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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 649 records · Page 36
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1986

Filters for Submillimeter Electromagnetic Waves

New manufacturing process produces filters strong, yet have small, precise dimensions and smooth surface finish essential for dichroic filtering at submillimeter wavelengths. Many filters, each one essentially wafer containing fine metal grid made at same time. Stacked square wires plated, fused, and etched to form arrays of holes. Grid of nickel and tin held in brass ring. Wall thickness, thickness of filter (hole depth) and lateral hole dimensions all depend upon operating frequency and filter characteristics.

Berdahl, C. M.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Net current measurements and secondary electron emission characteristics of the Voyager plasma science experiment and their impact on data interpretation

The Voyager Plasma Science (PLS) instrument is capable of returning integral (DC) current measurements, similar in some respects to measurements made with a Langmuir probe or a retarding potential analyzer, although there are significant differences. The integral measurements were made during a calibration sequence in the solar wind, during Cruise Science Maneuvers, and within the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn by Voyager 1. After the failure of the PLS experiment following the Saturn encounter, that instrument was placed in the DC return mode returning possibly usable data from early 1981 through early 1985. The DC return measurements are difficult to interpret and are above threshold values only for relatively large fluxes; the determination of the measured current level is dependent on the operating temperature of the preamplifiers which further complicates the interpretation. Nevertheless, these measurements can be used to determine the efficiency of the suppressor grid at preventing the loss of secondary electrons off the collector plate. Some DC return measurements have been invaluable in aiding in the interpretation of some electron plasma measurements not previously understood. It is found that electron spectra can be significantly modified by the presence of second generation secondary electrons produced by either first generation secondaries or photoelectrons on the support ring of the negative high voltage modulator grid within the instrument housing.

Mcnutt, Ralph L., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1989

A global climatology of albedo, roughness length and stomatal resistance for atmospheric general circulation models as represented by the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB)

Components of the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB) of Sellers et al. (1986) were used to generate global monthly fields of surface albedo (0.4-4.0 microns), roughness length and minimum surface (stomatal) resistance. SiB consists of three submodels which describe the roles of radiative transfer, turbulent transfer and surface resistance in determining the energy balance of the vegetated land surface. These three submodels were detached from SiB and used on the SiB parameter set (total and green leaf area index, leaf angle orientation, canopy dimensions, etc.) to calculate global monthly fields of albedo, roughness length and minimum stomatal resistance at 1 x 1 deg resolution. Time series of various parameters are also displayed for each vegetation type for specified grid points. The SiB results compare reasonably well with appropriate measurements obtained from the literature and have the additional merit of being mutually consistent; the three submodels use many common parameters, which ensures that, for each grid area, the calculated surface properties are closely interrelated as is the case in nature. The derived fields provide a check on the operation of the submodels and the correctness of the parameter set. They can also be used as prescribed fields for GCMs that do not have biophysically based land surface parameterizations.

Dorman, J. L.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Programmable Remapper

Input image remapped rapidly and accurately onto different coordinate grid. Analog/digital electronic image-processing system developed to warp input images onto arbitrary coordinate grids at video rates. Advantages of system include antialiasing effect of many-to-one data path and speed of lookup-table operation. Lookup tables reprogrammed easily with help of computer that generates table values from mathematical description of desired transformation. Applications include real-time corrections of distortions in input optics of image sensors, corrections for repeatable nonlinear scanning, and aiding persons of impaired vision by deliberately distorting images onto remaining functional portions of retinas.

Juday, Richard D.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Research in Parallel Algorithms and Software for Computational Aerosciences

Phase 1 is complete for the development of a computational fluid dynamics CFD) parallel code with automatic grid generation and adaptation for the Euler analysis of flow over complex geometries. SPLITFLOW, an unstructured Cartesian grid code developed at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, has been modified for a distributed memory/massively parallel computing environment. The parallel code is operational on an SGI network, Cray J90 and C90 vector machines, SGI Power Challenge, and Cray T3D and IBM SP2 massively parallel machines. Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is the message passing protocol for portability to various architectures. A domain decomposition technique was developed which enforces dynamic load balancing to improve solution speed and memory requirements. A host/node algorithm distributes the tasks. The solver parallelizes very well, and scales with the number of processors. Partially parallelized and non-parallelized tasks consume most of the wall clock time in a very fine grain environment. Timing comparisons on a Cray C90 demonstrate that Parallel SPLITFLOW runs 2.4 times faster on 8 processors than its non-parallel counterpart autotasked over 8 processors.

Domel, Neal D.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Research in Parallel Algorithms and Software for Computational Aerosciences

Phase I is complete for the development of a Computational Fluid Dynamics parallel code with automatic grid generation and adaptation for the Euler analysis of flow over complex geometries. SPLITFLOW, an unstructured Cartesian grid code developed at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, has been modified for a distributed memory/massively parallel computing environment. The parallel code is operational on an SGI network, Cray J90 and C90 vector machines, SGI Power Challenge, and Cray T3D and IBM SP2 massively parallel machines. Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is the message passing protocol for portability to various architectures. A domain decomposition technique was developed which enforces dynamic load balancing to improve solution speed and memory requirements. A host/node algorithm distributes the tasks. The solver parallelizes very well, and scales with the number of processors. Partially parallelized and non-parallelized tasks consume most of the wall clock time in a very fine grain environment. Timing comparisons on a Cray C90 demonstrate that Parallel SPLITFLOW runs 2.4 times faster on 8 processors than its non-parallel counterpart autotasked over 8 processors.

Domel, Neal D.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Sampling Versus Filtering in Large-Eddy Simulations

A LES formalism in which the filter operator is replaced by a sampling operator is proposed. The unknown quantities that appear in the LES equations originate only from inadequate resolution (Discretization errors). The resulting viewpoint seems to make a link between finite difference approaches and finite element methods. Sampling operators are shown to commute with nonlinearities and to be purely projective. Moreover, their use allows an unambiguous definition of the LES numerical grid. The price to pay is that sampling never commutes with spatial derivatives and the commutation errors must be modeled. It is shown that models for the discretization errors may be treated using the dynamic procedure. Preliminary results, using the Smagorinsky model, are very encouraging.

Debliquy, O.↗
NASA NTRS1995

[No Title]

Adequate performance was achieved relatively early in the development of ion engines and most subsequent development programs have focussed on demonstrating adequate engine life. The primary threats to engine reliability over the required service life are damage accumulation failure modes such as accelerator grid failure due to sputter erosion from charge exchange ions, erosion of discharge chamber components by lower energy ion sputtering and grid shorting by flakes of sputter-deposited material. These types of failure may typically be observed only after thousands of hours of operation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the approaches used in past ion engine development programs to characterize and control these wearout failure mechanisms.

Ion Engine↗
NASA NTRS2014

Design of the VISITOR Tool: A Versatile ImpulSive Interplanetary Trajectory OptimizeR

The design of trajectories for interplanetary missions represents one of the most complex and important problems to solve during conceptual space mission design. To facilitate conceptual mission sizing activities, it is essential to obtain sufficiently accurate trajectories in a fast and repeatable manner. To this end, the VISITOR tool was developed. This tool modularly augments a patched conic MGA-1DSM model with a mass model, launch window analysis, and the ability to simulate more realistic arrival and departure operations. This was implemented in MATLAB, exploiting the built-in optimization tools and vector analysis routines. The chosen optimization strategy uses a grid search and pattern search, an iterative variable grid method. A genetic algorithm can be selectively used to improve search space pruning, at the cost of losing the repeatability of the results and increased computation time. The tool was validated against seven flown missions: the average total mission (Delta)V offset from the nominal trajectory was 9.1%, which was reduced to 7.3% when using the genetic algorithm at the cost of an increase in computation time by a factor 5.7. It was found that VISITOR was well-suited for the conceptual design of interplanetary trajectories, while also facilitating future improvements due to its modular structure.

Corpaccioli, Luca↗
NASA NTRS2013

A Long-Term and Reproducible Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration Data Record for Climate Studies and Monitoring

A long-term, consistent, and reproducible satellite-based passive microwave sea ice concentration climate data record (CDR) is available for climate studies, monitoring, and model validation with an initial operation capability (IOC). The daily and monthly sea ice concentration data are on the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) polar stereographic grid with nominal 25 km × 25 km grid cells in both the Southern and Northern Hemisphere polar regions from 9 July 1987 to 31 December 2007. The data files are available in the NetCDF data format at http://nsidc.org/data/g02202.html and archived by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the satellite climate data record program (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdr/operationalcdrs.html). The description and basic characteristics of the NOAA/NSIDC passive microwave sea ice concentration CDR are presented here. The CDR provides similar spatial and temporal variability as the heritage products to the user communities with the additional documentation, traceability, and reproducibility that meet current standards and guidelines for climate data records. The data set, along with detailed data processing steps and error source information, can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.7265/N5B56GN3.

monitoring↗
NASA NTRS2021

ICESat-2 Early Mission Synopsis and Observatory Performance

The Advanced Topographic Laser Altimetry System (ATLAS) onboard the NASA Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) is the newest and most recent Earth observing satellite for global elevation studies. The primary objectives for ICESat-2 follow that of its predecessor, ICESat, and focus on providing cryospheric measurements to determine ice sheet mass balance, and monitor both sea ice thickness and extent. However, the global observations support secondary science objectives such as biomass estimation, inland water elevation, sea state height and aerosol concentrations. In all, ATLAS measurements support 7 along-track geophysical products with multiple gridded products to provide regional and global change detection for seasonal and annual cycles. Since the launch of ICESat-2, the instrument has operated nominally and collected more than a trillion measurements. This paper provides an overview of the mission, a description of the operational components that support the altimeter products for science discovery and on-orbit observatory performance.

Lori Magruder↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Joint Assimilation of Surface, GEO, and LEO CO, NO2, and O3 In Situ and Partial Column/Profile Retrievals with WRF-Chem/DART

Low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites like OMI or TROPOMI and geostationary satellites like TEMPO (to be launched January 2023) provide ozone (O3) retrieval profiles that extend into the stratosphere. Regional models like WRF-Chem generally do not include the stratosphere and have vertical grids that end near the tropopause. This causes difficulties when assimilating O3 retrievals (both column and profile retrievals) because the respective observation forward operators require model O3 profiles that extend into the stratosphere. In this presentation, we look at results from assimilating O3 observation from surface (in situ measurements), multiple LEO (profile retrievals), and GEO (proxy profile retrievals) platforms in as regional model where we use a global chemical transport model (GCTM) to provide O3 upper boundary conditions (BCs) to enable application of the O3 observation forward operators. We will also present results from assimilating O3 retrievals together with carbon monoxide (CO) observations from surface (in situ measurements) and multiple LEO platforms (column and profile retrievals), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) observations from surface (in situ measurements), multiple LEO (column retrievals), and GEO (proxy column retrievals) platforms. Our joint assimilation experiments show that sometimes the observations complement each, e.g., when assimilating surface and satellite CO or NO2 observations, and sometimes the observations conflict with each other, e.g., when assimilating observations that are biased with respect to other observations (e.g., CO retrievals), or when the assimilation increments conflict due to their chemical interaction (e.g., surface O3 and NO2 retrievals). Results from assimilation of O3 retrieval profiles in regional model are preliminary and will also be discussed in our presentation. Our expectation is that using GCTM O3 as upper BCs in the regional model for evaluation of the O3 forward operator will improve our O3 forecasts. In summary, we will present results from jointly assimilating surface, LEO, and GEO CO, NO2, and O3 in situ and satellite observations in a regional model with dynamic emissions estimation. This study uses proxy GEO observations as a prelude to actual observations because the GEO platform will not be launched until after our presentation.

WRF-Chem/DART↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Artemis Missions Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) & Reliability Assessment Overview

To show how NASA’s Moon-to-Mars (M2M) program can use hardware reliability assessments and comprehensive Probabilistic Risk Assessments (PRAs) to estimate risk of future missions and manage risk via safety and mission success requirements from the top down, so that this risk can be balanced with other program metrics like cost and schedule. These PRAs and reliability assessments can be used during the concept, design, and operational phases of development. This presentation also provides some thoughts on how the NASA process can be utilized for a lunar surface power grid development.

PRA↗
NASA NTRS2024

Influence of SMAP Soil Moisture Retrieval Assimilation on Runoff Estimation Across South Asia

This study was designed to characterize and quantify the influence of surface soil moisture assimilation on estimated runoff (surface flow and baseflow) and hydraulically-routed streamflow across three large river basins in South Asia that are at risk of impending water stress. Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) surface soil moisture retrievals were assimilated into the Noah-MP land surface model. The gridded runoff was hydraulically routed to obtain volumetric streamflow values for a river network using a runoff routing module (Hydrological Modeling and Analysis Platform, HyMAP). The open loop (OL, model-only) and data assimilated (DA, includes soil moisture retrieval assimilation) Noah-MP runoff estimates highlighted the improvements in estimated total runoff across irrigated areas. Soil moisture assimilation impacted baseflow more relative to surface runoff. The HyMAP-based OL and DA streamflow generally underestimated the streamflow at upstream stations and overestimated the streamflow at downstream stations within the Indus basin due to missing physics related to reservoir operations. For stations located in the Ganges–Brahmaputra basins, the OL and DA estimation performance varied. The OL and DA results showed that the assimilation of soil moisture retrievals improves gridded runoff and volumetric streamflow across irrigated areas. Considerable relative change in streamflow (>70% increase in magnitude relative to OL) is noted after assimilation across the highly irrigated lower Indus basin and high precipitation regions in Bangladesh. Improving the modeling system’s representativeness of ground conditions via inclusion of water management information could improve large-scale streamflow modeling across South Asia.

soil moisture↗
NASA NTRS2021

Small UAV Flight Planning in Urban Environments

This work proposes a fast algorithm for generating obstacle-free and wind-efficient flight paths at a constant above-ground-level altitude in urban environments because a fast flight path planning algorithm is an essential function or service needed for enabling small unmanned aerial vehicle (sUAV) to operate in urban environments within Class G airspace. The proposed method first converts the 3D path planning problem to a 2D problem by constructing an obstacle map at a given above-ground-level altitude. A quad-tree decomposition is then used to build a search space in terms of obstacle occupancy and wind difference. The wind cost of traveling through each cell is defined based on energy consumption under various wind conditions. A repulsive potential is also adopted to make sure that the flight plans stay away from obstacles. The Theta* search algorithm, a variant of A* algorithm, is applied to mitigate the path angle change constraints introduced by grid-based graphs. With the Theta* and postsmoothing techniques, an obstacle-free, wind efficient, and constant above-ground-level flight plan can be quickly generated for sUAV operations in urban environments while meeting the lateral path angle constraints. The results showed that the path planning algorithm is efficient and can be finished within several seconds. With a proper choice of wind coefficient, the proposed path planning algorithm outperforms the multiple-shooting trajectory optimization method even in an obstacle-free environment. With the flexibility of incorporating other geo-related costs and computation efficiency, the proposed algorithm shows the potential for real-time flight path planning in complex urban environments.

Path planning↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Characterizing Electrical Arc Behavior in Ion Engines

Test results using an engineering model Advanced NEXT thruster are presented to identify different arc types utilizing ground test hardware. Three distinct arc types were observed: grid-to-grid arcs, high voltage-to-chassis arcs, and a combination of both. The frequency of high voltage-to-chassis arcs ranged from 4-30%, depending on operating conditions and hardware configuration. Higher beam currents were typically associated with more frequent high voltage-to-chassis arcs. During these arcs, the measured chassis current levels ranged from 20-70 A, however a significant portion of the output beam current returned to the beam supply via the neutralizer cathode plasma, which may be a ground test facility effect. The paper also discusses conducted susceptibility tests that can be performed at the spacecraft level to address the transients associated with arcing events.

electric propulsion↗
NASA NTRS2010

FUN3D Grid Refinement and Adaptation Studies for the Ares Launch Vehicle

This paper presents grid refinement and adaptation studies performed in conjunction with computational aeroelastic analyses of the Ares crew launch vehicle (CLV). The unstructured grids used in this analysis were created with GridTool and VGRID while the adaptation was performed using the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code FUN3D with a feature based adaptation software tool. GridTool was developed by ViGYAN, Inc. while the last three software suites were developed by NASA Langley Research Center. The feature based adaptation software used here operates by aligning control volumes with shock and Mach line structures and by refining/de-refining where necessary. It does not redistribute node points on the surface. This paper assesses the sensitivity of the complex flow field about a launch vehicle to grid refinement. It also assesses the potential of feature based grid adaptation to improve the accuracy of CFD analysis for a complex launch vehicle configuration. The feature based adaptation shows the potential to improve the resolution of shocks and shear layers. Further development of the capability to adapt the boundary layer and surface grids of a tetrahedral grid is required for significant improvements in modeling the flow field.

Bartels, Robert E.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Performance and impedance studies of thin, porous molybdenum and tungsten electrodes for the alkali metal thermoelectric converter

Columnar, porous, magnetron-sputtered molybdenum and tungsten films show optimum performance as alkali metal thermoelectric converter electrodes at thicknesses less than 1.0 micron when used with molybdenum or nickel current collector grids. Power densities of 0.40 W/sq cm for 0.5-micron molybdenum films at 1200 K and 0.35 W/sq cm for 0.5-micron tungsten films at 1180 K were obtained at electrode maturity after 40-90 h. Sheet resistances of magnetron sputter deposited films on sodium beta-double-prime-alumina solid electrolyte (BASE) substrates were found to increase very steeply as thickness is decreased below about 0.3-double-prime 0.4-micron. The ac impedance data for these electrodes have been interpreted in terms of contributions from the bulk BASE and the porous electrode/BASE interface. Voltage profiles of operating electrodes show that the total electrode area, of electrodes with thickness less than 2.0 microns, is not utilized efficiently unless a fairly fine (about 1 x 1 mm) current collector grid is employed.

Wheeler, B. L.↗