SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
The development of computer models for a flexible production system is considered, as a step toward automated design. The formulation of modeling algorithms for flexible production systems at the level of technological operations is outlined. The corresponding software for a computerized modeling system is described.
Existing Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) robotic controllers rely on an inverse kinematic model to convert user-specified cartesian trajectory coordinates to joint variables. These joints experience friction, stiction, and gear backlash effects. Due to lack of proper linearization of these effects, modern control theory based on state space methods cannot provide adequate control for robotic systems. In the presence of loads, the dynamic behavior of robotic systems is complex and nonlinear, especially where mathematical modeling is evaluated for real-time operators. Fuzzy Logic Control is a fast emerging alternative to conventional control systems in situations where it may not be feasible to formulate an analytical model of the complex system. Fuzzy logic techniques track a user-defined trajectory without having the host computer to explicitly solve the nonlinear inverse kinematic equations. The goal is to provide a rule-based approach, which is closer to human reasoning. The approach used expresses end-point error, location of manipulator joints, and proximity to obstacles as fuzzy variables. The resulting decisions are based upon linguistic and non-numerical information. This paper presents a solution to the conventional robot controller which is independent of computationally intensive kinematic equations. Computer simulation results of this approach as obtained from software implementation are also discussed.
In the GEOS near real-time system, as well as in MERRA-2 which is the latest reanalysis produced at NASAs Global Modeling and Assimilation Office(GMAO), the assimilation of aerosol observations is performed by means of a so-called analysis splitting method. In line with the transition of the GEOS meteorological data assimilation system to a hybrid Ensemble-Variational formulation, we are updating the aerosol component of our assimilation system to an ensemble square root filter(EnSRF; Whitaker and Hamill (2002)) type of scheme.We present a summary of our preliminary results of the assimilation of column integrated aerosol observations (Aerosol Optical Depth; AOD) using an Ensemble Square Root Filters (EnSRF) scheme and the ensemble members produced routinely by the meteorological assimilation.
In the GEOS near real-time system, as well as in MERRA-2 which is the latest reanalysis produced at NASA's Global Modeling Assimilation Office (GMAO), the assimilation of aerosol observations is performed by means of a so-called analysis splitting method. The prognostic model is based on the GEOS model radiatively coupled to GOCART aerosol module and includes assimilation of bias-corrected Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) at 550 nm from various space-based remote sensing platforms. In line with the transition of the GEOS meteorological data assimilation system to a hybrid Ensemble-Variational formulation, we are updating the aerosol component of our assimilation system to a variational ensemble type of scheme. In this talk we will examine the impact of replacing the current analysis splitting scheme with this new approach. Starting with the assimilation of satellite based single-channel retrievals; we will discuss the impact of this aerosol data assimilation technique on the 3D aerosol distributions by means of innovation statistics and verification against independent datasets such as the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and surface PM2.5. We will also present preliminary results related to the introduction of new aerosol data types in GEOS, including multi-spectral AOD retrievals.
Estimates of the long-term performance of geo-synthetic liner and final cover components have traditionally relied on a small number of standard assumptions originally developed to address the needs of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle D solid waste industry. These past estimates demonstrated that, even under a series of highly conservative factors, the longevity of these components far exceeds the requirements for typical municipal solid waste (MSW) facilities. However, interest in the performance of these components for the disposal of low-level (LLW) and intermediate-level (ILW) radioactive waste landfills has led to additional study of geo-synthetic degradation to address longer assessment periods. These studies allow for the possibility of more rigorous, reliability-based risk assessments of landfill system performance. A particularly strong research need for LLW/ILW facilities is a complete enumeration of the various chemical and mechanical failures modes for geo-membranes serving as final cover and base liner barrier systems. For final covers, failure is defined as allowing an unacceptable flow of water into a containment system. Studies of the various mechanical modes of deformation and rupture for polyethylene sheet allow for a rigorous exploration of the potential causes of geo-membrane barrier system failure. Of particular interest in the performance assessment and engineering of these systems is the ability to use the resulting models to quantify the longevity of these systems with a probabilistic model. An example of this approach is used to illustrate how the consideration of the mechanism for stress cracking in final cover geo-membranes can be adapted for use in simulations of long-term landfill system performance. The results indicate that the effects of cover system design geometry and geo-membrane formulation on performance can be varied significantly by the cover system engineering to meet target performance goals. (authors)
The paper aims at the development of an apparatus for analysis and construction of near optimal solutions of singularly perturbed (SP) optimal controls problems (that is, problems of optimal control of SP systems) considered on the infinite time horizon. We mostly focus on problems with time discounting criteria but a possibility of the extension of results to periodic optimization problems is discussed as well. Our consideration is based on earlier results on averaging of SP control systems and on linear programming formulations of optimal control problems. The idea that we exploit is to first asymptotically approximate a given problem of optimal control of the SP system by a certain averaged optimal control problem, then reformulate this averaged problem as an infinite-dimensional linear programming (LP) problem, and then approximate the latter by semi-infinite LP problems. We show that the optimal solution of these semi-infinite LP problems and their duals (that can be found with the help of a modification of an available LP software) allow one to construct near optimal controls of the SP system. We demonstrate the construction with two numerical examples.
The efficiency of distributed energy systems can be significantly increased through waste heat recovery from industry or power generation. The technologies used for this process are typically dependent on the quality and temperature grades of waste heat. To maximize the efficiency of cascade heat utilization, it is important to optimize the choice of waste heat recovery technologies and their operation. Here, a detailed mixed integer linear programming optimization model is proposed for waste heat recovery in a district-scale microgrid. The model can distinguish waste heat quality for planning and operation optimization of distributed energy systems. Heat utilization technologies are formulated in this developed model and categorized in different temperature grades. The developed model is validated using four typical cases under different settings of system operation and business models. It is found that the optimization model, by distinguishing waste heat temperature, can increase energy cost savings by around 5%, compared to models that do not consider waste heat temperature grades. Additionally, the results indicate that the developed model can provide more realistic configuration and technologies dispatch.
This paper presents a study of evolutionary growth concepts for the 25 kW power module to augment STS mission support future capabilities. The study aimed to establish user payload requirements, define evolution methods for system initial operational capability, and formulate a development program and conceptual designs. The payload requirements analysis focused on material processing in space, public services, and solar terrestrial observations; evolutionary system concepts were evaluated to derive the power module and system support requirements, and four reference orbits were used to construct the nominal program scenario. The mission accomodations analysis evaluated the capability of the nominal program scenario and associated power module concepts to meet user needs. Finally, the recommended modular design consisting of electric power, attitude control, thermal control, and command and data handling is described, and it is concluded that the 25 kW power module is a logical first step to support the near term NASA sortie and free-flyer mission requirements.
A key ingredient in the simulation of self-gravitating astrophysical fluid dynamical systems is the gravitational potential and its gradient. This paper focuses on the development of a mixed method multigrid solver of the Poisson equation formulated so that both the potential and the Cartesian components of its gradient are self-consistently and accurately generated. The method achieves this goal by formulating the problem as a system of four equations for the gravitational potential and the three Cartesian components of the gradient and solves them using a distributed relaxation technique combined with conventional full multigrid V-cycles. The method is described, some tests are presented, and the accuracy of the method is assessed. We also describe how the method has been incorporated into our three-dimensional hydrodynamics code and give an example of an application to the collision of two stars. We end with some remarks about the future developments of the method and some of the applications in which it will be used in astrophysics.
We formulate and study dynamics from a complex Ginzburg–Landau system with saturable nonlinearity, including asymmetric cross-phase modulation (XPM) parameters. Such equations can model phenomena described by complex Ginzburg–Landau systems under the added assumption of saturable media. When the saturation parameter is set to zero, we recover a general complex cubic Ginzburg–Landau system with XPM. We first derive conditions for the existence of bounded dynamics, approximating the absorbing set for solutions. We use this to then determine conditions for amplitude death of a single wavefunction. We also construct exact plane wave solutions, and determine conditions for their modulational instability. In a degenerate limit where dispersion and nonlinearity balance, we reduce our system to a saturable nonlinear Schrödinger system with XPM parameters, and we demonstrate the existence and behavior of spatially heterogeneous stationary solutions in this limit. Using numerical simulations we verify the aforementioned analytical results, while also demonstrating other interesting emergent features of the dynamics, such as spatiotemporal chaos in the presence of modulational instability. In other regimes, coherent patterns including uniform states or banded structures arise, corresponding to certain stable stationary states. For sufficiently large yet equal XPM parameters, we observe a segregation of wavefunctions into different regions of the spatial domain, while when XPM parameters are large and take different values, one wavefunction may decay to zero in finite time over the spatial domain (in agreement with the amplitude death predicted analytically). We also find a collection of transient features, including transient defects and what appear to be rogue waves, while in two spatial dimensions we observe highly localized pattern formation. While saturation will often regularize the dynamics, such transient dynamics can still be observed – and in some cases even prolonged – as the saturability of the media is increased, as the saturation may act to slow the timescale.
We discuss reduced-scaling strategies employing recently introduced sub-system embedding sub-algebras coupled-cluster formalism (SES-CC) to describe many-body systems. These strategies utilize properties of the SES-CC formulations where the equations describing certain classes of sub- systems can be integrated into a computational flows composed coupled eigenvalue problems of reduced dimensionality. Additionally, these flows can be defined at the level of the CC Ansatz defined by selected classes of cluster amplitudes, which define the wave function ”memory” of possible partitionings of the many-body system into constituent sub-systems. One of the possible ways of solving these coupled problems is through implementing procedures, where the information is passed between the sub-systems in a self-consistent manner. As a special case, we consider local flow formulations where the so-called local character of correlation effects can be closely related to properties of sub-system embedding sub-algebras employing localized molecular basis. We also generalize flow equations to the time domain and to downfolding methods utilizing double exponential unitary CC Ansatz (DUCC), where reduced dimensionality of constituent sub-problems offer a possibility of efficient utilization of limited quantum resources in modeling realistic systems.
Interfacial strength plays a critical role in the mechanical properties of a composite system. In this work, a proven mock high explosive (HE), 5-iodo-2’-deoxyuridine (IDOX) was coated by the adhesive promoting polymer polydopamine (PDA), then formulated with an Estane binder system to form an improved HE mock composite. An extensive comparison study of mechanical properties was performed to determine the effects, if any, of PDA on the composite system. To aid in interpretation of the mechanical test data, neutron reflectometry experiments were performed to determine the thickness and structure of the as deposited PDA films. The mechanical performance of PDA-treated IDOX was then compared to untreated specimens by compression testing in the Brazilian disk geometry. The results strongly suggested that the structure of PDA consists of two layers: one low in density caused by polymer agglomerates attaching to the substrate during polymerization, and the second high in density caused by controlled linear deposition of polydopamine. Finally, the mechanical testing showed that PDA greatly increased the stiffness and yield strength of IDOX based mocks without causing any disruption to the underlying crystal system.
Model-based and performance-based control techniques are combined for an electrical robotic control system. Thus, two distinct and separate design philosophies were merged into a single control system having a control law formulation including two distinct and separate components, each of which yields a respective signal componet that is combined into a total command signal for the system. Those two separate system components include a feedforward controller and feedback controller. The feedforward controller is model-based and contains any known part of the manipulator dynamics that can be used for on-line control to produce a nominal feedforward component of the system's control signal. The feedback controller is performance-based and consists of a simple adaptive PID controller which generates an adaptive control signal to complement the nomical feedforward signal.
We analyze previous results on the stability of uniformly and differentialy rotating, self-gravitating, gaseous and stellar, axisymmetric systems to derive a new stability criterion for the appearance of torodial, m = 2 intermediate or I-modes and bar modes. In the process, we demonstrate that the bar modes in stellar systems and the m = 2 I-modes in gaseous systems have many common physical characteristics and only one substantial difference: because of the anisotropy of the stress tensor, dynamical instability sets in at lower rotation in stellar systems. This difference is reflected also in the new stability criterion. The new stability parameter alpha equals (T(sub J))/(absolute value of W) is formulated first for uniformly rotating systems and is based on the angular momentum content rather than on the energy content of a system. (T(sub J) is defined as ((L)(Omega(sub J)))/2; L is the total angular momentum; Omega(sub J) is the Jeans frequency introduced by self-gravity; and W is the total gravitational potential energy.) For stability of stellar systems alpha less than or equal to 0.254-0.258 while alpha less than or equal to 0.341-0.354 for stability of gaseous systems. For uniform rotation, one can write alpha = ((ft)/2)(exp 1/2), where t is defined as T/(absolute value of W), T is the total kinetic energy due to rotation, and f is a function characteristic of the topology/connectedness and the geometric shape of a system. Equivalently, alpha equals t/(chi), where chi is defined as Omega/Omega(sub J) and Omega is the rotation frequency. Using these forms, alpha can be extended to and calculated for a variety of differentially rotating, gaseous and stellar, axisymmetric disk and spheroidal models whose equilibrium structures and stability characteristics are known. In this paper, we also estimate alpha for gaseous torodial models and for stellar disk systems embedded in an inert or responsive 'halo.' We find that the new stability criterion holds equally well for all these previously published axisymmetric models.
Model-based and performance-based control techniques are combined for an electrical robotic control system. Thus, two distinct and separate design philosophies have been merged into a single control system having a control law formulation including two distinct and separate components, each of which yields a respective signal component that is combined into a total command signal for the system. Those two separate system components include a feedforward controller and a feedback controller. The feedforward controller is model-based and contains any known part of the manipulator dynamics that can be used for on-line control to produce a nominal feedforward component of the system's control signal. The feedback controller is performance-based and consists of a simple adaptive PID controller which generates an adaptive control signal to complement the nominal feedforward signal.
The systems studied in this work are gas-phase weakly bound adducts of the noble-gas (Ng) atoms with CCl{sub 4} and CF{sub 4}. Their investigation was motivated by the widespread current interest for the intermolecular halogen bonding (XB), a structural motif recognized to play a role in fields ranging from elementary processes to biochemistry. The simulation of the static and dynamic behaviors of complex systems featuring XB requires the formulation of reliable and accurate model potentials, whose development relies on the detailed characterization of strength and nature of the interactions occurring in simple exemplary halogenated systems. We thus selected the prototypical Ng-CCl{sub 4} and Ng-CF{sub 4} and performed high-resolution molecular beam scattering experiments to measure the absolute scale of their intermolecular potentials, with high sensitivity. In general, we expected to probe typical van der Waals interactions, consisting of a combination of size (exchange) repulsion with dispersion/induction attraction. For the He/Ne-CF{sub 4}, the analysis of the glory quantum interference pattern, observable in the velocity dependence of the integral cross section, confirmed indeed this expectation. On the other hand, for the He/Ne/Ar-CCl{sub 4}, the scattering data unravelled much deeper potential wells, particularly for certain configurations of the interacting partners. The experimental data can be properly reproduced only including a shifting of the repulsive wall at shorter distances, accompanied by an increased role of the dispersion attraction, and an additional short-range stabilization component. To put these findings on a firmer ground, we performed, for selected geometries of the interacting complexes, accurate theoretical calculations aimed to evaluate the intermolecular interaction and the effects of the complex formation on the electron charge density of the constituting moieties. It was thus ascertained that the adjustments of the potential suggested by the analysis of the experiments actually reflect two chemically meaningful contributions, namely, a stabilizing interaction arising from the anisotropy of the charge distribution around the Cl atom in CCl{sub 4} and a stereospecific electron transfer that occurs at the intermolecular distances mainly probed by the experiments. Our model calculations suggest that the largest effect is for the vertex geometry of CCl{sub 4} while other geometries appear to play a minor to negligible role.
An adaptive modeling technique is examined by which controllers can be synthesized to provide corrective dynamics to a human operator's mathematical model in closed loop control systems. The technique utilizes a class of Liapunov functions formulated for this purpose, Liapunov's stability criterion and a model-reference system configuration. The Liapunov function is formulated to posses variable characteristics to take into consideration the identification dynamics. The time derivative of the Liapunov function generate the identification and control laws for the mathematical model system. These laws permit the realization of a controller which updates the human operator's mathematical model parameters so that model and human operator produce the same response when subjected to the same stimulus. A very useful feature is the development of a digital computer program which is easily implemented and modified concurrent with experimentation. The program permits the modeling process to interact with the experimentation process in a mutually beneficial way.
Shared mooring systems, where adjacent platforms are tethered directly to each other, can reduce anchor quantities and mooring line lengths in a floating array but also introduce new modeling and design challenges. This paper presents and demonstrates a first-order approach to modeling and designing shared mooring systems that simplifies these challenges. We formulate a general, linearized model for the force-displacement response of shared mooring systems, including inter-platform couplings. Using this linearization, we realize significant simplifications to the shared mooring system design problem and propose a corresponding design optimization approach. Finally, we demonstrate the complete approach on a variety of shared-mooring floating wind farm layouts with generic design assumptions and constraints. Some fundamental observations about shared mooring systems can be made from the results. Polygonal array layouts with perpendicular anchor positions appear to maximize shared mooring system efficiency. Also, arrays with greater levels of sharing tend to exhibit larger deviations in offsets between platforms. Overall, the results show how the linearized approach can be applied to efficiently evaluate and systematically optimize preliminary shared mooring system designs.