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At least 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2002

Investigating the Use of Ultrasonic Guided Waves for Aging Wire Insulation Assessment

Aging wiring has become a critical issue to DoD, NASA, FAA, and Industry. The problem is that insulation on environmentally aged wire becomes brittle and cracks. This exposes the underlying conductive wire to the potential for short circuits and fire. The difficulty is that techniques to monitor aging wire problems focus on applying electrical sensing techniques that are not very sensitive to the wire insulation. Thus, the development of methods to quantify and monitor aging wire insulation is highly warranted. Measurement of wire insulation stiffness by ultrasonic guided waves is being examined. Initial laboratory tests were performed on a simple model consisting of a solid cylinder and then a solid cylinder with a polymer coating. Experimental measurements showed that the lowest order axisymmetric mode may be sensitive to stiffness changes in the wire insulation. To test this theory, mil-spec wire samples MIL-W-81381, MIL-W-22759/34, and MIL-W-22759/87 (typically found in aircraft) were heat-damaged in an oven, in a range of heating conditions. The samples were 12, 16, and 20 gauge and the heat-damage introduced material changes in the wire-insulation that made the originally flexible insulation brittle and darker in color. Axisymmetric mode phase velocity increased for the samples that were exposed to heat for longer duration. For example, the phase velocity in the 20-gauge MIL-W-22759/34 wire changed from a baseline value of 2790m/s to 3280m/s and 3530m/s for one-hour exposures to 3490C and 3990C, respectively. Although the heat-damage conditions are not the same as environmental aging, we believe that with further development and refinements, the ultrasonic guided waves can be used to inspect wire-insulation for detrimental environmental aging conditions.

Anastasi, Robert F.↗
DOE OSTI2020

A new field solver for modeling of relativistic particle-laser interactions using the particle-in-cell algorithm

A customized finite-difference field solver for the particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithm that provides higher fidelity for wave-particle interactions in intense electromagnetic waves is presented. In many problems of interest, particles with relativistic energies interact with intense electromagnetic fields that have phase velocities near the speed of light. Numerical errors can arise due to (1) dispersion errors in the phase velocity of the wave, (2) the staggering in time between the electric and magnetic fields and between particle velocity and position and (3) errors in the time derivative in the momentum advance. Errors of the first two kinds are analyzed in detail. It is shown that by using field solvers with different -space operators in Faraday’s and Ampere’s law, the dispersion errors and magnetic field time-staggering errors in the particle pusher can be simultaneously removed for electromagnetic waves moving primarily in a specific direction. Here, the new algorithm was implemented into Osiris by using customized higher-order finite-difference operators. Schemes using the proposed solver in combination with different particle pushers are compared through PIC simulation. It is shown that the use of the new algorithm, together with an analytic particle pusher (assuming constant fields over a time step), can lead to accurate modeling of the motion of a single electron in an intense laser field with normalized vector potentials, eA / mc 2 , exceeding for typical cell sizes and time steps.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
NASA NTRS1986

Three-wave coupling coefficient in a drifting bi-Maxwellian plasma

A general electrostatic coupling coefficient which satisfies the Manley-Rowe relations is used to derive an explicit expression for the resonant three-wave coupling coefficient between electrostatic normal modes of a uniformly magnetized, infinite, homogeneous plasma with species described by drifting bi-Maxwellian distribution functions. The limit of this expression is taken when the phase velocities of the three waves are much larger than a species thermal speed, and also when the phase velocities are much smaller than the thermal speed. These are fluid limits and are applicable to the three-wave interaction between some low-frequency electrostatic waves, such as ion acoustic and ion cyclotron modes, in a plasma where T(e) is much greater than T(i).

Bergmann, Rachelle↗
NASA NTRS1990

Ultrasonic verification of five wave fronts in unidirectional graphite epoxy composite

The existence of five different waves fronts in a unidirectional graphite fiber reinforced epoxy composite with energy flux propagation at the angle of 60 deg with respect to the fiber direction is verified by measuring their corresponding group and phase velocities of longitudinal and shear waves using the through transmission technique. The experimental and theoretical values of phase velocities show excellent agreement for all three modes of wave propagation. It is also verified that the maximum output voltage amplitude is obtained when the line joining the centers of the transmitting and receiving transducers is parallel to the energy propagation direction defined by the deviation angle.

Seng, Han-Song↗
DOE OSTI2025

Phase-based velocity extraction method for photonic Doppler velocimetry with potential higher time resolution

We present an extension of the [Takeda et al., J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72, 156 (1982)] phase extraction method to heterodyne photonic Doppler velocimetry applications. The method yields results equivalent to those obtained by the short-time Fourier transform (STFT), while offering potential improvements in time resolution. Unlike STFT, which relies on window functions, such as the Hamming window, that emphasize central data points and diminish the influence of edges, the extended Takeda method utilizes all data uniformly. This uniform treatment allows for the derivation of empirical equations that directly relate velocity error to the actual time resolution rather than to the local analysis duration. The established equation provides a useful metric for both optimizing hardware configuration and guiding data analysis. Simulation and experimental results confirm that, for a given dataset, specifying a target time resolution yields consistent velocity errors for both methods. These findings underscore the Takeda method’s advantages, particularly its potential higher time resolution and reduced computational burden, making it a valuable tool for high-throughput applications such as laser dynamic compression experiments.

Computer simulation↗
DOE OSTI2025

Investigation of Site Amplifications Using Ambient-Noise-Derived Shallow Velocity Structures Under a Dense Array in Oklahoma

The shear-wave velocity (V S ) structure plays an important role in characterizing site amplification. The Large-n Seismic Survey in Oklahoma (LASSO; 1820 stations) revealed large vertical ground-motion variability in a 25 km × 32 km area in northern Oklahoma. The LASSO array has a relatively simple and flat topography, typical in a sedimentary basin environment in the central United States. In this study, we use the dense array to investigate the velocity structure under the LASSO array and how vertical ground motions relate to the shallow-to-deep structures. We extract the fundamental-mode Rayleigh wave by cross-correlating one month of ambient noise (0.7–5 Hz). We use double-beamforming to measure the group and phase velocities and anisotropy. By jointly inverting the group and phase velocities, we obtain the V S structure. Here, we observe correlations between V S at depths of 0.1–1.5 km and vertical ground motions using sites on the stiffer Permian formations. The shallow Quaternary alluvium and terrace deposits can amplify vertical ground motions by a factor of 2–4.5 between 2 and 25 Hz and attenuate signals above 25 Hz. We use 1D V S profiles to simulate the SV-wave transfer functions. An average V S of 250 m/s in the upper 20–40 m may cause the observed amplification between 2 and 40 Hz. V S estimated by topographic slopes cannot predict the relative amplification. Our results highlight the large variability of site-dependent ground motion in a small local region and the importance of characterizing shallow structures to estimate seismic hazards. Small thickness variations of the shallow formation can significantly change the resonance amplitude and frequency, which likely reduces the coherency of the Rayleigh waves extracted from ambient noise.

Chang, Hilary [Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (↗
DOE OSTI2020

Broad band tunable energy electron beam pulser

An electromagnetic mechanical pulser implements a transverse wave metallic comb stripline TWMCS kicker having inwardly opposing teeth that retards a phase velocity of an RF traveling wave to match the kinetic velocity of a continuous electron beam, causing the beam to oscillate before being chopped into pulses by an aperture. The RF phase velocity is substantially independent of RF frequency and amplitude, thereby enabling independent tuning of the electron pulse widths and repetition rate. The TWMCS further comprises an electron pulse picker (EPP) that applies a pulsed transverse electric field across the TWMCS to deflect electrons out of the beam, allowing only selected electrons and/or groups of electrons to pass through. The EPP pulses can be synchronized with the RF traveling wave and/or with a pumping trigger of a transverse electron microscope (TEM), for example to obtain dynamic TEM images in real time.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS2002

Evaluating Thermally Damaged Polyimide Insulated Wiring (MIL-W-81381) with Ultrasound

A series of experiments to investigate the use of ultrasound for measuring wire insulation have been conducted. Initial laboratory tests were performed on MIL-W-81381/7,/12, and /21 aviation wire, a wire that has polyimide (Kapton Registered Trademark) layers for insulation. Samples of this wiring were exposed to 370C temperatures for different periods of time to induce a range of thermal damage. For each exposure, 12 samples of each gauge (12, 16, and 20 gauges) were processed. The velocity of the lowest order axisymmetric ultrasonic guided mode, a mode that is sensitive to the geometry and stiffness of the wire conductor and insulation, was measured. The phase velocity for the 20-gauge MIL-W-81381/7 wire had a baseline value of 3023 +/- 78 m/s. After exposure to the high temperatures, the wire's phase velocity rapidly increased, and reached an asymptotic value of 3598 +/- 20 m/s after 100 hours exposure. Similar behavior was measured for the 16 gauge MIL-W-81381/21 wire and 12 gauge MIL-W-81381/12 wire which had baseline values of 3225 +/- 22 m/s and 3403 +/- 33 m/s respectively, and reached asymptotic values of 3668 +/- 19 m/s, and 3679 +/- 42 m/s respectively. These measured velocity changes represent changes of 19, 14, and 8 percent respectively for the 20, 16, and 12 gauge wires. Finally, some results for a wire with an ethylene tetrafluoroethylene insulation are reported. Qualitatively similar behaviors are noted ultrasonically.

Madaras, Eric I.↗
NASA NTRS1977

Study of stratospheric-ionospheric coupling during thunderstorms and tornadoes

A continuous-wave-spectrum high-frequency Doppler sounder array with three transmitters at each of three sites was used to observe the dynamics of the coupling of energy between the stratosphere and the ionosphere. During times of severe weather activity wavelike disturbances have been detected on ground-based ionospheric sounding records as perturbations in electron densities. Infrasonic waves with wave periods of 3-7 min and with horizontal phase velocities of 600-800 m/s were observed when there was thunderstorm activity; gravity waves with wave periods of 10-15 min and horizontal phase velocities of 100-200 m/s were detected when there was tornado activity. Both triangulations from the cross correlation functions of the Doppler records based on an assumption of no background wind shear and ray-tracing computations including an assumed background wind shear indicate that the waves originated in the vicinity of the thunderstorms and tornadoes. A comparison of the wavelengths of the infrasonic and gravity waves observed at ionospheric heights and those in cloud-top pictures from satellites show that they are all of the order of 100-300 km.

Hung, R. J.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Acousto-ultrasonic input-output characterization of unidirectional fiber composite plate by SH waves

A unidirectional fiberglass epoxy composite plate specimen is modelled as a homogeneous transversely isotropic continuum plate medium. Acousto-ultrasonic non-contact input-output characterization by tracing SH waves in the continuum is studied theoretically with a transmitting and receiving transducer located on the same face of the plate. It is found that the directional dependence of the phase velocity of the SH waves travelling in the transversely isotropic medium has a significant effect on the delay time as opposed to the phase velocity of the SH wave travelling in an isotropic medium.

Williams, James H., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Acousto-ultrasonic input-output characterization of unidirectional fiber composite plate by SV waves

A unidirectional fiberglass epoxy compostie specimen is modelled as a homogeneous transversely isotropic continuum plate medium. Acousto-ultrasonic noncontact input-output characterization is studied theoretically with a transmitting and a receiving transducer located on the same face of the plate. The single reflection problem for an incident SV wave at a plane boundary in transversely isotropic medium is analyzed. An obliquely incident SV wave results in a reflected SV wave and a reflected P wave for an angle of incidence of the incident SV wave less than the critical angle. Otherwise, there exists only an SV wave in the medium as the reflected P wave degenerates into a surface wave travelling parallel to the plane boundary. The amplitude ratio of the reflected SV wave is -1 when the angle of incidence is greater than or = the critical angle. The directional dependence of the phase velocity of the SV wave propagating in the transversely isotropic medium has a significant effect on the delay time, as opposed to the directional independence of the phase velocity of a shear wave propagating in an isotropic medium. The displacements associated with the SV wave in the plate and which may be detected by the noncontact receiving transducer are approximated by an asymptotic solution for an infinite transversely isotropic medium subjected to a harmonic point load.

Liao, Peter↗
NASA NTRS1990

Particle acceleration by a wave in a strong magnetic field - Regular and stochastic motion

A general theory for the acceleration of a charged particle by a coherent wave of arbitrary polarization, propagation angle, and phase velocity in the presence of a uniform and strong magnetic field is presented. It is shown that the Hamiltonian surfaces are topologically open for waves with parallel phase velocity, equal to or larger than the speed of light. The trapping width is found to be a strong function of the index of refraction (N), and for N = 1 the trapping width increases as a function of the harmonic number. A novel mechanism for coherently accelerating particles to unlimited energies is presented.

Karimabadi, H.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Instability Analysis of a Low-Density Gas Jet Injected into a High-Density Gas

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of buoyancy on the absolute instability of low-density gas jets injected into high-density gas mediums. Most of the existing analyses of low-density gas jets injected into a high-density ambient have been carried out neglecting effects of gravity. In order to investigate the influence of gravity on the near-injector development of the flow, a linear temporal stability analysis and a spatio-temporal stability analysis of a low-density round jet injected into a high-density ambient gas were performed. The flow was assumed to be isothermal and locally parallel; viscous and diffusive effects were ignored. The variables were represented as the sum of the mean value and a normal-mode small disturbance. An ordinary differential equation governing the amplitude of the pressure disturbance was derived. The velocity and density profiles in the shear layer, and the Froude number (signifying the effects of gravity) were the three important parameters in this equation. Together with the boundary conditions, an eigenvalue problem was formulated. Assuming that the velocity and density profiles in the shear layer to be represented by hyperbolic tangent functions, the eigenvalue problem was solved for various values of Froude number. The temporal growth rates and the phase velocity of the disturbances were obtained. It was found that the presence of variable density within the shear layer resulted in an increase in the temporal amplification rate of the disturbances and an increase in the range of unstable frequencies, accompanied by a reduction in the phase velocities of the disturbances. Also, the temporal growth rates of the disturbances were increased as the Froude number was reduced (i.e. gravitational effects increased), indicating the destabilizing role played by gravity. The spatio-temporal stability analysis was performed to determine the nature of the absolute instability of the jet. The roles of the density ratio, Froude number, Schmidt number, and the lateral shift between the density and velocity profiles on the jet s absolute instability were determined. Comparisons of the results with previous experimental studies show good agreement when the effects of these variables are combined together. Thus, the combination of these variables determines how absolutely unstable the jet will be. Experiments were carried out to observe the qualitative differences between a round low-density gas jet injected into a high-density gas (helium jet injected into air) and a round constant density jet (air jet injected into air). Flow visualizations and velocity measurements in the near-injector region of the helium jet show more mixing and spreading of the helium jet than the air jet. The vortex structures develop and contribute to the jet spreading causing the helium jet to oscillate.

Lawson, Anthony Layiwola↗
DOE OSTI2025

Accelerating high-order continuum kinetic plasma simulations using multiple GPUs

Kinetic plasma simulations solve the Vlasov-Poisson or Vlasov-Maxwell equations to evolve scalar-variable distribution functions in position-velocity phase space and vector-variable electromagnetic fields in configuration space. The immense computational cost of evolving high-dimensional variables, and their large number of degrees of freedom, often limits the utility of continuum kinetic simulations and presents a challenge when it comes to accurately simulating real-world physical phenomena. To address this challenge, we present techniques that accelerate and minimize the computational work required for a scalable Vlasov-Poisson solver. We show theoretical hardware compute and communication bounds for solving a fourth-order finite-volume Vlasov-Poisson system. These bounds are then used to inform and evaluate the design of performance portable algorithms for a multiple graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated version of the Vlasov-Poisson solver VCK-CPU [1]. We demonstrate that the multi-GPU Vlasov solver implementation, VCK-GPU, simultaneously minimizes required inter-process data transfer while also being bounded by the machine network performance limits. This results in an overall strong scaling speedup per timestep of up to 40x in three-dimensional phase space (one position, two velocity coordinates) and 54x in four dimensional phase space (two position, two velocity coordinates) and a 341x increase in simulation throughput of the GPU accelerated code over the existing CPU code. The GPU code is also able to weak scale up to 256 compute nodes and 1024 GPUs. In conclusion, we demonstrate that the improved compute performance enables exploring configurations which were previously computationally infeasible, including resolving fine-scale distribution function filamentation and multi-species dynamics with realistic electron-proton mass ratios.

Continuum kinetics↗
NASA NTRS2002

Comparison of Ultrasound with Tensile Testing of Thermally Damaged Polyimide Insulated Wiring (MIL-W-81381)

Ultrasonic measurements were performed on MIL-W-81381/7, /12, and /21 wire, a polyimide (Kapton) insulated wire. The phase velocity for the 20-gauge MIL-W-81381/7 wire had a baseline value of 3023 plus or minus 78 m/s. After exposure to high temperatures, the wire's phase velocity rapidly increased, and reached an asymptotic value of 3598 plus or minus 20 m/s after 100 hours exposure. Similar responses were measured in other gauges. The baseline measurements of Young's moduli resulted in values of 5636 plus or minus 486, 7714 plus or minus 505, and 8767 plus or minus 292 KSI for the 20 ga, 16 ga, and 12 ga. wires respectively.

Madaras, Eric I.↗
NASA NTRS1974

Analysis of acoustic radiation in a jet flow environment

The analysis of sound fields from arbitrary source distributions in terms of Legendre and spherical Hankel functions is well known. The purpose of this paper is to extend this classical method of analysis to environments such as jet flows where flow and flow gradients are inherently present. The wave-equation governing the radiation of sound in such an environment is derived. The steady state flow and flow gradients in the axial and transverse directions appear as coefficients in the terms of the wave-equation. A semi-numerical method is used to solve the wave-equation in terms of modified spherical harmonics yielding the phase velocities and the directivities of an infinite set of modes. The directivity of each mode is obtained in terms of modified Legendre functions by numerical integration. Some results of these directivity and phase-velocity calculations are presented for a limited number of frequency and flow parameters. Both convective and shear refraction are shown to be important.

Mungur, P.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Ray tracing of gravity waves as a possible warning system for tornadic storms and hurricanes

Gravity waves with wave periods of 13 to 15 min and horizontal phase velocities of 90 to 220 m/sec were present in ground-based observations of the upper atmosphere during time periods when tornadoes were occurring and gravity waves with wave periods of 20 to 25 min and horizontal phase velocities of 100 to 200 m/sec were detected when a hurricane was present. Combinations of available neutral atmosphere data and model parameter values were used with a group ray tracing technique in an attempt to locate the sources of these waves. Computed sources of the waves with periods of 13 to 15 min were located within 50 km of the locations where tornadoes touched down from 2 to 4 h later. In the case of the waves with periods of 20 to 25 min it was found that the computed location of the source was roughly where the hurricane would be located 3 h after the waves were excited. The applicability of the present study to a tornado and hurricane warning system is noted.

Hung, R. J.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Ultrasonic determination of the elastic constants of the stiffness matrix for unidirectional fiberglass epoxy composites

The elastic constants of a fiberglass epoxy unidirectional composite are determined by measuring the phase velocities of longitudinal and shear stress waves via the through transmission ultrasonic technique. The waves introduced into the composite specimens were generated by piezoceramic transducers. Geometric lengths and the times required to travel those lengths were used to calculate the phase velocities. The model of the transversely isotropic medium was adopted to relate the velocities and elastic constants.

Marques, E. R. C.↗