SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Linear accelerators”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 667 records · Page 37

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1994

Feed-forward control of gear mesh vibration using piezoelectric actuators

This paper presents a novel means for suppressing gear mesh-related vibrations. The key components in this approach are piezoelectric actuators and a high-frequency, analog feed-forward controller. Test results are presented and show up to a 70-percent reduction in gear mesh acceleration and vibration control up to 4500 Hz. The principle of the approach is explained by an analysis of a harmonically excited, general linear vibratory system.

Montague, Gerald T.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Mutagenic effects of heavy ion radiation in plants

Genetic and developmental effects of heavy ions in maize and rice were investigated. Heavy particles with various charges and energies were accelerated at the BEVALAC. The frequency of occurrence of white-yellow stripes on leaves of plants developed from irradiated maize seeds increased linearly with dose, and high Linear Energy Transfer (LET) heavy charged particles, e.g., neon, argon, and iron, were 2-12 times as effective as gamma rays in inducing this type of mutation. The effectiveness of high-LET heavy ion in (1) inhibiting rice seedling growth, (2) reducing plant fertility, (3) inducing chromosome aberration and micronuclei in root tip cells and pollen mother cells of the first generation plants developed from exposed seeds, and (4) inducing mutation in the second generation, were greater than that of low-LET gamma rays. All effects observed were dose-dependent; however, there appeared to be an optimal range of doses for inducing certain types of mutation, for example, for argon ions (400 MeV/u) at 90-100 Gy, several valuable mutant lines with favorable characters, such as semidwarf, early maturity and high yield ability, were obtained. Experimental results suggest that the potential application of heavy ions in crop improvement is promising. Restriction-fragment-length-polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of two semidwarf mutants induced by argon particles revealed that large DNA alterations might be involved in these mutants.

Mei, M.↗

NASA NTRS1961

Analysis of a Linear System for Variable-Thrust Control in the Terminal Phase of Rendezvous

A linear system for applying thrust to a ferry vehicle in the 3 terminal phase of rendezvous with a satellite is analyzed. This system requires that the ferry thrust vector per unit mass be variable and equal to a suitable linear combination of the measured position and velocity vectors of the ferry relative to the satellite. The variations of the ferry position, speed, acceleration, and mass ratio are examined for several combinations of the initial conditions and two basic control parameters analogous to the undamped natural frequency and the fraction of critical damping. Upon making a desirable selection of one control parameter and requiring minimum fuel expenditure for given terminal-phase initial conditions, a simplified analysis in one dimension practically fixes the choice of the remaining control parameter. The system can be implemented by an automatic controller or by a pilot.

Hord, Richard A.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Understanding how molecular hydrogen impacts the total dose and dose rate response of linear bipolar circuits

Recent Enhanced Low Dose Rate Sensitivity (ELDRS) investigations carried out by RLP Research, Arizona State University (ASU) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have shown significant differences in the degradation of bipolar micro-circuits with total dose in the presence of molecular hydrogen (H2) in packages. This has a significant impact on radiation hardness assurance and opens up opportunities to improve device performance. The general objectives of this program are to: 1. Determine the extent to which hydrogen contamination affects the total dose and dose rate response of linear bipolar circuits; 2. Develop a model that will enable the prediction of high dose rate (HDR) and low dose rate (LDR) response asymptotes and transition dose rates as a function of total dose, temperature, pressurized hydrogen, defect precursors, and other process dependent variables; 3. Explore the possibility of an accelerated hardness assurance method and possible hardening approaches; and 4. Extend the work to other technologies that have total dose response affected by hydrogen contamination.In this document, we xperimentally demonstrate with test transistors and circuits that hydrogen is correlated with ELDRS in bipolar linear circuits. We show that the amount of hydrogen determines: 1) the total dose response versus dose rate and 2) the transition dose rates between the high and low dose rate responses. The experimental results are supported with a steady state drift/diffusion analytical model as well as modeling calculations using COMSOL Multiphysics.

Pease, Ron↗

NASA NTRS1993

Cancellation control law for lateral-directional dynamics of a supermaneuverable aircraft

Cancellation control laws are designed which reduce the high levels of lateral acceleration encountered during aggressive rolling maneuvers executed at high angle of attack. Two independent problem are examined. One is to reduce lateral acceleration at the mass center, while the other focuses on lateral acceleration at the pilot's station, located 7.0 m forward of the mass center. Both of these problems are challenging and somewhat different in their limitations. In each case the design is based on a linearization of the lateral-directional dynamics about a high angle of attack condition. The controllers incorporate dynamic inversion inner loops to provide control of stability-axis roll- and yaw-rates and then employ cancellation filters in both feed-forward and feed-back signal paths. The relative simplicity of the control laws should allow nonlinear generalizations to be devised. Although it is shown that lateral acceleration can be reduced substantially by such control laws, this is at the cost of slowed roll response, poor dutch-roll damping or a combination of the two.

Snell, Antony↗

NASA NTRS1973

Hydrogen evolution in nickel-water heat pipes.

A study was made of the evolution of hydrogen gas in nickel-water heat pipes for the purpose of investigating methods of accelerated life testing. The data were analyzed in terms of a phenomenological corrosion model of heat pipe degradation which incorporates corrosion and oxidation theory and contains parameters which can be determined by experiment. The gas was evolved with a linear time dependence and an exponential temperature dependence with an activation energy of 1.03 x 10 to the minus 19th joules. A flow-rate dependence of the gas evolution was found in the form of a threshold. The results were used to predict usable lifetimes of heat pipes operated at normal operating conditions from results taken under accelerated operating conditions.

Anderson, W. T.↗

NASA NTRS2007

Increased Water Storage at Ice-stream Onsets: A Critical Mechanism?

The interdependence of rapid ice flow, surface topography and the spatial distribution of subglacial water are examined by linking existing theories. The motivation is to investigate whether the acceleration of an ice-stream tributary contains a positive feedback that encourages the retention of subglacial water that leads to faster flow. Periodically varying surface and bed topographies are related through a linear ice-flow perturbation theory for various values of mean surface slope, perturbation amplitude and basal sliding speeds. The topographic variations lead to a periodic variation in hydraulic potential that is used to infer the tendency for subglacial water to be retained in local hydraulic potential minima. If water retention leads to enhanced basal sliding, a positive feedback loop is closed that could explain the transition from slower tributary flow to faster-streaming flow and the sustained downstream acceleration along the tributary-ice-stream system. A sensitivity study illustrates that the same range of topographic wavelengths most effectively transmitted from the bed to the surface also strongly influences the behavior of subglacial water. A lubrication index is defined to qualitatively measure the heterogeneity of the subglacial hydrologic system. Application of this index to field data shows that the transition from tributary to ice stream closely agrees with the location where subglacial water may be first stored.

Bindschadler, Robert↗

NASA NTRS2025

Mission-Maps For Outbound Cislunar Transfer Trajectories

This study quantifies the robustness and sensitivity of an outbound cislunar trajectory for a lunar lander in the form of mission-maps, or topological maps that allows either a computer program or mission designer to intuitively optimize the placement of critical outbound correction burns from the derived sensitivity data. The non-linear multi-body dynamics are applied to generate an outbound cislunar reference profile used by a linear covariance analysis (LinCov) tool to compute the expected Δv and trajectory dispersions due to the initial state uncertainty, sensor errors, maneuver execution errors, and disturbance accelerations along the outbound cislunar profile. The rapid performance analysis capabilities of LinCov are complimented with parallel processing techniques to evaluate hundreds and thousands of different translational burn locations, placements, and targeting constraints to identify the combination that minimizes the total Δv usage (nominal plus 3σ Δv) and trajectory dispersions at lunar orbit insertion. This study utilizes a generalized reference targeting algorithm to quickly assess the integrated closed-loop GN&C system performance due to different targeting configurations and constraints. The resulting mission maps provide an intuitive insight to ascertain each trajectory correction maneuver’s (TCM) sensitivity to different burn times along an outbound cislunar trajectory and quickly identify desirable engineering tradeoffs when performing analysis on the number and placement of these burns that nominally zero. Multiple mission maps are generated for a variety of different performance parameters that allow engineers to visually identify optimal solutions for trajectory correction maneuver placements, the number of correction burns, and the targeting constraints for each burn.

GN&C↗

NASA NTRS1971

Time dependent shear stress and temperature distribution over an insulated flat plate moving at hypersonic speed.

The laminar two-dimensional flow over a stepwise accelerated flat plate moving with hypersonic speed at zero angle of attack is analysed. The governing equations in the self-similar form are linearized and solved numerically for small times. The solutions obtained are the deviations of the velocity and the temperature profiles from those of steady state. The presented results may be used to find the first order boundary layer induced pressure on the plate.

Rodkiewicz, C. M.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Ordering Unstructured Meshes for Sparse Matrix Computations on Leading Parallel Systems

The ability of computers to solve hitherto intractable problems and simulate complex processes using mathematical models makes them an indispensable part of modern science and engineering. Computer simulations of large-scale realistic applications usually require solving a set of non-linear partial differential equations (PDES) over a finite region. For example, one thrust area in the DOE Grand Challenge projects is to design future accelerators such as the SpaHation Neutron Source (SNS). Our colleagues at SLAC need to model complex RFQ cavities with large aspect ratios. Unstructured grids are currently used to resolve the small features in a large computational domain; dynamic mesh adaptation will be added in the future for additional efficiency. The PDEs for electromagnetics are discretized by the FEM method, which leads to a generalized eigenvalue problem Kx = AMx, where K and M are the stiffness and mass matrices, and are very sparse. In a typical cavity model, the number of degrees of freedom is about one million. For such large eigenproblems, direct solution techniques quickly reach the memory limits. Instead, the most widely-used methods are Krylov subspace methods, such as Lanczos or Jacobi-Davidson. In all the Krylov-based algorithms, sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SPMV) must be performed repeatedly. Therefore, the efficiency of SPMV usually determines the eigensolver speed. SPMV is also one of the most heavily used kernels in large-scale numerical simulations.

Oliker, Leonid↗

NASA NTRS1998

Repair of clustered DNA damage caused by high LET radiation in human fibroblasts

It has recently been demonstrated experimentally that DNA damage induced by high LET radiation in mammalian cells is non-randomly distributed along the DNA molecule in the form of clusters of various sizes. The sizes of such clusters range from a few base-pairs to at least 200 kilobase-pairs. The high biological efficiency of high LET radiation for induction of relevant biological endpoints is probably a consequence of this clustering, although the exact mechanisms by which the clustering affects the biological outcome is not known. We discuss here results for induction and repair of base damage, single-strand breaks and double-strand breaks for low and high LET radiations. These results are discussed in the context of clustering. Of particular interest is to determine how clustering at different scales affects overall rejoining and fidelity of rejoining of DNA double-strand breaks. However, existing methods for measuring repair of DNA strand breaks are unable to resolve breaks that are close together in a cluster. This causes problems in interpretation of current results from high LET radiation and will require new methods to be developed.

NASA Discipline Radiation Health↗

NASA NTRS2018

Application of a First-Principles Anomalous Transport Model for Electrons to Multiple Hall Thrusters and Operating Conditions

We have developed a physics-based model based on a pseudo-particle description of the electron cyclotron drift instability. A key improvement of the model with respect to previous work is that linear theory is not applied in the event of wave saturation and deviations of electrons or ions from a Maxwellian distribution function. In the acceleration region, the anomalous collision frequency is computed as the minimum value necessary to prevent the electron drift velocity from exceeding the thermal velocity. A functional based on the electron equilibration time is defined to control the transition from high to low resistivity regions. The model was previously applied to a single Hall thruster at its nominal operating condition, showing promising results that captured accurately the location of the thruster’s acceleration region. In this paper, we extend the use of this firstprinciples models to two additional thrusters, also considering multiple operating conditions for each of them. Numerical results are compared to experimental measurements obtained with non-invasive laser induced fluorescence. In general, the agreement between experiments and simulations is good. The model is able to predict the location of the acceleration region for all cases. We observe however that fine details, such as changes in the plasma potential gradient within the acceleration regions, are not captured. The model is also insensitive to changes in the magnetic field strength while experiments show that small shifts in location (of less than 5% of the acceleration channel length) occur. We plan to address the weaknesses of our method with the help of physical insight gained from kinetic simulations of the acceleration region.

Chaplin, Vernon H.↗

NASA NTRS1982

Response control for fatigue testing of non-linear systems

A signal conditioner which ensures that peak and low values during vibration testing are not lost during nonlinear or asymmetric vibration testing on small structures is described. The trapped signals may be for acceleration, velocity, or displacement. The test signal is sent through an analog circuit to a multiplexer, which resets to zero each time a zero-line is crossed by another incoming signal. Peak positive and negative amplitude and frequency are retained and nonsymmetric responses are thus detected, rather than averaged out.

Gowdey, J. C.↗

NASA NTRS1979

Study of fatigue durability of advanced composite materials under conditions of accelerated loading

The effect of temperature on the tension-tension fatigue life of the T300/5208 graphite/epoxy angle-ply laminate system was investigated in an effort to develop an acceptable and reliable method of accelerated loading. Typical S log sub 10 N curves were determined experimentally at 25 C, 75 C, and 115 C. The time-temperature superposition principle was employed to find the shift factors of uniaxial fatigue strength, and a general linear equation of S log sub 10 N for shifting purpose was established. The combined techniques of cyclic creep measurements and optical microscopy upon fatigue failure allow some assessment of the possible physical basis of S log 10 N curve shifting. Before fatigue, the laminates at all test temperatures and stress levels undergo a unique damage mechanism during fatigue loading. It is concluded that an accelerated loading method is feasible.

Shih, H. M.↗

NASA NTRS1984

Lateral directional requirements for a low L/D aeromaneuvering orbital transfer vehicle

The lateral-directional aerodynamics and control requirements for a low L/D (0.3) aeromaneuvering orbital transfer vehicle are evaluated. A lateral directional RCS control concept that permits a linearized analysis is utilized to evaluate the effect of Dutch Roll frequency and damping on the atmospheric guidance and control performance. The bank rate and acceleration requirements for acceptable performance are defined and the sensitivity to a parameter similar to the lateral control departure parameter but involving the RCS jets is evaluated.

Gamble, J. D.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Energy diffusion of pickup ions upstream of comets

A steady state model of pickup ion energization upstream of a cometary bow wave is presented in order to investigate the effects of quasi-linear energy diffusion in the turbulence there. The model assumes that the ions are immediately isotropized at pickup, and it includes the effects of adiabatic acceleration in the slowing solar wind and of continual pickup of ions as the comet is approached. By taking all physical quantities to fall off as power laws with distance from the comet, an analytical expression is obtained for the distribution function of pickup ions in the reference frame moving with the solar wind. To illustrate the application of this model, the model results are compared to the observations of pickup ions at comet Giacobini-Zinner. At present, this is the only cometary encounter for which sufficient quantitative information is available. The model does not compare well with these observations, but it is not clear whether the differences are due to artificial problems in the model or the data analysis or to the action of other energization processes at this comet. Preliminary results from the Halley encounters appear to agree more closely with this model.

Isenberg, Philip A.↗

NASA NTRS1947

Voltera's Solution of the Wave Equation as Applied to Three-Dimensional Supersonic Airfoil Problems

A surface integral is developed which yields solutions of the linearized partial differential equation for supersonic flow. These solutions satisfy boundary conditions arising in wing theory. Particular applications of this general method are made, using acceleration potentials, to flat surfaces and to uniformly loaded lifting surfaces. Rectangular and trapezoidal plan forms are considered along with triangular forms adaptable to swept-forward and swept-back wings. The case of the triangular plan form in sideslip is also included. Emphasis is placed on the systematic application of the method to the lifting surfaces considered and on the possibility of further application.

Heslet, Max A↗

NASA NTRS1998

Stability of Capillary Surfaces in Rectangular Containers: The Right Square Cylinder

The linearized governing equations for an ideal fluid are presented for numerical analysis for the stability of free capillary surfaces in rectangular containers against unfavorable disturbances (accelerations,i.e. Rayleigh-Taylor instability). The equations are solved for the case of the right square cylinder. The results are expressed graphically in term of a critical Bond number as a function of system contact angle. A critical wetting phenomena in the corners is shown to significantly alter the region of stability for such containers in contrast to simpler geometries such as the right circular cylinder or the infinite rectangular slot. Such computational results provide additional constraints for the design of fluids systems for space-based applications.

Weislogel, M. M.↗