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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 667 records · Page 37
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2003

Thermo-Mechanical Processing in Friction Stir Welds

Friction stir welding is a solid-phase joining, or welding process that was invented in 1991 at The Welding Institute (TWI). The process is potentially capable of joining a wide variety of aluminum alloys that are traditionally difficult to fusion weld. The friction stir welding (FSW) process produces welds by moving a non-consumable rotating pin tool along a seam between work pieces that are firmly clamped to an anvil. At the start of the process, the rotating pin is plunged into the material to a pre-determined load. The required heat is produced by a combination of frictional and deformation heating. The shape of the tool shoulder and supporting anvil promotes a high hydrostatic pressure along the joint line as the tool shears and literally stirs the metal together. To produce a defect free weld, process variables (RPM, transverse speed, and downward force) and tool pin design must be chosen carefully. An accurate model of the material flow during the process is necessary to guide process variable selection. At MSFC a plastic slip line model of the process has been synthesized based on macroscopic images of the resulting weld material. Although this model appears to have captured the main features of the process, material specific interactions are not understood. The objective of the present research was to develop a basic understanding of the evolution of the microstructure to be able to relate it to the deformation process variables of strain, strain rate, and temperature.

Schneider, Judy↗
NASA NTRS1952

A Wind-Tunnel Investigation to Determine the Effect of Various Head Designs on the Aerodynamic Characteristics in Pitch of the Army Ordnance Corps T205 3.5-Inch Heat Rocket

The aerodynamic characteristics in pitch of the Army Ordnance Corps T205 3.5-inch HEAT rocket with various head designs and one fin modification have been determined at velocities of 500, 700 and 900 feet per second in the Langley high-speed 7- by 10-foot tunnel. The results presented are those of the full-scale model. Comparison of results obtained at 500 feet per second shows, in general, that for changes on the forward portion of the head the missile configurations having the greatest stability - most rearward center-of-loads location - were those having the highest drag. However, very limited comparisons indicate that the shape of the rear position of the head may be an important factor in reducing the drag and increasing the restoring moments. Generally, large increases in drag were noted for the various head designs with an increase in Mach number from 0.62 to 0.82. Pitching-moment-curve slopes increased with Mach number on all models except those having reasonably well-faired forward sections. These models showed a decrease in stability with increases in Mach number.

Morrison, William D., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Vibration of a Singly-curved Thin Shell Reflector with a Unidirectional Tension Field

Increased science requirements for space-based instruments over the past few decades have lead to the increased popularity of deployable space structures constructed from thin, lightweight films. Such structures offer both low mass and the ability to be stowed inside conventional launch vehicles. The analysis in this work pertains to large, singly-curved lightweight deployable reflectors commonly used in radar antennas and space telescopes. These types of systems, which can vary a great deal in size, often have frequency requirement that must be met. This work discusses two missions that utilize this type of aperture technology, and then develops a Rayleigh-Ritz model that predicts the natural frequencies and mode shapes for a (nearly) flat and singly-curved reflector with unidirectional in-plane loading. The results are compared with NASTRAN analyses.

singly-curved shell↗
NASA NTRS2007

Multistage Passive Cooler for Spaceborne Instruments

A document describes a three-stage passive radiative cooler for a cryogenic spectrometer to be launched into a low orbit around the Moon. This cooler is relatively lightweight and compact, and its basic design is scalable and otherwise adaptable to other applications in which there are requirements for cooling instrumentation in orbit about planets. The cooler includes multiple lightweight flat radiator blades alternating with cylindrical parabolic infrared reflectors. The radiator blades are oriented at an angle chosen to prevent infrared loading from the Moon limb at the intended orbital altitude and attitude. The reflectors are shaped and oriented to position their foci outside the radiator surfaces. There are six radiator-blade/reflector pairs - two pairs for each stage of cooling. The radiator blades and reflectors are coated on their front and back surfaces with materials having various infrared emissivities, infrared reflectivities, and solar reflectivities so as to maximize infrared radiation to cold outer space and minimize inadvertent solar heating. The radiator blades and reflectors are held in place by a lightweight support structure, the components of which are designed to satisfy a complex combination of thermal and mechanical requirements.

Rodriquez, Jose I.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Design Considerations for Ceramic Matrix Composite Vanes for High Pressure Turbine Applications

Issues associated with replacing conventional metallic vanes with Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) vanes in the first stage of the High Pressure Turbine (HPT) are explored. CMC materials have higher temperature capability than conventional HPT vanes, and less vane cooling is required. The benefits of less vane coolant are less NOx production and improved vane efficiency. Comparisons between CMC and metal vanes are made at current rotor inlet temperatures and at an vane inlet pressure of 50 atm.. CMC materials have directionally dependent strength characteristics, and vane designs must accommodate these characteristics. The benefits of reduced NOx and improved cycle efficiency obtainable from using CMC vanes. are quantified Results are given for vane shapes made of a two dimensional CMC weave. Stress components due to thermal and pressure loads are shown for all configurations. The effects on stresses of: (1) a rib connecting vane pressure and suction surfaces; (2) variation in wall thickness; and (3) trailing edge region cooling options are discussed. The approach used to obtain vane temperature distributions is discussed. Film cooling and trailing edge ejection were required to avoid excessive vane material temperature gradients. Stresses due to temperature gradients are sometimes compressive in regions where pressure loads result in high tensile stresses.

Boyle, Robert J.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Use of a Viscous Flow Simulation Code for Static Aeroelastic Analysis of a Wing at High-Lift Conditions

In this paper, we present a static aeroelastic analysis of a wind tunnel test model of a wing in high-lift configuration using a viscous flow simulation code. The model wing was tailored to deform during the tests by amounts similar to a composite airliner wing in highlift conditions. This required use of a viscous flow analysis to predict the lift coefficient of the deformed wing accurately. We thus utilized an existing static aeroelastic analysis framework that involves an inviscid flow code (Cart3d) to predict the deformed shape of the wing, then utilized a viscous flow code (Overflow) to compute the aerodynamic loads on the deformed wing. This way, we reduced the cost of flow simulations needed for this analysis while still being able to predict the aerodynamic forces with reasonable accuracy. Our results suggest that the lift of the deformed wing may be higher or lower than that of the non-deformed wing, and the washout deformation of the wing is the key factor that changes the lift of the deformed wing in two distinct ways: while it decreases the lift at low to moderate angles of attack simply by lowering local angles of attack along the span, it increases the lift at high angles of attack by alleviating separation.

Aeroelastic↗
NASA NTRS2013

Empirical Study of the Multiaxial, Thermomechanical Behavior of NiTiHf Shape Memory Alloys

An empirical study was conducted to characterize the multiaxial, thermomechanical responses of new high temperature NiTiHf alloys. The experimentation included loading thin walled tube Ni(sub 50.3)Ti(sub 29.7)Hf(sub 20) alloy samples along both proportional and nonproportional axial-torsion paths at different temperatures while measuring surface strains using stereo digital image correlation. A Ni(sub 50.3)Ti(sub 33.7)Hf(sub 16) alloy was also studied in tension and compression to document the effect of slightly depleting the Hf content on the constitutive responses of NiTiHf alloys. Samples of both alloys were made from nearly texture free polycrystalline material processed by hot extrusion. Analysis of the data shows that very small changes in composition significantly alter NiTiHf alloy properties, as the austenite finish (Af) temperature of the 16-at Hf alloy was found to be approximately 60 C less than the 20-at Hf alloy (approximately 120 C vs. 180 C). In addition, the 16-at Hf alloy exhibited smaller compressive transformation strains (2 vs. 2.5 percent). Multi-axial characterization of the 20-at % Hf alloy showed that while the random polycrystal transformation strains in tension (4 percent) and compression (2.5 percent) are modest in comparison with binary NiTi (6 percent, 4 percent), the torsion performance is superior (7 vs. 4 shear strain width to the pseudoelastic plateau).

tensile deformation↗
NASA NTRS1994

Strength evaluation of socket joints

This report documents the development of a set of equations that can be used to provide a relatively simple solution for identifying the strength of socket joints and for most cases avoid the need of more lengthy analyses. The analytical approach was verified by comparison of the contact load distributions to results obtained from a finite element analysis. The contacting surfaces for the specific joint in this analysis are in the shape of frustrums of a cone and are representative of the tapered surfaces in the socket-type joints used to join segments of model support systems for wind tunnels. The results are in the form of equations that can be used to determine the contact loads and stresses in the joint from the given geometry and externally applied loads. Equations were determined to define the bending moments and stresses along the length of the joints based on strength and materials principles. The results have also been programmed for a personal computer and a copy of the program is included.

Rash, Larry C.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Stiffness-matrix condition number and shape sensitivity errors

This paper derives an error magnification index for assessing the sensitivity of the displacement field to errors in the load vector. It is shown that the error magnification index is less conservative than the stiffness-matrix condition number and that, for some cases, no error magnification occurs even when the condition number is very high. The proposed index was used to calculate the derivatives of beam response to changes in the beam structural parameters, using a semianalytical method. It is shown that the proposed index discriminates well between the calculation of the derivative with respect to length, which is very sensitive to errors, and the calculation of the derivative with respect to cross-sectional height, which is not sensitive.

Haftka, Raphael T.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Control of VR-7 Dynamic Stall by Strong Steady Blowing

An experiment was performed in a water tunnel on a Boeing-Vertol VR-7 airfoil to study the effects of tangential blowing over the upper surface. Blowing was applied at the quarter-chord location during sinusoidal pitching oscillations described by alpha = alpha(sub m) + 10 deg sin omega t. Results were obtained for a Reynolds number of 1 x 10(exp 5), mean angles of 10 and 15 deg, reduced frequencies ranging from 0.005 to 0.15, and blowing rates from C(sub mu) = 0.16 to 0.66. Unsteady lift, drag, and pitching moment loads are reported, along with fluorescent-dye flow visualizations. Strong steady blowing was found to prevent the bursting of the leading-edge separation bubble at several test points. When this occurred, the lift was increased significantly, stall was averted, and the shape of the moment response showed a positive damping in pitch. In almost all cases, steady blowing reduced the hysteresis amplitudes present in the loads, but the benefits diminished as the reduced frequency and mean angle of oscillation increased. A limited number of pulsed blowing cases indicated that for low blowing rates, the greatest gains were achieved at F(sup +) = 0.9.

Weaver, D.↗
NASA NTRS2004

A Revised Approach to the ULDB Design

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Balloon Program has experienced problems in the scaling up of the proposed Ultra Long Duration Balloon. Full deployment of the balloon envelope has been the issue for the larger balloons. There are a number of factors that contribute to this phenomenon. Analytical treatments of the deployment issue are currently underway. It has also been acknowledged that the current fabrication approach using foreshortening is costly, labor intensive, and requires significant handling during production thereby increasing the chances of inducing damage to the envelope. Raven Industries has proposed a new design and fabrication approach that should increase the probability of balloon deployment, does not require foreshortening, will reduce the handling, production labor, and reduce the final balloon cost. This paper will present a description of the logic and approach used to develop this innovation. This development consists of a serial set of steps with decision points that build upon the results of the previous steps. The first steps include limited material development and testing. This will be followed by load testing of bi-axial reinforced cylinders to determine the effect of eliminating the foreshortening. This series of tests have the goal of measuring the strain in the material as it is bi-axially loaded in a condition that closely replicated the application in the full-scale balloon. Constant lobe radius pumpkin shaped test structures will be designed and analyzed. This matrix of model tests, in conjunction with the deployment analyses, will help develop a curve that should clearly present the deployment relationship for this kind of design. This will allow the "design space" for this type of balloon to be initially determined. The materials used, analyses, and ground testing results of both cylinders and small pumpkin structures will be presented. Following ground testing, a series of test flights, staged in increments of increasing suspended load and balloon volume, will be conducted. The first small scale test flight has been proposed for early Spring 2004. Results of this test flight of this new design and approach will presented. Two additional domestic test flights from Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, and Palestine, Texas, and one circumglobal test flight from Australia are planned as part of this development. Future plans for both ground testing and test flights will also be presented.

Smith, Michael↗
NASA NTRS1993

Development and use of computational techniques in Army Aviation research and development programs for crash resistant helicopter technology

During the 1960's over 30 full-scale aircraft crash tests were conducted by the Flight Safety Foundation under contract to the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) of the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command (AVSCOM). The purpose of these tests were to conduct crash injury investigations that would provide a basis for the formulation of sound crash resistance design criteria for light fixed-wing and rotary wing aircraft. This resulted in the Crash Survival Design Criteria Designer's Guide which was first published in 1967 and has been revised numerous times, the last being in 1989. Full-scale aircraft crash testing is an expensive way to investigate structural deformations of occupied spaces and to determine the decelerative loadings experienced by occupants in a crash. This gave initial impetus to the U.S. Army to develop analytical methods to predict the dynamic response of aircraft structures in a crash. It was believed that such analytical tools could be very useful in the preliminary design stage of a new helicopter system which is required to demonstrate a level of crash resistance and had to be more cost effective than full-scale crash tests or numerous component design support tests. From an economic point of view, it is more efficient to optimize for the incorporation of crash resistance features early in the design stage. However, during preliminary design it is doubtful if sufficient design details, which influence the exact plastic deformation shape of structural elements, will be available. The availability of simple procedures to predict energy absorption and load-deformation characteristics will allow the designer to initiate valuable cost, weight, and geometry tradeoff studies. The development of these procedures will require some testing of typical specimens. This testing should, as a minimum, verify the validity of proposed procedures for providing pertinent nonlinear load-deformation data. It was hoped that through the use of these analytical models, the designer could optimize aircraft design for crash resistance from both a weight and cost increment standpoint, thus enhancing the acceptance of the design criteria for crash resistance.

Burrows, Leroy T.↗
NASA NTRS2026

Mechanical Design and Operation of a Novel Lunar Environment Structural Test Rig (LESTR)

The Lunar Environment Structural Test Rig (LESTR) was developed to address a critical gap in mechanical property data for metal alloy wire materials under lunar-relevant conditions down to 40 K. Conventional aerospace material databases provide thermophysical properties for bulk metals over a wide temperature range, but validated mechanical and physical property data below 77 K, particularly for small-diameter wires, remain limited and are generally the exception rather than the rule. These conditions are essential for Artemis mission hardware such as shape memory alloy (SMA) rover tires. LESTR’s design requirements were to combine a high-stiffness electrodynamic load frame with closed- cycle cryogenic cooling, high-vacuum capability (10–6 torr), and noncontact optical strain measurement to enable tensile, four-point bend, and fatigue testing of wires or other materials and geometries at temperatures from 40 to 125 K. These considerable requirements were merged with the need to lower the barrier of testing for the end user as measured in terms of cost-per-test cycle, safety improvement, and reduction in upkeep costs associated with state-of-the-art solutions associated with cryomechanical material characterization. The system incorporates modular gripping and alignment fixtures; precision thermal management using cryocoolers and embedded heaters; and integrated instrumentation for displacement, load, temperature, and vacuum control. Calibration procedures establish correlations between tooling and specimen temperature, ensuring accurate thermal conditions across the design envelope unbound by cryofluid conditions in heritage immersion-based test systems. Initial validation tests using Inconel (Special Metals Corp.) wire demonstrated accurate ultimate strength and post-yield behavior. The load frame operation was also verified under representative service conditions, including thermal cycling and prolonged fatigue loading. By generating mechanical property data at ultralow temperatures, LESTR fills a critical gap in existing materials databases and provides a scalable platform for iterative alloy development and durability assessment for planetary hardware. This capability supports NASA’s long-term objectives for surface exploration by enabling design confidence for components operating in extreme cryogenic environments.

LESTR↗
NASA NTRS1985

Short-wavelength buckling and shear failures for compression-loaded composite laminates

The short-wavelength buckling (or the microbuckling) and the interlaminar and inplane shear failures of multi-directional composite laminates loaded in uniaxial compression are investigated. A laminate model is presented that idealizes each lamina. The fibers in the lamina are modeled as a plate, and the matrix in the lamina is modeled as an elastic foundation. The out-of-plane w displacement for each plate is expressed as a trigonometric series in the half-wavelength of the mode shape for laminate short-wavelength buckling. Nonlinear strain-displacement relations are used. The model is applied to symmetric laminates having linear material behavior. The laminates are loaded in uniform end shortening and are simply supported. A linear analysis is used to determine the laminate stress, strain, and mode shape when short-wavelength buckling occurs. The equations for the laminate compressive stress at short-wavelength buckling are dominated by matrix contributions.

Shuart, M. J.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Investigation of HTS Twisted Stacked-Tape Cable (TSTC) Conductor for High-Field, High-Current Fusion Magnets

The critical currents of a twisted single-tape were measured at 4.2 K in fields up to 17 T. It was confirmed that the critical current of a twisted-tape was similar to that of a flat tape in c-axis fields. Based on the single-tape critical-currents, a 40-tape (4-mm width) twisted stacked-tape cable (TSTC) conductor was experimentally evaluated at fields up to 17 T at 4.2 K. It was found that the Lorentz load degradation of the TSTC conductor was negligible at the end of a cyclic test. The TSTC cabling method has been considered to be suitable for developing a high-field high-current REBCO conductor for magnet applications as well as power transmission cables. A method to fabricate the inner legs of a D-shape toroidal field coil using a TSTC conductor has been discussed. This method allows the conductor to properly resist the transverse Lorentz load and mitigate ac loss issues by adopting a parallel-HTS-tape flat cable configuration where necessary.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS2011

Vertical Drop Testing and Simulation of Anthropomorphic Test Devices

A series of 14 vertical impact tests were conducted using Hybrid III 50th Percentile and Hybrid II 50th Percentile Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATDs) at NASA Langley Research Center. The purpose of conducting these tests was threefold: to compare and contrast the impact responses of Hybrid II and Hybrid III ATDs under two different loading conditions, to compare the impact responses of the Hybrid III configured with a nominal curved lumbar spine to that of a Hybrid III configured with a straight lumbar spine, and to generate data for comparison with predicted responses from two commercially available ATD finite element models. The two loading conditions examined were a high magnitude, short duration acceleration pulse, and a low magnitude, long duration acceleration pulse, each created by using different paper honeycomb blocks as pulse shape generators in the drop tower. The test results show that the Hybrid III results differ from the Hybrid II results more for the high magnitude, short duration pulse case. The comparison of the lumbar loads for each ATD configuration show drastic differences in the loads seen in the spine. The analytical results show major differences between the responses of the two finite element models. A detailed discussion of possible sources of the discrepancies between the two analytical models is also provided.

Polanco, Michael A.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Adaptive Load Control of Flexible Aircraft Wings Using Fiber Optic Sensing

Over the past century aircraft wing design has transformed from the morphing wing used on the Wright Flyer to rigid wings with little to no shape-tailoring abilities. Modern day wings are designed to fly at a single trim condition and optimized to have a maximum aerodynamic efficiency at only this condition. Shape morphing wings on the other hand have the potential to undergo geometric changes allowing them to adapt to their mission profiles. Several flight demonstrations have been conducted over the decades using morphing-wing technologies. Active wing-twist control was demonstrated on the X-53 Active Aeroelastic Wing (AAW) research project by utilizing multiple leading- and trailing-edge control surfaces. Passive morphing technology has been demonstrated on the Rockwell RPRV-870 Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology (HiMAT) aircraft. In the current study, the wings of a small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) were modified to have segmented control surfaces (SCS). The modifications include segmenting the original wing control surfaces (one flap and one aileron per wing) into 44 individual sections, each section having its own independent servo control motor. The wings were also instrumented with a network of over 1800 fiber-optic strain sensors (on four sensing fibers distributed over the top and bottom surfaces of the wing) monitoring the strain response of the wing to aerodynamic loading. The SCS positions were manipulated in real time to modify the spanwise lift distribution of the wings on the sUAS. The change in the structural response of the wings caused by load redistribution was quantified by measuring the bending strains on the upper and lower wing surfaces using an on-board compact fiber-optic strain sensing (cFOSS) system. A feedback controller was developed to control the SCS positions using strain-based shape estimations from the Displacement Transfer Function (DTF). Post-processing of the strain data allowed for the transverse displacement distributions and load distributions to be compared for the conventional and segmented control surface cases using displacements and loads algorithms developed by Richards and Ko at AFRC (refs. 5-10). While the current study focused on the shifting of the spanwise aerodynamic loads as quantified by displacements, future applications for loads or displacement control might include active gust alleviation and flutter suppression.

Pena, Francisco↗
NASA NTRS2000

On Flowfield Periodicity in the NASA Transonic Flutter Cascade: Experimental Study - Part 1

An extensive study to improve flow uniformity and periodicity in the NASA Transonic Flutter Cascade is presented here. The results are reported in two independent parts dealing with the experimental approach and the analytical approach. The first part, the Experimental Study, focuses first on the data sets acquired in this facility in the past and explains several discrepancies, particularly the questions of actual flow incidence and cascade back pressure levels. Next, available means for control and modifications of the cascade flowfield, boundary layer bleed and tailboard settings are presented in detail. This is followed by experimental data sets acquired in modified test facility configurations that were based on analytical predictions of the cascade flowfield. Finally, several important conclusions about improving the cascade flowfield uniformity and blade load periodicity are summarized. The important conclusions are: (1) boundary layer bleed does not improve the cascade flow periodicity; (2) tunnel wall contours must be carefully matched to the expected shape of cascade streamlines; (3) actual flow incidence for each cascade configuration rather must be measured instead of relying on the tunnel geometry; and (4) the current cascade configuration exhibits a very high blade load uniformity over six blades from blade #2 to blade #7, and the facility is now ready for unsteady pressure data acquisition.

Lepicovsky, J.↗