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At least 55 records · Page 3

Coolant passage heat transfer with rotation

The objective is to develop a heat transfer and pressure drop data base, computational fluid dynamic techniques, and correlations for multi-pass rotating coolant passages with and without flow turbulators. The experimental effort is focused on the simulation of configurations and conditions expected in the blades of advanced aircraft high pressure turbines. With the use of this data base, the effects of Coriolis and buoyancy forces on the coolant side flow can be included in the design of turbine blades.

Hajek, T. J.↗

Coolant passage heat transfer with rotation

In current and advanced gas turbine engines, increased speeds, pressures and temperatures are used to reduce specific fuel consumption and increase thrust/weight ratios. Hence, the turbine airfoils are subjected to increased heat loads escalating the cooling requirements to satisfy life goals. The efficient use of cooling air requires that the details of local geometry and flow conditions be adequately modeled to predict local heat loads and the corresponding heat transfer coefficients. The objective of this program is to develop a heat transfer and pressure drop data base, computational fluid dynamic techniques and correlations for multi-pass rotating coolant passages with and without flow turbulators. The experimental effort is focused on the simulation of configurations and conditions expected in the blades of advanced aircraft high pressure turbines. With the use of this data base, the effects of Coriolis and buoyancy forces on the coolant side flow can be included in the design of turbine blades.

Hajek, T. J.↗

Heat transfer in rotating serpentine passages with smooth walls

Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of buoyancy and Coriolis forces on heat transfer in turbine blade internal coolant passages. The experiments were conducted with a large scale, multi-pass, smooth-wall heat transfer model with both radially inward and outward flow. An analysis of the governing flow equations showed that four parameters influence the heat transfer in rotating passages (coolant-to-wall temperature ratio, Rossby number, Reynolds number and radius-to-passage hydraulic diameter ratio). These four parameters were varied over ranges which are typical of advanced gas turbine engine operating conditions. It was found that both Coriolis and buoyancy effects must be considered in turbine blade cooling designs and that the effect of rotation on the heat transfer coefficients was markedly different depending on the flow direction. Local heat transfer coefficients were found to decrease by as much as 60 percent and increase by 250 percent from no rotation levels. Comparisons with a pioneering stationary vertical tube buoyancy experiment showed reasonably good agreement. Correlation of the data is achieved employing dimensionless parameters derived from the governing flow equations.

Wagner, J. H.↗

Heat transfer in rotating serpentine passages with trips skewed to the flow

Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of buoyancy and Coriolis forces on heat transfer in turbine blade internal coolant passages. The experiments were conducted with a large scale, multi-pass, heat transfer model with both radially inward and outward flow. Trip strips, skewed at 45 deg to the flow direction, were machined on the leading and trailing surfaces of the radial coolant passages. An analysis of the governing flow equations showed that four parameters influence the heat transfer in rotating passages: coolant-to-wall temperature, rotation number, Reynolds number, and radius-to-passage hydraulic diameter ratio. The first three of these four parameters were varied over ranges which are typical of advanced gas turbine engine operating conditions. Results were correlated and compared to previous results from similar stationary and rotating models with smooth walls and with trip strips normal to the flow direction. The heat transfer coefficients on surfaces, where the heat transfer decreased with rotation and buoyancy, decreased to as low as 40 percent of the value without rotation. However, the maximum values of the heat transfer coefficients with high rotation were only slightly above the highest levels previously obtained with the smooth wall models. It was concluded that (1) both Coriolis and buoyancy effects must be considered in turbine blade cooling designs with trip strips, (2) the effects of rotation are markedly different depending upon the flow direction, and (3) the heat transfer with skewed trip strips is less sensitive to buoyancy than the heat transfer in models with either smooth or normal trips. Therefore, skewed trip strips rather than normal trip strips are recommended and geometry-specific tests are required for accurate design information.

Johnson, B. V.↗

All solid-state high power visible laser

The overall objective of this Phase 2 effort was to develop and deliver to NASA a high repetition rate laser-diode-pumped solid-state pulsed laser system with output in the green portion of the spectrum. The laser is for use in data communications, and high efficiency, short pulses, and low timing jitter are important features. A short-pulse 1 micron laser oscillator, a new multi-pass amplifier to boost the infrared power, and a frequency doubler to take the amplified infrared pulsed laser light into the green. This produced 1.5 W of light in the visible at a pulse repetition rate of 20 kHz in the laboratory. The pulses have a full-width at half maximum of near 1 ns. The results of this program are being commercialized.

Grossman, William M.↗

Rayleigh-Brillouin scattering for high-pressure gas temperature measurements

An experiment was set up to evaluate the feasibility of using Rayleigh-Brillouin scattering as a diagnostic technique for measuring gas temperature in high pressure environments, such as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) Preburner. A high pressure furnace is used as the scattering chamber. Either nitrogen or hydrogen may be used. An argon ion laser beam is focused into the furnace. Light backscattering from the gas in the furnace is collected and analyzed with a 5-pass scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer and photon counting electronics. The multi-pass configuration provides the high frequency selectively needed to measure the Brillouin peaks in the presence of large amounts of spuriously scattered light at the laser frequency. Preliminary measurements were made at room temperature in nitrogen at pressures up to 2000 psia. The free spectral range of the interferometer and frequency separation of the Brillouin peaks are determined from measured spectra. Temperature measurements are then obtained using the simple continuum theory with low frequency values of specific heat ratio and shear viscosity. The measured temperatures are within 10 percent of the true value.

Seasholtz, Richard G.↗

Heat transfer in rotating serpentine passages with trips skewed to the flow

Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of buoyancy and Coriolis forces on heat transfer in turbine blade internal coolant passages. The experiments were conducted with a large scale, multi-pass heat transfer model with both radially inward and outward flow. An analysis of the governing flow equations showed that four parameters influence the heat transfer in rotating passages: coolant-to-wall temperature, rotation number, Reynolds number, and radius-to-passage hydraulic diameter ratio. Results were correlated and compared to previous results from similar stationary and rotating models with smooth walls and with trip strips normal to the flow direction. It was concluded that (1) both Coriolis and buoyancy must be considered in turbine blade cooling designs with trip strips, (2) the effects of rotation are markedly different depending upon the flow direction, and (3) the heat transfer with skewed trip strips is less sensitive to buoyancy than the heat transfer models with either smooth or normal trips. Therefore, skewed trip strips rather than normal trip strips are recommended and geometry-specific tests are required for accurate design.

Johnson, B. V.↗

Application of Derivative Spectrometry to the Analysis of Trace Gases

A derivative spectrometer is sensitive to changes in spectral intensity over narrow wavelength internal. Specifically, a second derivative spectrometer senses the curvature of the incident spectral intensity, providing an output voltage signal proportional to the second derivative of intensity with respect to wavelength. When such an instrument is combined with multi-pass White cell, a unique trace gas analyzer results. The analyzer, operating within the middle ultraviolet spectral region, provides a highly amplified derivative spectrum of any molecular narrow band absorption which is used for trace gas identification. The intensity of any peak within a spectrum is proportional to the trace gas concentration. Such an analyzer, utilizing a 20 meter pathlength White cell, is presently being used to automatically monitor ambient air for SO2, NO, NO2, and O3 with minimum detectable concentration limits in the part per billion range.

Hager, Robert N.↗

Mechanical Properties of Friction Stir Welds in A12195-T8

An extensive study of the mechanical properties of friction stir welded Al-Li 2195 has been conducted by Lockheed Martin Michoud Space Systems under contract to NASA. The study was part of a development program in which weld parameters were defined for using FSW to assemble large-scale aluminum cryogenic tanks. In excess of 300 feet of 0.320 in. gage plate material was welded and tested. The tests include room temperature and cryogenic temperature tensile tests and surface crack tension (SCT) tests, nondestructive evaluation, metallurgical studies, and photostress analysis. The results of the testing demonstrated improved mechanical properties with FSW as compared to typical fusion welding processes. Increases in ultimate tensile strength, cryogenic enhancement and elongation were observed with the tensile test results. Increased fracture toughness was observed with the SCT results. Nondestructive evaluations were conducted on all welded Joints. No volumetric defects were indicated. Surface indications on the root side of the welds did not significantly affect weld strength. The results of the nondestructive evaluations were confirmed via metallurgical studies. Photostress analysis revealed strain concentrations in multi-pass and heat-repaired FSW's. Details of the tests and results are presented.

Kinchen, David G.↗

Friction Stir Weld Restart+Reweld Repair Allowables

A friction stir weld (FSW) repair method has been developed and successfully implemented on Al 2195 plate material for the Space Shuttle External Fuel Tank (ET). The method includes restarting the friction stir weld in the termination hole of the original weld followed by two reweld passes. Room temperature and cryogenic temperature mechanical properties exceeded minimum FSW design strength and compared well with the development data. Simulated service test results also compared closely to historical data for initial FSW, confirming no change to the critical flaw size or inspection requirements for the repaired weld. Testing of VPPA fusion/FSW intersection weld specimens exhibited acceptable strength and exceeded the minimum design value. Porosity, when present at the intersection was on the root side toe of the fusion weld, the "worst case" being 0.7 inch long. While such porosity may be removed by sanding, this "worst case" porosity condition was tested "as is" and demonstrated that porosity did not negatively affect the strength of the intersection weld. Large, 15-inch "wide panels" FSW repair welds were tested to demonstrate strength and evaluate residual stresses using photo stress analysis. All results exceeded design minimums, and photo stress analysis showed no significant stress gradients due to the presence of the restart and multi-pass FSW repair weld.

Clifton, Andrew↗

IONAC-Lite

The Interplanetary Overlay Net - working Protocol Accelerator (IONAC) described previously in The Inter - planetary Overlay Networking Protocol Accelerator (NPO-45584), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 32, No. 10, (October 2008) p. 106 (http://www.techbriefs.com/component/ content/article/3317) provides functions that implement the Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) bundle protocol. New missions that require high-speed downlink-only use of DTN can now be accommodated by the unidirectional IONAC-Lite to support high data rate downlink mission applications. Due to constrained energy resources, a conventional software implementation of the DTN protocol can provide only limited throughput for any given reasonable energy consumption rate. The IONAC-Lite DTN Protocol Accelerator is able to reduce this energy consumption by an order of magnitude and increase the throughput capability by two orders of magnitude. In addition, a conventional DTN implementation requires a bundle database with a considerable storage requirement. In very high downlink datarate missions such as near-Earth radar science missions, the storage space utilization needs to be maximized for science data and minimized for communications protocol-related storage needs. The IONAC-Lite DTN Protocol Accelerator is implemented in a reconfigurable hardware device to accomplish exactly what s needed for high-throughput DTN downlink-only scenarios. The following are salient features of the IONAC-Lite implementation: An implementation of the Bundle Protocol for an environment that requires a very high rate bundle egress data rate. The C&DH (command and data handling) subsystem is also expected to be very constrained so the interaction with the C&DH processor and the temporary storage are minimized. Fully pipelined design so that bundle processing database is not required. Implements a lookup table-based approach to eliminate multi-pass processing requirement imposed by the Bundle Protocol header s length field structure and the SDNV (self-delimiting numeric value) data field formatting. 8-bit parallel datapath to support high data-rate missions. Reduced resource utilization implementation for missions that do not require custody transfer features. There was no known implementation of the DTN protocol in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device prior to the current implementation. The combination of energy and performance optimization that embodies this design makes the work novel.

Torgerson, Jordan L.↗

NASA Tech Briefs, June 2013

Topics include: Cloud Absorption Radiometer Autonomous Navigation System - CANS, Software Method for Computed Tomography Cylinder Data Unwrapping, Re-slicing, and Analysis, Discrete Data Qualification System and Method Comprising Noise Series Fault Detection, Simple Laser Communications Terminal for Downlink from Earth Orbit at Rates Exceeding 10 Gb/s, Application Program Interface for the Orion Aerodynamics Database, Hyperspectral Imager-Tracker, Web Application Software for Ground Operations Planning Database (GOPDb) Management, Software Defined Radio with Parallelized Software Architecture, Compact Radar Transceiver with Included Calibration, Software Defined Radio with Parallelized Software Architecture, Phase Change Material Thermal Power Generator, The Thermal Hogan - A Means of Surviving the Lunar Night, Micromachined Active Magnetic Regenerator for Low-Temperature Magnetic Coolers, Nano-Ceramic Coated Plastics, Preparation of a Bimetal Using Mechanical Alloying for Environmental or Industrial Use, Phase Change Material for Temperature Control of Imager or Sounder on GOES Type Satellites in GEO, Dual-Compartment Inflatable Suitlock, Modular Connector Keying Concept, Genesis Ultrapure Water Megasonic Wafer Spin Cleaner, Piezoelectrically Initiated Pyrotechnic Igniter, Folding Elastic Thermal Surface - FETS, Multi-Pass Quadrupole Mass Analyzer, Lunar Sulfur Capture System, Environmental Qualification of a Single-Crystal Silicon Mirror for Spaceflight Use, Planar Superconducting Millimeter-Wave/Terahertz Channelizing Filter, Qualification of UHF Antenna for Extreme Martian Thermal Environments, Ensemble Eclipse: A Process for Prefab Development Environment for the Ensemble Project, ISS Live!, Space Operations Learning Center (SOLC) iPhone/iPad Application, Software to Compare NPP HDF5 Data Files, Planetary Data Systems (PDS) Imaging Node Atlas II, Automatic Calibration of an Airborne Imaging System to an Inertial Navigation Unit, Translating MAPGEN to ASPEN for MER, Support Routines for In Situ Image Processing, and Semi-Supervised Eigenbasis Novelty Detection.

Source record↗

Laser Amplifier Development for the Remote Sensing of CO2 from Space

Accurate global measurements of tropospheric CO2 mixing ratios are needed to study CO2 emissions and CO2 exchange with the land and oceans. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is developing a pulsed lidar approach for an integrated path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar to allow global measurements of atmospheric CO2 column densities from space. Our group has developed, and successfully flown, an airborne pulsed lidar instrument that uses two tunable pulsed laser transmitters allowing simultaneous measurement of a single CO2 absorption line in the 1570 nm band, absorption of an O2 line pair in the oxygen A-band (765 nm), range, and atmospheric backscatter profiles in the same path. Both lasers are pulsed at 10 kHz, and the two absorption line regions are sampled at typically a 300 Hz rate. A space-based version of this lidar must have a much larger lidar power-area product due to the approximately x40 longer range and faster along track velocity compared to airborne instrument. Initial link budget analysis indicated that for a 400 km orbit, a 1.5 m diameter telescope and a 10 second integration time, a approximately 2 mJ laser energy is required to attain the precision needed for each measurement. To meet this energy requirement, we have pursued parallel power scaling efforts to enable space-based lidar measurement of CO2 concentrations. These included a multiple aperture approach consists of multi-element large mode area fiber amplifiers and a single-aperture approach consists of a multi-pass Er:Yb:Phosphate glass based planar waveguide amplifier (PWA). In this paper we will present our laser amplifier design approaches and preliminary results.

Solid-State Laser Amplifier↗

A High-Throughput, Adaptive FFT Architecture for FPGA-Based Space-Borne Data Processors

Historically, computationally-intensive data processing for space-borne instruments has heavily relied on ground-based computing resources. But with recent advances in functional densities of Field-Programmable Gate-Arrays (FPGAs), there has been an increasing desire to shift more processing on-board; therefore relaxing the downlink data bandwidth requirements. Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) are commonly used building blocks for data processing applications, with a growing need to increase the FFT block size. Many existing FFT architectures have mainly emphasized on low power consumption or resource usage; but as the block size of the FFT grows, the throughput is often compromised first. In addition to power and resource constraints, space-borne digital systems are also limited to a small set of space-qualified memory elements, which typically lag behind the commercially available counterparts in capacity and bandwidth. The bandwidth limitation of the external memory creates a bottleneck for a large, high-throughput FFT design with large block size. In this paper, we present the Multi-Pass Wide Kernel FFT (MPWK-FFT) architecture for a moderately large block size (32K) with considerations to power consumption and resource usage, as well as throughput. We will also show that the architecture can be easily adapted for different FFT block sizes with different throughput and power requirements. The result is completely contained within an FPGA without relying on external memories. Implementation results are summarized.

Nguyen, Kayla↗

High Energy, Narrow Linewidth 1572nm Eryb-Fiber Based MOPA for a Multi-Aperture CO2 Trace-Gas Laser Space Transmitter

Accurate global measurements of tropospheric CO2 mixing ratios are needed to study CO2 emissions and CO2 exchange with the land and oceans. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is developing a pulsed lidar approach for an integrated path differential absorption (IPDA) lidar to allow global measurements of atmospheric CO2 column densities from space. Our group has developed, and successfully flown, an airborne pulsed lidar instrument that uses two tunable pulsed laser transmitters allowing simultaneous measurement of a single CO2 absorption line in the 1570 nm band, absorption of an O2 line pair in the oxygen A-band (765 nm), range, and atmospheric backscatter profiles in the same path. Both lasers are pulsed at 10 kHz, and the two absorption line regions are sampled at typically a 300 Hz rate. A space-based version of this lidar must have a much larger lidar power-area product due to the x40 longer range and faster along track velocity compared to airborne instrument. Initial link budget analysis indicated that for a 400 km orbit, a 1.5 m diameter telescope and a 10 second integration time, a 2 mJ laser energy is required to attain the precision needed for each measurement. To meet this energy requirement, we have pursued parallel power scaling efforts to enable space-based lidar measurement of CO2 concentrations. These included a multiple aperture approach consists of multi-element large mode area fiber amplifiers and a single-aperture approach consists of a multi-pass Er:Yb:Phosphate glass based planar waveguide amplifier (PWA). In this paper we will present our laser amplifier design approaches and preliminary results.

micropulse lidar↗

Technology Advancement for Active Remote Sensing of Carbon Dioxide from Space Using the ASCENDS CarbonHawk Experiment Simulator: First Results

The ASCENDS CarbonHawk Experiment Simulator (ACES) is a newly developed lidar developed at NASA Langley Research Center and funded by NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) that seeks to advance technologies critical to measuring atmospheric column carbon dioxide (CO2) mixing ratios in support of the NASA Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) mission. The technology advancements targeted include: (1) increasing the power-aperture product to approach ASCENDS mission requirements by implementing multi-aperture telescopes and multiple co-aligned laser transmitters; (2) incorporating high-efficiency, high-power Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs); (3) developing and incorporating a high-bandwidth, low-noise HgCdTe detector and transimpedence amplifier (TIA) subsystem capable of long-duration autonomous operation on Global Hawk aircraft, and (4) advancing algorithms for cloud and aerosol discrimination. The ACES instrument architecture is being developed for operation on high-altitude aircraft and will be directly scalable to meet the ASCENDS mission requirements. These technologies are critical towards developing not only spaceborne instruments but also their airborne simulators, with lower platform requirements for size, mass, and power, and with improved instrument performance for the ASCENDS mission. ACES transmits five laser beams: three from commercial EDFAs operating near 1.57 microns, and two from the Exelis oxygen (O2) Raman fiber laser amplifier system operating near 1.26 microns. The three EDFAs are capable of transmitting up to 10 watts average optical output power each and are seeded by compact, low noise, stable, narrow-linewidth laser sources stabilized with respect to a CO2 absorption line using a multi-pass gas absorption cell. The Integrated-Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) lidar approach is used at both wavelengths to independently measure the CO2 and O2 column number densities and retrieve the average column CO2 mixing ratio. The ACES receiver uses three fiber-coupled 17.8-cm diameter athermal telescopes. The transmitter assembly consists of five fiber-coupled laser collimators and an associated Risley prism pair for each laser to co-align the outgoing laser beams and to align them with the telescope field of view. The backscattered return signals collected by the three telescopes are combined in a fiber bundle and sent to a single low noise detector. The detector/TIA development has improved the existing detector subsystem by increasing its bandwidth to 4.7 MHz from 500 kHz and increasing the duration of autonomous, service-free operation periods from 4 hours to >24 hours. The new detector subsystem enables the utilization of higher laser modulation rates, which provides greater flexibility for implementing advanced thin-cloud discrimination algorithms as well as improving range-determination resolution and error reduction. The cloud/aerosol discrimination algorithm development by Langley and Exelis features a new suite of algorithms for the minimization/elimination of bias errors in the return signal induced by the presence of intervening thin clouds. Multiple laser modulation schemes are being tested in an effort to significantly mitigate the effects of thin clouds on the retrieved CO2 column amounts. Full instrument development concluded in the spring of 2014. After ground range tests of the instrument, ACES successfully completed six test flights on the Langley Hu-25 aircraft in July, 2014, and recorded data at multiple altitudes over land and ocean surfaces with and without intervening clouds. Preliminary results from these test flights will be presented in this paper.

Obland, Michael D.↗

Miniature Tunable Laser Spectrometer for Detection of a Trace Gas

An open-path laser spectrometer (OPLS) for measuring a concentration of a trace gas, the OPLS including an open-path multi-pass analysis region including a first mirror, a second mirror at a distance and orientation from the first mirror, and a support structure for locating the mirrors, a laser coupled to the analysis region and configured to emit light of a wavelength range and to enable a plurality of reflections of the emitted light between the mirrors, a detector coupled to the analysis region and configured to detect a portion of the emitted light impinging on the detector and to generate a corresponding signal, and an electronic system coupled to the laser and the detector, and configured to adjust the wavelength range of the emitted light from the laser based on the generated signal, and to measure the concentration of the trace gas based on the generated signal.

Christensen, Lance E.↗

Separation of isobaric Amino Acids and Small Molecule Metabolites Using Multipass Ion Mobility Analysis

Amino acids along with small molecule metabolites are important biomarkers for the study and detection of diseases that are initially analyzed in untargeted omics fashion. Amino acids and many metabolites are isomeric, and their specific form can have a significant impact on biological function. Chromatographic separation of isomers is challenging, and they cannot be resolved by mass spectrometry alone. Ion mobility is a technique that allows the separation of ions based on their size, shape, and charge. Here we present the results of the separation of isobaric amino acids and small molecule metabolites using a system that allows for multi-pass ion mobility separation which, in turn, enhances the ion mobility resolution of the separation. Amino acid standards and small molecule metabolites commercially available were infused directly into a SELECT SERIES™ Cyclic™ IMS system. Solutions of individual and mixture of the isobaric species were used and the mobility conditions were optimized for multiple passes for each corresponding set of isobaric species. Both ionization polarities and various solvent adducts were tested to provide the best signal intensity and separation. Amino acids such as leucine and isoleucine have previously been separated with ion mobility in a system with lower ion mobility resolution (SYNAPT™ G2 mass spectrometer) rendering about 90% of valley and mobility resolution of around 40 Ω/ΔΩ. With the enhanced ion mobility resolution using the cyclic IMS technique we have obtained almost complete separation of those amino acids rendering a valley of about 10% after 15 passes. For this case, the mobility resolution is around 250 Ω/ΔΩ. Another example is the separation of glucose-6-phosphate from glucose-1-phosphate, and fructose-6phosphate which were separated after 10 passes. For this case, the mobility resolution is around 205 Ω/ΔΩ.

Hernando J Olivos↗