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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 595 records · Page 33
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2006

Representation of Serendipitous Scientific Data

A computer program defines and implements an innovative kind of data structure than can be used for representing information derived from serendipitous discoveries made via collection of scientific data on long exploratory spacecraft missions. Data structures capable of collecting any kind of data can easily be implemented in advance, but the task of designing a fixed and efficient data structure suitable for processing raw data into useful information and taking advantage of serendipitous scientific discovery is becoming increasingly difficult as missions go deeper into space. The present software eases the task by enabling definition of arbitrarily complex data structures that can adapt at run time as raw data are transformed into other types of information. This software runs on a variety of computers, and can be distributed in either source code or binary code form. It must be run in conjunction with any one of a number of Lisp compilers that are available commercially or as shareware. It has no specific memory requirements and depends upon the other software with which it is used. This program is implemented as a library that is called by, and becomes folded into, the other software with which it is used.

James, Mark↗
NASA NTRS2011

Advancements in the Representation of Cloud-Aerosol Microphysics in the GEOS-5 AGCM

Despite numerous challenges, the physical parameterization of cloud-aerosol interactions in atmospheric GCMs has become a top priority for advancement because of our need to simulate and understand past, current, and future indirect effects of aerosols on clouds. The challenges stem from the involvement of wide range of cloud-scale dynamics and aerosol activation physical processes. Cloud dynamics modulate cloud areal extent and condensate, while aerosol activation depends on aerosol mass load, size distribution, internal mixing state, and nucleating properties, and ultimately determines cloud optical properties via particle sizes. Both macro- and micro-scale processes are obviously important for cloud-radiation interactions. We will present the main features of cloud microphysical properties in the GEOS- 5 Atmospheric GCM (AGCM) as simulated by the McRAS-AC (Microphysics of Clouds with Relaxed Arakawa-Schubert and Aerosol-Cloud interaction) scheme. McRAS-AC uses Fountoukis and Nenes (2005) aerosol activation for liquid clouds, and has an option for either Liu and Penner (2005) or Barahona and Nenes (2008, 2009) aerosol activation for ice clouds. Aerosol loading (on-line or climatological) comes from GOCART, with an assumed log-normal size distribution. Other features of McRAS-AC are level-by-level cloud-scale thermodynamics, and Seifert-Beheng (2001)-type precipitation microphysics, particularly from moist convection. Results from Single-Column Model simulations will be shown to demonstrate how cloud radiative properties, lifetimes, and precipitation are influenced by different parameterization assumptions. Corresponding fields from year-long simulations of the full AGCM will also be presented with geographical distributions of cloud effective particle sizes compared to satellite retrievals. While the primary emphasis will be on current climate, simulation results with perturbed aerosol loadings will also be shown to expose the radiative sensitivity of the microphysical parameterization.

Lee, D.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Provenance Representation in the Global Change Information System (GCIS)

Global climate change is a topic that has become very controversial despite strong support within the scientific community. It is common for agencies releasing information about climate change to be served with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for everything that led to that conclusion. Capturing and presenting the provenance, linking to the research papers, data sets, models, analyses, observation instruments and satellites, etc. supporting key findings has the potential to mitigate skepticism in this domain. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is now coordinating the production of a National Climate Assessment (NCA) that presents our best understanding of global change. We are now developing a Global Change Information System (GCIS) that will present the content of that report and its provenance, including the scientific support for the findings of the assessment. We are using an approach that will present this information both through a human accessible web site as well as a machine readable interface for automated mining of the provenance graph. We plan to use the developing W3C PROV Data Model and Ontology for this system.

Tilmes, Curt↗
NASA NTRS2013

Influence of Computational Drop Representation in LES of a Droplet-Laden Mixing Layer

Multiphase turbulent flows are encountered in many practical applications including turbine engines or natural phenomena involving particle dispersion. Numerical computations of multiphase turbulent flows are important because they provide a cheaper alternative to performing experiments during an engine design process or because they can provide predictions of pollutant dispersion, etc. Two-phase flows contain millions and sometimes billions of particles. For flows with volumetrically dilute particle loading, the most accurate method of numerically simulating the flow is based on direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the governing equations in which all scales of the flow including the small scales that are responsible for the overwhelming amount of dissipation are resolved. DNS, however, requires high computational cost and cannot be used in engineering design applications where iterations among several design conditions are necessary. Because of high computational cost, numerical simulations of such flows cannot track all these drops. The objective of this work is to quantify the influence of the number of computational drops and grid spacing on the accuracy of predicted flow statistics, and to possibly identify the minimum number, or, if not possible, the optimal number of computational drops that provide minimal error in flow prediction. For this purpose, several Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of a mixing layer with evaporating drops have been performed by using coarse, medium, and fine grid spacings and computational drops, rather than physical drops. To define computational drops, an integer NR is introduced that represents the ratio of the number of existing physical drops to the desired number of computational drops; for example, if NR=8, this means that a computational drop represents 8 physical drops in the flow field. The desired number of computational drops is determined by the available computational resources; the larger NR is, the less computationally intensive is the simulation. A set of first order and second order flow statistics, and of drop statistics are extracted from LES predictions and are compared to results obtained by filtering a DNS database. First order statistics such as Favre averaged stream-wise velocity, Favre averaged vapor mass fraction, and the drop stream-wise velocity, are predicted accurately independent of the number of computational drops and grid spacing. Second order flow statistics depend both on the number of computational drops and on grid spacing. The scalar variance and turbulent vapor flux are predicted accurately by the fine mesh LES only when NR is less than 32, and by the coarse mesh LES reasonably accurately for all NR values. This is attributed to the fact that when the grid spacing is coarsened, the number of drops in a computational cell must not be significantly lower than that in the DNS.

Bellan, Josette↗
NASA NTRS2014

New Representation of Bearings in LS-DYNA

Non-linear, dynamic, finite element analysis is used in various engineering disciplines to evaluate high-speed, dynamic impact and vibration events. Some of these applications require connecting rotating to stationary components. For example, bird impacts on rotating aircraft engine fan blades are a common analysis performed using this type of analysis tool. Traditionally, rotating machines utilize some type of bearing to allow rotation in one degree of freedom while offering constraints in the other degrees of freedom. Most times, bearings are modeled simply as linear springs with rotation. This is a simplification that is not necessarily accurate under the conditions of high-velocity, high-energy, dynamic events such as impact problems. For this reason, it is desirable to utilize a more realistic non-linear force-deflection characteristic of real bearings to model the interaction between rotating and non-rotating components during dynamic events. The present work describes a rolling element bearing model developed for use in non-linear, dynamic finite element analysis. This rolling element bearing model has been implemented in LS-DYNA as a new element, *ELEMENT_BEARING.

bearings↗
NASA NTRS2014

Horizontal Variability of Water and Its Relationship to Cloud Fraction near the Tropical Tropopause: Using Aircraft Observations of Water Vapor to Improve the Representation of Grid-scale Cloud Formation in GEOS-5

Large-scale models such as GEOS-5 typically calculate grid-scale fractional cloudiness through a PDF parameterization of the sub-gridscale distribution of specific humidity. The GEOS-5 moisture routine uses a simple rectangular PDF varying in height that follows a tanh profile. While below 10 km this profile is informed by moisture information from the AIRS instrument, there is relatively little empirical basis for the profile above that level. ATTREX provides an opportunity to refine the profile using estimates of the horizontal variability of measurements of water vapor, total water and ice particles from the Global Hawk aircraft at or near the tropopause. These measurements will be compared with estimates of large-scale cloud fraction from CALIPSO and lidar retrievals from the CPL on the aircraft. We will use the variability measurements to perform studies of the sensitivity of the GEOS-5 cloud-fraction to various modifications to the PDF shape and to its vertical profile.

climate modeling↗
NASA NTRS2011

Nondimensional Representations for Occulter Design and Performance Evaluation

An occulter is a spacecraft with a precisely-shaped optical edges which ies in formation with a telescope, blocking light from a star while leaving light from nearby planets una ected. Using linear optimization, occulters can be designed for use with telescopes over a wide range of telescope aperture sizes, science bands, and starlight suppression levels. It can be shown that this optimization depends primarily on a small number of independent nondimensional parameters, which correspond to Fresnel numbers and physical scales and enter the optimization only as constraints. We show how these can be used to span the parameter space of possible optimized occulters; this data set can then be mined to determine occulter sizes for various mission scenarios and sets of engineering constraints.

Earth like planets↗
NASA NTRS2016

Average Cross-Sectional Area of DebriSat Fragments Using Volumetrically Constructed 3D Representations

Debris fragments from the hypervelocity impact testing of DebriSat are being collected and characterized for use in updating existing satellite breakup models. One of the key parameters utilized in these models is the ballistic coefficient of the fragment which is directly related to its area‐to‐mass ratio. However, since the attitude of fragments varies during their orbital lifetime, it is customary to use the average cross‐sectional area in the calculation of the area‐to‐mass ratio. The average cross‐sectional area is defined as the average of the projected surface areas perpendicular to the direction of motion and has been shown to be equal to one‐fourth of the total surface area of a convex object. Unfortunately, numerous fragments obtained from the DebriSat experiment show significant concavity (i.e., shadowing) and thus we have explored alternate methods for computing the average cross‐sectional area of the fragments. An imaging system based on the volumetric reconstruction of a 3D object from multiple 2D photographs of the object was developed for use in determining the size characteristic (i.e., characteristics length) of the DebriSat fragments. For each fragment, the imaging system generates N number of images from varied azimuth and elevation angles and processes them using a space‐carving algorithm to construct a 3D point cloud of the fragment. This paper describes two approaches for calculating the average cross‐sectional area of debris fragments based on the 3D imager. Approach A utilizes the constructed 3D object to generate equally distributed cross‐sectional area projections and then averages them to determine the average cross‐sectional area. Approach B utilizes a weighted average of the area of the 2D photographs to directly compute the average cross‐sectional area. A comparison of the accuracy and computational needs of each approach is described as well as preliminary results of an analysis to determine the "optimal" number of images needed for the 3D imager to accurately measure the average cross sectional area of objects with known dimensions.

Scruggs, T.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Ontology and modeling patterns for state-based behavior representation

This paper provides an approach to capture state-based behavior of elements, that is, the specification of their state evolution in time, and the interactions amongst them. Elements can be components (e.g., sensors, actuators) or environments, and are characterized by state variables that vary with time. The behaviors of these elements, as well as interactions among them are represented through constraints on state variables. This paper discusses the concepts and relationships introduced in this behavior ontology, and the modeling patterns associated with it. Two example cases are provided to illustrate their usage, as well as to demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of the behavior ontology: a simple flashlight electrical model and a more complex spacecraft model involving instruments, power and data behaviors. Finally, an implementation in a SysML profile is provided.

state variable↗
NASA NTRS2016

Enhanced Representation of Soil NO Emissions in the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Model Version 5.0.2

Modeling of soil nitric oxide (NO) emissions is highly uncertain and may misrepresent its spatial and temporal distribution. This study builds upon a recently introduced parameterization to improve the timing and spatial distribution of soil NO emission estimates in the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The parameterization considers soil parameters, meteorology, land use, and mineral nitrogen (N) availability to estimate NO emissions. We incorporate daily year-specific fertilizer data from the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) agricultural model to replace the annual generic data of the initial parameterization, and use a 12km resolution soil biome map over the continental USA. CMAQ modeling for July 2011 shows slight differences in model performance in simulating fine particulate matter and ozone from Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) and Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) sites and NO2 columns from Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite retrievals. We also simulate how the change in soil NO emissions scheme affects the expected O3 response to projected emissions reductions.

remote sensing↗
NASA NTRS2016

Accurately Characterizing the Importance of Wave-Particle Interactions in Radiation Belt Dynamics: The Pitfalls of Statistical Wave Representations

Wave-particle interactions play a crucial role in energetic particle dynamics in the Earths radiation belts. However, the relative importance of different wave modes in these dynamics is poorly understood. Typically, this is assessed during geomagnetic storms using statistically averaged empirical wave models as a function of geomagnetic activity in advanced radiation belt simulations. However, statistical averages poorly characterize extreme events such as geomagnetic storms in that storm-time ultralow frequency wave power is typically larger than that derived over a solar cycle and Kp is a poor proxy for storm-time wave power.

Murphy, Kyle R.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Towards A Representation of Vertically Resolved Ozone Changes in Reanalyses

The Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Radiometer (SBUV) instruments on NASA and NOAA spacecraft provide a long-term record of total-column ozone and deep-layer partial columns since about 1980. These data have been carefully processed to extract long-term trends and offer a valuable resource for ozone monitoring. Studies assimilating limb-sounding observations in the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) data assimilation system (DAS) demonstrate that vertical ozone gradients in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) are much better represented than with the deep-layer SBUV observations. This is exemplified by the use of retrieved ozone from the EOS Microwave Limb Sounder (EOS-MLS) instrument in the MERRA-2 reanalysis, for the period after 2004. This study examines the potential for extending the use of limb-sounding observations at earlier times and into the future, so that future reanalyses may be more applicable to the study of long-term ozone changes.Historical data are available from NASA instruments: the Limb Infrared Monitor of the Stratosphere (LIMS: 1978-1979); the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS: 1991-1995); Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER: 2000-onwards). For the post EOS-MLS period, the joint NASA-NOAA Ozone Monitoring and Profiling Suite Limb Profiler (OMPS-LP) instrument was launched on the Suomi-NPP platform in 201x and is planned for future platforms. This study will examine two aspects of these data pertaining to future reanalyses. First, the feasibility of merging the EOS-MLS and OMPS-LP instruments to provide a long-term record that extends beyond the potential lifetime of EOS-MLS. If feasible, this would allow for long-term monitoring of ozone recovery in a three-dimensional reanalysis context. Second, the skill of the GEOS DAS in ingesting historical data types will be investigated. Because these do not overlap with EOS-MLS, use will be made of system statistics and evaluation using independent datasets. Impacts of using a complete ozone chemistry module will also be considered.

ML↗
NASA NTRS2016

Multidisciplinary Model Transformation Through Simplified Intermediate Representations

There has long been a challenge of making engineering tools from multiple disciplines interoperate. This problem extends to system modeling practices. This challenge has been confronted with a wide variety of techniques. These techniques include attempting to interface tools together into combined suites, attempting to find underlying commonalities in mathematics, supporting connections through semantic encoding, various graph mappings and transformations, and code wrappers. All of these approaches have strengths and weaknesses. These are measured in multiple areas: relative freedom of action of individual domain engineers in developing their own tools, speed of execution, ease of creation, traceability, fidelity of information transfer, and degree of alignment between the concepts of different domains. This paper presents an approach to this interoperation problem currently being used in the World-Wide Web. The approach is to develop easy-to-parse formats that allow flexibility to both the file author and file interpreter. Many of the formats that are currently deployed sacrifice runtime performance for the ability of third parties to easily understand what to do with the data. XML became popular earlier as a de-facto standard format for many web applications, but is now being replaced by JSON to enhance human readability and provide a simpler data model. This is the basis for work in this paper. Our approach, which provides the key to interoperation, is a simplified “shrapnel” intermediate collection of objects and relationships that is the result of a breakdown of the system model into minimal pieces. It is then reassembled on the destination side, forming a two-step transformation. Previous efforts with single-step transformations have proven too difficult to create efficiently. In contrast, the use of this approach leads to an almost automatic procedure for transformation development. The Europa project is a large engineering project that must coordinate the efforts of many different teams with different specialties. The traditional form of exchanging engineering information has been documentation. The vision of model-based systems engineering is to make this information exchange much more digital. This paper presents the application of our simplified format to connecting two different engineering tools to the system model, with a focus on a dynamic mission simulation encoded in Modelica.

Cole, Bjorn↗
NASA NTRS2020

Representation of Tropical Storms by the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications Version 2

This study examines the veracity of the tropical cyclone (TC) statistics estimated from the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) global atmospheric reanalysis, focusing on the climatological-mean genesis regions, tracks and their lifetime maximum intensity, as well as the interannual and intraseasonal variations in TC activity. The results are validated against the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) data for 1980-2016. MERRA-2 represents the spatial distribution of the TC genesis location and the tracks realistically well over all main development regions (MDRs), but with notable discrepancies including too weak TC activity over the Arabian Sea and the South China Sea and too strong activity over the North Indian Ocean. Over the western North Pacific and the North Atlantic, MERRA-2 underestimates recurving TCs steered by background westerlies in the mid-latitudes and thereby exaggerates northwestward moving TCs, resulting in an overestimate of the landfall probability in East Asia and North America. Excessive development of TCs over the Bay of Bengal also tends to exaggerate the landfall probability in India. In spite of the discrepancies in the annual TC number, the seasonal variation of TC genesis is realistic in MERRA-2. MERRA-2 also captures the TC intensity relationship between the minimum pressure and the maximum surface wind speed at the mature stage, although the maximum intensity is weaker than in the observations. While MERRA-2 tends to reproduce the interannual variations of the observed TC number and the power dissipation index (PDI), the level of accuracy depends on the region. MERRA-2 describes the changes in the TC genesis region and tracks realistically according to the different phases of El Nino and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), although it is less realistic over the North Indian Ocean.

International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewa↗