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At least 649 records · Page 36

Risk-Based Explosion Assessment Internal Explosion of Exploration Upper Stage in Vehicle Assembly Building

This paper presents risk-based explosion analyses used to determine if an explosion of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) during fueling in Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) High Bay 4 can hazard the Space Launch System (SLS) being processed in Bay 3. This paper focuses on blast fragmentation as it was the controlling hazard. An estimate of the amount of Net Explosion Weight (NEW) was used to develop a fragment list (mass, shape, takeoff velocity/angle) given an explosion occurs at ground level in Bay 4. Intervening superstructure that exists between Bay 4 and Bay 3 (that could potentially block EUS fragments) was modeled based on detailed visual images (VISSIM) and AUTOCAD/structural drawings. The fragment list was input to a 3D trajectory application that performs multiple random explosion simulations; each simulation varying fragment ballistic coefficient and takeoff angle/velocity. Individual fragments are tracked until stopped by the intervening superstructure or reach Bay 3, potentially impacting the SLS. The probability of impacting the SLS is then determined from the random simulations; the results are used to help decision-makers determine the efficacy of co-processing within the VAB and decide what mitigations may be appropriate.

Explosion Assessment↗

Strategic Time-Based Metering that Assures Separation for Integrated Operations in a Terminal Airspace

This paper reports an algorithm for strategic time-based metering of air traffic arriving and departing from a large ( tens of nautical miles) area (called here, the commitment region) around an airport or metroplex. The algorithm assures separation continuously in time and avoids a dictation of intent to an aircraft crew. This is accomplished by allowing an aircraft (specifically, its Flight Management System) to specify, and commit to, an intended route and ground speed profile along that route within the commitment region, and by supplying the time at which to enter the region to the aircraft crew. The airspace that comprises the commitment region need not be confined to the terminal airspace and can include some of the enroute space: the size and shape of the commitment region are parameters in the algorithm. An exact formula for including speed profile uncertainty in the algorithm is provided. The algorithm is applied to a number of data sets recorded during actual air traffic operations in the Southern California TRACON in July of 2014 and the Atlanta TRACON in November and December of 2013. The results of the numerical simulations indicate that the algorithm succeeds at keeping the aircraft separated, but introduces, in its current implementation, more separation than that observed in actual operations. This excess separation can be reduced by modeling more accurately the Visual Flight Rules separation practices, a direction for future research.

air traffic management↗

Experimental Investigation of Shock-Shock Interactions Over a 2D Wedge at M = 6

The effects of fin-leading-edge radius and sweep angle on peak heating rates due to shock-shock interactions were investigated in the NASA Langley Research Center 20-Inch Mach 6 Air Tunnel. The fin model leading edges, which represent cylindrical leading edges or struts on hypersonic vehicles, were varied from 0.25 inches to 0.75 inches in radius. A 9° wedge generated a planar oblique shock at 16.7° to the flow that intersected the fin bow shock, producing a shock-shock interaction that impinged on the fin leading edge. The fin angle of attack was varied from 0° (normal to the free-stream) to 15° and 25° swept forward. Global temperature data were obtained from the surface of the fused silica fins through phosphor thermography. Metal oil flow models with the same geometries as the fused silica models were used to visualize the streamline patterns for each angle of attack. High-speed zoom-schlieren videos were recorded to show the features and temporal unsteadiness of the shock-shock interactions. The temperature data were analyzed using one-dimensional semi-infinite as well as one- and two-dimensional finite-volume methods to determine the proper heat transfer analysis approach to minimize errors from lateral heat conduction due to the presence of strong surface temperature gradients induced by the shock interactions. The general trends in the leading-edge heat transfer behavior were similar for the three shock-shock interactions, respectively, between the test articles with varying leading-edge radius. The dimensional peak heat transfer coefficient augmentation increased with decreasing leading-edge radius. The dimensional peak heat transfer output from the two-dimensional code was about 20% higher than the value from a standard, semi-infinite one-dimensional method.

shock-shock interaction↗

Digital Lunar Exploration Sites (DLES)

It has been almost 50 years since humans last set foot on the Moon. With NASA’s Artemis program, the United States and its international and commercial partners are embarking on a new endeavor to explore the lunar surface. Before we return, we will have simulated every aspect of these future missions. Many of these models and simulations (M&S) will rely on well-known and commonly-used technologies, some of which trace their origins back to the Apollo program. However, M&S has advanced significantly, as have the underlying computational capabilities. As a result, we are able to model many more aspects of the Artemis vehicles and support systems with significantly improved detail and confidence. Accurately and efficiently modeling the lunar environment will be critical to simulating the Artemis elements and mission activities. This includes characterizing and modeling lunar topography, smaller craters, exposed surface rocks, lunar regolith, surface lighting, and ambient thermal environment. These are all necessary for understanding fundamental behaviors and performance of vehicles and support systems in the lunar environment and are often determining factors in the selection of exploration sites and defining mission profiles. The Astromaterials Research and Exploration Sciences (ARES) team in the Exploration Integration and Science Directorate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the NASA Exploration Systems Simulations (NExSyS) team in the Simulation and Graphics Branch at JSC are developing and maintaining the Digital Lunar Exploration Sites (DLES) data, documentation, and software packages. This data is being fed directly into a diverse collection of graphics and simulation environments, where it is used to construct the closest known truth for numerous potential Lunar South Pole landing sites. DLES is available to projects across NASA and particularly the Artemis program to support coordinated digital representations of the lunar environment. This paper describes the fundamental need for DLES, the science data sets that are going into DLES, some of the processes used to integrate this data into DLES products, the basic products that constitute DLES, and some examples of DLES in use.

Lunar↗

Bhutan Agriculture: Developing a Crop Mask for Rice and Creating a Data Collection Protocol Utilizing Remotely Sensed Data in Bhutan

Rice cultivation in Bhutan has been increasingly threatened by deteriorating soil health and outbreaks of diseases and pests associated with the global change in climate patterns. Field surveys, which the national government of Bhutan has relied on to monitor remote agricultural lands, are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by growing threats to agricultural health. To address these concerns, NASA DEVELOP partnered with the Department of Agriculture of Bhutan, the Bhutan Foundation, and the Ugyen Wangchuck Institute of Conservation and Environmental Research (UWICER) and worked to increase the government of Bhutan’s agricultural monitoring capacity. Utilizing Earth observations including Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), Sentinel-1 C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (C-SAR), Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and Planet imagery, the DEVELOP team worked with NASA SERVIR and created a sampling protocol to identify rice plantations and supplement field surveys for more efficient agriculture monitoring. The analysis focused on districts Paro, Punakha, Samtse, Sarpang, Trongsa, Zhemgang, Wangdue Phodrang, and Samdrup Jongkhar in the year 2020 during the period of transplantation (June) to harvesting of rice (November). The team provided the partners with a sampling protocol for integrating NASA Earth observations into their crop monitoring methods, as well as a crop mask for rice identification and to aid crop management. The crop mask for rice was developed using the Random Forest (RF) classifier for the eight districts of Bhutan. Visually, the random forest model has proved to be more accurate and precise than the classification and Regression Tree model. Statistically, the Random Forest model was 91.8% accurate in identifying rice in Bhutan.

Yeshey Seldon↗

Impact, a Tool Suite for Crew Health and Performance System Trade Analyses and Decision Support - Status of Development

Mission planners, systems engineers, and clinicians that support crew health and performance face very difficult choices on upcoming exploration missions. Given that there will be a heavily constrained mass and volume allocation for a medical system on these missions, what medical capability should be manifested to minimize both medical risk and mission risk? Given that not all promising research and technology proposals can be funded, how can proposals be prioritized so that those funded research investments produce the maximum benefit in reducing overall medical risk? The Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces (IMPACT) project seeks to answer these kinds of questions and others to support upcoming exploration missions. IMPACT enables risk-informed and evidence-based trade space analysis for future space vehicles, missions, and systems. This presentation will discuss the long-term HRP and ExMC vision for the larger ecosystem of tools, which include an updated medical database (consisting of an Evidence Library for medical conditions and a medical item database (MedID) for medical resources), dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) capabilities, System Modeling Language (SysML) models, and contextual data visualizations of output data. IMPACT is the result of a multi-center collaborative effort. The trade space analyses performed by IMPACT can directly inform mission, vehicle, and habitat development by quantifying medical risk, given a design reference mission, crew attributes and a set of medical capabilities. This presentation will update the audience on the development status of the tool suite, its constituent parts and the plans for when it will deploy as an operational product, currently scheduled for the end of FY22. Recent development successes on the IMPACT project include the ability to cluster medical resources into medical capabilities and mutually-dependent bundles, the ability to perform trade analyses on different medical sets, different DRMs, and different crew complements, and the ability to specify mission segments as periods of time assigned to one or more members of the crew during which unique mission events occur (e.g., extravehicular activities, surface operations, gravity well adaptations, etc.). IMPACT is gearing up for its verification and validation phase to compile the data package necessary for a successful Transition to Operations (TtO), per the guidance in NPR 8900.1B .

IMPACT↗

IMPACT, a Tool Suite for Crew Health and Performance System Trade Analyses and Decision Support - Status of Development

Mission planners, systems engineers, and clinicians that support crew health and performance face very difficult choices on upcoming exploration missions. Given that there will be a heavily constrained mass and volume allocation for a medical system on these missions, what medical capability should be manifested to minimize both medical risk and mission risk? Given that not all promising research and technology proposals can be funded, how can proposals be prioritized so that those funded research investments produce the maximum benefit in reducing overall medical risk? The Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces (IMPACT) project seeks to answer these kinds of questions and others to support upcoming exploration missions. IMPACT enables risk-informed and evidence-based trade space analysis for future space vehicles, missions, and systems. This presentation will discuss the long-term HRP and ExMC vision for the larger ecosystem of tools, which include an updated medical database, consisting of an Evidence Library for medical conditions and a medical item database (MedID) for medical resources, dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) capabilities, System Modeling Language (SysML) models, and contextual data visualizations of output data. IMPACT is the result of a multi-center collaborative effort. The trade space analyses performed by IMPACT can directly inform mission, vehicle, and habitat development by quantifying medical risk, given a design reference mission, crew attributes and a set of medical capabilities. This presentation will update the audience on the development status of the tool suite as it nears its System Acceptance Review (SAR). It will review IMPACT’s constituent parts, briefly discuss typical outputs and outline the plans for transitioning to operations, currently scheduled for later in FY23. Recent development successes on the IMPACT project include the integration of the Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) v2.0 to accommodate segmented missions with multiple carriers and medical systems, full onboarding of the IMPACT Medical Database (IMPACT-MD), clustering medical resources and skills into medical capabilities and mutually-dependent bundles, and the ability to perform trade analyses on different medical sets, different design reference missions (DRM), with different crew complements and extra-vehicular activity (EVA) schedule.

IMPACT↗

Impact, A Tool Suite for Crew Health and Performance System Trade Analyses and Decision to Support - Transition to Operations

Mission planners, systems engineers, and clinicians that support crew health and performance face very difficult choices on upcoming exploration missions. Given that there will be a heavily constrained mass and volume allocation for a medical system on these missions, what medical capability should be manifested to minimize both medical risk and mission risk? Given that not all promising research and technology proposals can be funded, how can proposals be prioritized so that those funded research investments produce the maximum benefit in reducing overall medical risk? The Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces (IMPACT) project seeks to answer these kinds of questions and others to support upcoming exploration missions. IMPACT enables risk-informed and evidence-based trade space analysis for future space vehicles, missions, and systems. This presentation will discuss the long-term HRP and ExMC vision for the larger ecosystem of tools, which include an updated medical database, consisting of an Evidence Library for medical conditions and a medical item database (MedID) for medical resources, dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) capabilities, System Modeling Language (SysML) models, and contextual data visualizations of output data. IMPACT is the result of a multi-center collaborative effort. The trade space analyses performed by IMPACT can directly inform mission, vehicle, and habitat development by quantifying medical risk, given a design reference mission, crew attributes and a set of medical capabilities. This presentation will update the audience on the development status of the IMPACT tool suite as it comes out of its System Acceptance Review (SAR) and nears Transition to Operations (TTO). It will review IMPACT’s constituent parts, briefly discuss typical outputs, and outline the plans for transitioning to operations, currently scheduled for later in FY24. Recent development successes on the IMPACT project include the integration of the Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) v2.0 to accommodate segmented missions with multiple carriers and medical systems, full onboarding of the IMPACT Medical Database (IMPACT-MD), clustering medical resources and skills into medical capabilities and mutually-dependent bundles, verification of IMPACT-MD, and the ability to perform trade analyses on different medical sets, different design reference missions (DRM), with different crew complements and extra-vehicular activity (EVA) schedules.

IMPACT↗

IMPACT, A Tool Suite for Crew Health and Performance System Trade Analyses and Decision Support- Transition to Operations

Mission planners, systems engineers, and clinicians that support crew health and performance face very difficult choices on upcoming exploration missions. Given that there will be a heavily constrained mass and volume allocation for a medical system on these missions, what medical capability should be manifested to minimize both medical risk and mission risk? Given that not all promising research and technology proposals can be funded, how can proposals be prioritized so that those funded research investments produce the maximum benefit in reducing overall medical risk? The Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces (IMPACT) project seeks to answer these kinds of questions and others to support upcoming exploration missions. IMPACT enables risk-informed and evidence-based trade space analysis for future space vehicles, missions, and systems. This presentation will discuss the long-term HRP and ExMC vision for the larger ecosystem of tools, which include an updated medical database, consisting of an Evidence Library for medical conditions and a medical item database (MedID) for medical resources, dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) capabilities, System Modeling Language (SysML) models, and contextual data visualizations of output data. IMPACT is the result of a multi-center collaborative effort. The trade space analyses performed by IMPACT can directly inform mission, vehicle, and habitat development by quantifying medical risk, given a design reference mission, crew attributes and a set of medical capabilities. This presentation will update the audience on the development status of the IMPACT tool suite as it comes out of its System Acceptance Review (SAR) and nears Transition to Operations (TTO). It will review IMPACT’s constituent parts, briefly discuss typical outputs, and outline the plans for transitioning to operations, currently scheduled for later in FY24. Recent development successes on the IMPACT project include the integration of the Medical Extensible Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool (MEDPRAT) v2.0 to accommodate segmented missions with multiple carriers and medical systems, full onboarding of the IMPACT Medical Database (IMPACT-MD), clustering medical resources and skills into medical capabilities and mutually-dependent bundles, verification of IMPACT-MD, and the ability to perform trade analyses on different medical sets, different design reference missions (DRM), with different crew complements and extra-vehicular activity (EVA) schedules.

IMPACT↗

Development of an end state vision to implement digital monitoring in nuclear plants

Transitioning from an onsite Maintenance & Diagnostics Center to cloud-based services offers many new opportunities with computing power and storage, but also new challenges in terms of networking and security. This report will cover everything required for that transition including data processing and uploading to cloud services, feature selection, model creation, and result visualization for decision making. Although there are several other cloud-based services (e.g. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud), this report explores Microsoft Azure to simplify nomenclature and maintain a consistent focus. Many of the services offered by Microsoft Azure are also available in the other cloud-based services, and their differences have been recorded in other literature. The Azure services most important to a nuclear power plant including networking & security, storage & databases, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are reviewed here. Networking covers all aspects related to communication to Azure resources including security, privacy, and redundancy. Storage & databases includes data storage, upgrading, patching, backups, and monitoring. The AI services allows the user access to the machine learning (ML) techniques developed with Azure including automated ML, anomaly detection, computer vision, and natural language processing. This report summaries the features, capabilities, and challenges when using cloud-based services in a user-friendly manner.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Mechanical response and microstructure evolution from multiaxial stress relaxation in textured zircaloy nuclear cladding

Modern energy markets provide motivation for nuclear reactors to increase operational flexibility and load following capacity of existing reactor designs. The operational power changes result in fuel pellet expansion and contraction resulting in pellet-cladding mechanical interaction (PCMI) and high cladding stresses that are strongly related to stressed corrosion cracking (SCC) which can lead to fuel rod failure. This work aims to quantify the stress fields in cladding with a focus on multiaxial stress relaxation response from an imposed strain and the resulting microstructure changes in textured zircaloy claddings. Stress relaxation tests resulting in multiaxial stress fields are performed to measure the material response of Zircaloy-4 nuclear cladding. Multiple experiments using samples from the same piece of cladding are performed so samples with the same processing history may be removed at strategic points throughout mechanical testing for microstructure characterization. The microstructure evolution is analyzed with mechanical response to evaluate the static recovery impact on crystallographic texture and grain morphology. Experiments are performed at Idaho National Laboratory using an experimental device capable of applying internal pressure and independent axial load to commercial nuclear cladding at elevated temperatures with stress- or strain-controlled experimental capability. X-ray diffraction and electron backscatter diffraction are used for microstructure analysis. Rheological models are used to visualize the multiaxial stress-strain relationships and isolate elastic, plastic, and viscoplastic material properties for analysis.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

“Understanding Robustness Lottery”: A Geometric Visual Comparative Analysis of Neural Network Pruning Approaches

Deep learning approaches have provided state-of-the-art performance in many applications by relying on large and overparameterized neural networks. However, such networks are very brittle and are difficult to deploy on resource-limited platforms. Model pruning, i.e., reducing the size of the network, is a widely adopted strategy that can lead to a more robust and compact model. Many heuristics exist for model pruning, but our understanding of the pruning process remains limited due to the black-box nature of a neural network model. Empirical studies show that some heuristics improve performance whereas others can make models more brittle. Here, this work aims to shed light on how different pruning methods alter the network’s internal feature representation and the corresponding impact on model performance. To facilitate a comprehensive comparison and characterization of the high-dimensional model feature space, we introduce a visual geometric analysis of feature representations. We evaluated a set of critical geometric concepts decomposed from the commonly adopted classification loss and used them to design a visualization system to compare and highlight the impact of pruning on model performance and feature representation. The proposed tool provides an environment for an in-depth comparison of pruning methods and a comprehensive understanding of how the model responds to common data corruption. By leveraging the proposed visualization, machine learning researchers can reveal the similarities between pruning methods and redundancy in robustness evaluation benchmarks, obtain geometric insights about the differences between pruned models that achieve superior robustness performance, and identify samples that are robust or fragile to model pruning and common data corruption.

Li, Zhimin [Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (Uni↗

Visually induced motion in flight simulation

Visually induced yaw (circularvection) resulting from a moving wide field presentation, and its interaction with vestibular yaw cues generated by base motion is discussed. A model is presented for the interaction between visual and motion cues in yaw which rationalizes the high frequency utilization of vestibular cues and the low frequency use of visual cues to support sustained angular velocity. The implications for fixed and moving base flight simulator design are discussed. Similar considerations apply to visually induced linear velocity (linearvection) and interesting asymmetries in the fore-aft direction are noted. Visually induced pitch and roll are discussed and modelled in terms of conflict between the visually induced motion and the information regarding attitude based upon graviceptor signals.

Young, L. R.↗

Visualizing turbulent mixing of gases and particles

A physical model and interactive computer graphics techniques have been developed for the visualization of the basic physical process of stochastic dispersion and mixing from steady-state CFD calculations. The mixing of massless particles and inertial particles is visualized by transforming the vector field from a traditionally Eulerian reference frame into a Lagrangian reference frame. Groups of particles are traced through the vector field for the mean path as well as their statistical dispersion about the mean position by using added scalar information about the root mean square value of the vector field and its Lagrangian time scale. In this way, clouds of particles in a turbulent environment are traced, not just mean paths. In combustion simulations of many industrial processes, good mixing is required to achieve a sufficient degree of combustion efficiency. The ability to visualize this multiphase mixing can not only help identify poor mixing but also explain the mechanism for poor mixing. The information gained from the visualization can be used to improve the overall combustion efficiency in utility boilers or propulsion devices. We have used this technique to visualize steady-state simulations of the combustion performance in several furnace designs.

Ma, Kwan-Liu↗

Computational Modeling of Cephalad Fluid Shift for Application to Microgravity-Induced Visual Impairment

An improved understanding of spaceflight-induced ocular pathology, including the loss of visual acuity, globe flattening, optic disk edema and distension of the optic nerve and optic nerve sheath, is of keen interest to space medicine. Cephalad fluid shift causes a profoundly altered distribution of fluid within the compartments of the head and body, and may indirectly generate phenomena that are biomechanically relevant to visual function, such as choroidal engorgement, compromised drainage of blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and altered translaminar pressure gradient posterior to the eye. The experimental body of evidence with respect to the consequences of fluid shift has not yet been able to provide a definitive picture of the sequence of events. On earth, elevated intracranial pressure (ICP) is associated with idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), which can produce ocular pathologies that look similar to those seen in some astronauts returning from long-duration flight. However, the clinically observable features of the Visual Impairment and Intracranial Pressure (VIIP) syndrome in space and IIH on earth are not entirely consistent. Moreover, there are at present no experimental measurements of ICP in microgravity. By its very nature, physiological measurements in spaceflight are sparse, and the space environment does not lend itself to well-controlled experiments. In the absence of such data, numerical modeling can play a role in the investigation of biomechanical causal pathways that are suspected of involvement in VIIP. In this work, we describe the conceptual framework for modeling the altered compartmental fluid distribution that represents an equilibrium fluid distribution resulting from the loss of hydrostatic pressure gradient.

Nelson, Emily S.↗

Direction of impact for explainable risk assessment modeling

Abstract Several graphical indicators have been recently introduced to help analysts visualize the marginal effects of inputs in complex models. The insights derived from such tools may help decision‐makers and risk analysts in designing interventions. However, we know little about the adequacy and consistency of different indicators. This work investigates popular marginal effect indicators to understand whether they yield indications consistent with the properties of the quantitative model under inspection. Specifically, we examine the notions of monotonicity, Lipschitz, and concavity consistency. Surprisingly, only PD functions satisfy all these notions of consistency. However, when selecting the indicators, in addition to consistency, analysts need to consider the risk of model extrapolation. For situations where such risk is under control, we utilize individual conditional expectations together with PD plots. Two applications, on a NASA space risk assessment model and a susceptible exposed infected recovered (SEIR) model for the COVID‐19 pandemic illustrate the insights obtained from these indicators.

Mathematical Methods In Social Sciences↗

A water tunnel flow visualization study of the F-15

Water tunnel studies were performed to qualitatively define the flow field of the F-15 aircraft. Two lengthened forebodies, one with a modified cross-sectional shape, were tested in addition to the basic forebody. Particular emphasis was placed on defining vortex flows generated at high angles of attack. The flow visualization tests were conducted in the Northrop diagnostic water tunnel using a 1/48-scale model of the F-15. Flow visualization pictures were obtained over an angle-of-attack range to 55 deg and sideslip angles up to 10 deg. The basic aircraft configuration was investigated in detail to determine the vortex flow field development, vortex path, and vortex breakdown characteristics as a function of angle of attack and sideslip. Additional tests showed that the wing upper surface vortex flow fields were sensitive to variations in inlet mass flow ratio and inlet cowl deflection angle. Asymmetries in the vortex systems generated by each of the three forebodies were observed in the water tunnel at zero sideslip and high angles of attack.

Lorincz, D. J.↗