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NASA NTRS1988

A method for designing robust multivariable feedback systems

A new methodology is developed for the synthesis of linear, time-invariant (LTI) controllers for multivariable LTI systems. The aim is to achieve stability and performance robustness of the feedback system in the presence of multiple unstructured uncertainty blocks; i.e., to satisfy a frequency-domain inequality in terms of the structured singular value. The design technique is referred to as the causality recovery methodology (CRM). Starting with an initial (nominally) stabilizing compensator, the CRM produces a closed-loop system whose performance-robustness is at least as good as, and hopefully superior to, that of the original design. The robustness improvement is obtained by solving an infinite-dimensional, convex optimization program. A finite-dimensional implementation of the CRM was developed, and it was applied to a multivariate design example.

Milich, David A.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Block rotations, fault domains and crustal deformation

Much of the earth's crust is broken by sets of parallel strike-slip faults which are organized in domains. A simple kinematic model suggests that when subject to tectonic strain, the faults, and the blocks bound by them, rotate. The rotation can be estimated from the structurally-determined fault slip and fault spacing, and independently from local deviations of paleomagnetic declinations from global values. A rigorous test of this model was carried out in northern Israel, where good agreement was found between the two rotations.

Nur, A.↗

NASA NTRS1991

End-effector microprocessor

The topics are presented in viewgraph form and include: automated structures assembly facility current control hierarchy; automated structures assembly facility purposed control hierarchy; end-effector software state transition diagram; block diagram for ideal install composite; and conclusions.

William R Doggett↗

NASA NTRS1990

Neurocomputing

The present work is intended to give technologists, research scientists, and mathematicians a graduate-level overview of the field of neurocomputing. After exploring the relationship of this field to general neuroscience, attention is given to neural network building blocks, the self-adaptation equations of learning laws, the data-transformation structures of associative networks, and the multilayer data-transformation structures of mapping networks. Also treated are the neurocomputing frontiers of spatiotemporal, stochastic, and hierarchical networks, 'neurosoftware', the creation of neural network-based computers, and neurocomputing applications in sensor processing, control, and data analysis.

Hecht-Nielsen, Robert↗

NASA NTRS1993

Some experiences with Krylov vectors and Lanczos vectors

This paper illustrates the use of Krylov vectors and Lanczos vectors for reduced-order modeling in structural dynamics and for control of flexible structures. Krylov vectors and Lanczos vectors are defined and illustrated, and several applications that have been under study at The University of Texas at Austin are reviewed: model reduction for undamped structural dynamics systems, component mode synthesis using Krylov vectors, model reduction of damped structural dynamics systems, and one-sided and two-sided unsymmetric block-Lanczos model-reduction algorithms.

Craig, Roy R., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS1992

The data acquisition system for the Anglo-Australian Observatory 2-degree field project

The Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) is building a system that will provide a two-degree field of view at prime focus. A robot positioner will be used to locate up to 400 optical fibers at pre-determined positions in this field. While observations are being made using one set of 400 fibers, the robot will be positioning a second set of fibers in a background field that can be moved in to replace the first when the telescope is moved to a new position. The fibers feed two spectrographs each with a 1024 square CCD detector. The software system being produced to control this involves Vaxes for overall control and data recording, UNIX workstations for fiber configuration calculations and on-line data reduction, and VME systems running VxWorks for real-time control of critical parts such as the positioner robot. The system has to be able to interact with the observatory's present data acquisition systems, which use the ADAM system. As yet, the real-time parts of ADAM have not been ported to Unix, and so we are having to produce a smaller-scale system that is similar but inherently distributed (which ADAM is not). We are using this system as a testbed for ideas that we hope may eventually influence an ADAM II system. The system we are producing is based on a message system that is designed to be able to handle inter-process and inter-processor messages of any length, efficiently, and without ever requiring a task to block (i.e., be unresponsive to 'cancel' messages, enquiry messages), other than when deliberately waiting for external input - all of which will be through such messages. The essential requirement is that a message 'send' operation should never be able to block. The messages will be hierarchical, self-defining, machine-independent data structures. This allows us to provide very simple monitoring of messages for diagnostic purposes, and allows general purpose interface programs to be written without needing to share precise byte by byte message format definitions. Programs in this system have interfaces defined simply in terms of named actions and their parameters. Real-time control programs are required to be able to handle a number of such actions concurrently; data reduction programs will normally only need to handle one action at a time ('process an image', 'display a spectrum', etc).

Shortridge, K.↗

NASA NTRS2006

An eight-meter inflatable reflectarray antenna and its inflatable/self-rigidizable booms

This paper presents the analysis and test results related to buckling capability, modal characteristics, and thermal expansion coefficient of STR aluminum laminate inflatable/self-rigidizable booms with lengths up to 10 metes. STR booms are fundamental building blocks of space inflatable/self-rigidizable reflectarray antennas. These boom characteristics are essential for analyzing structural integrity, in orbit dynamic response, and in orbit thermal distortion of the 8-mter reflectarray antenna. Distinct advantages of the STR booms will also be identified and presented by this paper.

membranes↗

NASA NTRS2018

Structural Certification of Human-Rated Inflatable Space Structures

This paper details the results of an initial study to develop a certification plan for human-rated inflatable space structures, including guidelines for qualification testing. Habitable softgoods inflatables are multi-layered shell structures that use high-strength webbing, cordage and broadcloth fabric to carry the skin loads of a variety of volumetric shapes and structural architectures. The primary objectives of this study are to define the key parameters that affect these structures and propose a statistically robust approach to defining safety and knockdown factors based on test and analysis. Current NASA standards for habitable inflatable space structures use a factor of safety of 4, which was inherited from airship design criteria. An updated approach to defining a design factor, taking into account material strength variability, load variability in the article, number of test samples, and damage and degradation effects is specified. Accurate analytical modeling of these structures is hindered by the difficulty of obtaining accurate and consistent material data due to load-history- dependent, nonlinear load versus strain behavior. A building block approach to certification is detailed that uses stochastic modeling and statistical test design and analysis to address the unique challenges these high-strength softgoods structures present. Human-rated inflatable modules are a transformative capability for launching much larger habitable volumes into space than is possible with rigid shell structures. This research aims to provide the framework for certifying these structures for future human space exploration missions.

Jones, Thomas C.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Trellises and Trellis-Based Decoding Algorithms for Linear Block Codes: A Recursive Maximum Likelihood Decoding - Part 3

The Viterbi algorithm is indeed a very simple and efficient method of implementing the maximum likelihood decoding. However, if we take advantage of the structural properties in a trellis section, other efficient trellis-based decoding algorithms can be devised. Recently, an efficient trellis-based recursive maximum likelihood decoding (RMLD) algorithm for linear block codes has been proposed. This algorithm is more efficient than the conventional Viterbi algorithm in both computation and hardware requirements. Most importantly, the implementation of this algorithm does not require the construction of the entire code trellis, only some special one-section trellises of relatively small state and branch complexities are needed for constructing path (or branch) metric tables recursively. At the end, there is only one table which contains only the most likely code-word and its metric for a given received sequence r = (r(sub 1), r(sub 2),...,r(sub n)). This algorithm basically uses the divide and conquer strategy. Furthermore, it allows parallel/pipeline processing of received sequences to speed up decoding.

Lin, Shu↗

NASA NTRS1985

Compliant hydrodynamic fluid journal bearing

An air bearing structure is described that prevents destructive bending moments within the top foil. Welds are eliminated by mounting the top bearing foil in the bearing cartridge sleeve without using a space block. Tabs or pins at the end of the top bearing foil are restrained by slots or stops formed in the cartridge sleeve. These structural members are free to move in a direction normal to the shaft while being restrained from movement in the direction of shaft rotation.

Warren, E. L.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Multi-level bandwidth efficient block modulation codes

The multilevel technique is investigated for combining block coding and modulation. There are four parts. In the first part, a formulation is presented for signal sets on which modulation codes are to be constructed. Distance measures on a signal set are defined and their properties are developed. In the second part, a general formulation is presented for multilevel modulation codes in terms of component codes with appropriate Euclidean distances. The distance properties, Euclidean weight distribution and linear structure of multilevel modulation codes are investigated. In the third part, several specific methods for constructing multilevel block modulation codes with interdependency among component codes are proposed. Given a multilevel block modulation code C with no interdependency among the binary component codes, the proposed methods give a multilevel block modulation code C which has the same rate as C, a minimum squared Euclidean distance not less than that of code C, a trellis diagram with the same number of states as that of C and a smaller number of nearest neighbor codewords than that of C. In the last part, error performance of block modulation codes is analyzed for an AWGN channel based on soft-decision maximum likelihood decoding. Error probabilities of some specific codes are evaluated based on their Euclidean weight distributions and simulation results.

Lin, Shu↗

NASA NTRS2001

Carbon Nanotube Anodes Being Evaluated for Lithium Ion Batteries

The NASA Glenn Research Center is evaluating the use of carbon nanotubes as anode materials for thin-film lithium-ion (Li) batteries. The motivation for this work lies in the fact that, in contrast to carbon black, directed structured nanotubes and nanofibers offer a superior intercalation media for Li-ion batteries. Carbon lamellas in carbon blacks are circumferentially oriented and block much of the particle interior, rendering much of the matrix useless as intercalation material. Nanofibers, on the other hand, can be grown so as to provide 100-percent accessibility of the entire carbon structure to intercalation. These tubes can be visualized as "rolled-up" sheets of carbon hexagons (see the following figure). One tube is approximately 1/10,000th the diameter of a human hair. In addition, the high accessibility of the structure confers a high mobility to ion-exchange processes, a fundamental for the batteries to respond dynamically because of intercalation.

Raffaelle, Ryne P.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Adaptive grid methods for RLV environment assessment and nozzle analysis

Rapid access to highly accurate data about complex configurations is needed for multi-disciplinary optimization and design. In order to efficiently meet these requirements a closer coupling between the analysis algorithms and the discretization process is needed. In some cases, such as free surface, temporally varying geometries, and fluid structure interaction, the need is unavoidable. In other cases the need is to rapidly generate and modify high quality grids. Techniques such as unstructured and/or solution-adaptive methods can be used to speed the grid generation process and to automatically cluster mesh points in regions of interest. Global features of the flow can be significantly affected by isolated regions of inadequately resolved flow. These regions may not exhibit high gradients and can be difficult to detect. Thus excessive resolution in certain regions does not necessarily increase the accuracy of the overall solution. Several approaches have been employed for both structured and unstructured grid adaption. The most widely used involve grid point redistribution, local grid point enrichment/derefinement or local modification of the actual flow solver. However, the success of any one of these methods ultimately depends on the feature detection algorithm used to determine solution domain regions which require a fine mesh for their accurate representation. Typically, weight functions are constructed to mimic the local truncation error and may require substantial user input. Most problems of engineering interest involve multi-block grids and widely disparate length scales. Hence, it is desirable that the adaptive grid feature detection algorithm be developed to recognize flow structures of different type as well as differing intensity, and adequately address scaling and normalization across blocks. These weight functions can then be used to construct blending functions for algebraic redistribution, interpolation functions for unstructured grid generation, forcing functions to attract/repel points in an elliptic system, or to trigger local refinement, based upon application of an equidistribution principle. The popularity of solution-adaptive techniques is growing in tandem with unstructured methods. The difficultly of precisely controlling mesh densities and orientations with current unstructured grid generation systems has driven the use of solution-adaptive meshing. Use of derivatives of density or pressure are widely used for construction of such weight functions, and have been proven very successful for inviscid flows with shocks. However, less success has been realized for flowfields with viscous layers, vortices or shocks of disparate strength. It is difficult to maintain the appropriate mesh point spacing in the various regions which require a fine spacing for adequate resolution. Mesh points often migrate from important regions due to refinement of dominant features. An example of this is the well know tendency of adaptive methods to increase the resolution of shocks in the flowfield around airfoils, but in the incorrect location due to inadequate resolution of the stagnation region. This problem has been the motivation for this research.

Thornburg, Hugh J.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Using template/hotwire cutting to demonstrate moldless composite fabrication

The objective of this experiment is to provide a simple, inexpensive composite fabrication technique which can be easily performed with a minimum of equipment and facilities. This process eliminates expensive female molds and uses only male molds which are easily formed from foam blocks. Once the mold is shaped, it is covered with fiberglass and becomes a structural component of the product.

Coleman, J. Mario↗

NASA NTRS1992

Impactites from Popigai Crater

Impactites (tagamites and suevites) from Popigai impact crater, whose diameter is about 100 km, are distributed over an area of 5000 sq km. The continuous sheet of suevite overlies the allogenic polymict breccia and partly authogenic breccia, and may also be observed in lenses or irregular bodies. The thickness of suevites in the central part of the crater is more than 100 m. Suevites may be distinguished by content of vitroclasts, lithoclasts, and crystalloclasts, by their dimensions, and by type of cementation, which reflects the facial settings of ejection of crushed and molten material, its sedimentation and lithification. Tagamites (impact melt rocks) are distributed on the surface predominantly in the western sector of the crater. The most characteristic are thick sheetlike bodies overlying the allogenic breccia and occurring in suevites where minor irregular bodies are widespread. The maximal thickness of separate tagamite sheets is up to 600 m. Tagamites, whose matrix is crystallized to a different degree, include fragments of minerals and gneiss blocks, among them shocked and thermally metamorphosed ones. Tagamite sheets have a complex inner structure; separate horizontal zones distinguish in crystallinity and fragment saturation. Differentiation in the impact melt in situ was not observed. The average chemical compositions of tagamites and suevites are similar, and correspond to the composition of biotite-garnet gneisses of the basement. According to the content of supplied Ir, Ni, and other siderophiles, impact melt was contaminated by 5 percent cosmic matter of collided body, probably ordinary chondrite. The total volume of remaining products of chilled impact melt is about 1750 cu km. Half this amount is represented by tagamite bodies. Though impact melt was in general well homogenized, the trend analysis showed that the concentric zonation is distribution of SiO2, MgO, and Na2O and the bandlike distribution of FeO and Al2O3 content testifies to a certain inheritance and heterogeneity in country rock composition laterally and vertically in the melting zone.

Masaitis, V. L.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Benefits of Swept and Leaned Stators for Fan Noise Reduction

An advanced high bypass ratio fan model was tested in the NASA Lewis Research Center 9 x 15-Foot Low Speed Wind Tunnel. The primary focus of this test was to quantify the acoustic benefits and aerodynamic performance of sweep and lean in stator vane design. Three stator sets were used for this test series. A conventional radial stator was tested at two rotor-stator axial spacings. Additional stator sets incorporating sweep + lean, and sweep only were also tested. The hub axial location for the swept + lean, and sweep only stators corresponded to the location of the radial stator at the upstream rotor-stator spacing, while the tip axial location of these modified stators corresponded to the radial stator axial position at the downstream position. The acoustic results show significant reductions in both rotor-stator interaction noise and broadband noise beyond what could be achieved through increased axial spacing of the conventional, radial stator. Theoretical application of these results to acoustically quantify a fictitious 2-engine aircraft and flight path suggested that about 3 Effective Perceived Noise (EPN) dB could be achieved through incorporation of these modified stators. This reduction would represent a significant portion of the 6 EPNdB noise goal of the current NASA Advanced Subsonic Technology (AST) initiative relative to that of 1992 technology levels. A secondary result of this fan test was to demonstrate the ability of an acoustic barrier wall to block aft-radiated fan noise in the wind tunnel, thus revealing the acoustic structure of the residual inlet-radiated noise. This technology should prove valuable toward better understanding inlet liner design, or wherever it is desirable to eliminate aft-radiated noise from the fan acoustic signature.

Woodward, Richard P.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Control Structures Interaction (CSI) Technology

Control Structures Interaction (CSI) technology for control of space structures is being developed cooperatively by JPL, LaRC and MSFC for NASA OAST/RM. The mid-'90s goal of JPL's CSI program is to demonstrate with analysis, ground and flight tests, the super quiet structures needed for large diffraction-limited instruments such as optical stellar interferometers and large advanced successors to the Hubble Space Telescope. Microprecision CSI technology is intended as a new "building block" for use by the designers of large optical systems. The thrust of the microprecision CSI technology effort is to achieve nanometer-levels of space structure stability/accuracy with designs which employ otherwise conventional spacecraft technologies. JPL design experiences have indicated the following CSI technology development areas are especially applicable to large optical system projects: (1) Active structural members; (2) Control/structures design methods; (3) Microdynamic effects characterization; and (4) Ground and flight test validation of CSI methods.

Layman, W. E.↗

NASA NTRS2007

Agent Based Intelligence in a Tetrahedral Rover

A tetrahedron is a 4-node 6-strut pyramid structure which is being used by the NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center as the basic building block for a new approach to robotic motion. The struts are extendable; it is by the sequence of activities: strut-extension, changing the center of gravity and falling that the tetrahedron "moves". Currently, strut-extension is handled by human remote control. There is an effort underway to make the movement of the tetrahedron autonomous, driven by an attempt to achieve a goal. The approach being taken is to associate an intelligent agent with each node. Thus, the autonomous tetrahedron is realized as a constrained multi-agent system, where the constraints arise from the fact that between any two agents there is an extendible strut. The hypothesis of this work is that, by proper composition of such automated tetrahedra, robotic structures of various levels of complexity can be developed which will support more complex dynamic motions. This is the basis of the new approach to robotic motion which is under investigation. A Java-based simulator for the single tetrahedron, realized as a constrained multi-agent system, has been developed and evaluated. This paper reports on this project and presents a discussion of the structure and dynamics of the simulator.

Phelps, Peter↗