of weberite-like short-range domains in the recrystallized material. Intriguingly, the second event for different pyrochlores generally starts at similar temperatures while the onset of the long range recrystallization is compositionally dependent. Finally, the amorphization and thermal annealing behavior observed in irradiated Dy 2 Sn 2 O 7 may provide insights into the general mechanisms of radiation damage and recovery of pyrochlores relevant to their nuclear applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Shock compression behavior of bi-material powder composites with disparate melting temperatures

Laser driven experiments were used to investigate the shock compression behavior of powder processed Bismuth/Tungsten (Bi/W) composite samples. The constituents provide different functionality to the composite behavior as Bi could be shock melted at the pressures attained in this work, while the W could not. Samples were prepared by uniaxial pressing, and the relative density was measured as a function of particle size, applied pressure, and composition for both hot and cold pressing conditions. This resulted in sample densities between 73% and 99% of the theoretical maximum density, and also noticeable differences in microstructure in the hot and cold pressed samples. The compression waves were generated with a 1.3 × 1.3 mm square spot directly onto the surface of the sample, using irradiances between 10{sup 12} and 10{sup 13} W/cm{sup 2}, which resulted in calculated peak pressures between 50 and 150 GPa within a few micrometers. Sample recovery and post-mortem analysis revealed the formation of a crater on the laser drive surface, and the depth of this crater corresponded to the depth to which the Bi had been melted. The melt depth was found to be primarily a function of residual porosity and composition, and ranged from 167 to 528 μm. In general, a higher porosity led to a larger melt depth. Direct numerical simulations were performed, and indicated that the observed increase in melt depth for low-porosity samples could be largely attributed to increased heating associated with work done for pore collapse. However, the relative scaling was sensitive to composition, with low volume fraction Bi samples exhibiting a much stronger dependence on porosity than high Bi content samples. Select samples were repeated using an Al foil ablator, but there were no noticeable differences ensuring that the observed melting was indeed pressure-driven and was not a result of direct laser heating. The resultant microstructures and damage near the spall surface were also investigated qualitatively.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗