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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 739 records · Page 41

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1992

How should Fitts' Law be applied to human-computer interaction?

The paper challenges the notion that any Fitts' Law model can be applied generally to human-computer interaction, and proposes instead that applying Fitts' Law requires knowledge of the users' sequence of movements, direction of movement, and typical movement amplitudes as well as target sizes. Two experiments examined a text selection task with sequences of controlled movements (point-click and point-drag). For the point-click sequence, a Fitts' Law model that used the diagonal across the text object in the direction of pointing (rather than the horizontal extent of the text object) as the target size provided the best fit for the pointing time data, whereas for the point-drag sequence, a Fitts' Law model that used the vertical size of the text object as the target size gave the best fit. Dragging times were fitted well by Fitts' Law models that used either the vertical or horizontal size of the terminal character in the text object. Additional results of note were that pointing in the point-click sequence was consistently faster than in the point-drag sequence, and that pointing in either sequence was consistently faster than dragging. The discussion centres around the need to define task characteristics before applying Fitts' Law to an interface design or analysis, analyses of pointing and of dragging, and implications for interface design.

NASA Program Space Human Factors↗

NASA NTRS1998

A modernized approach to meet diversified earth observing system (EOS) AM-1 mission requirements

From a flight dynamics perspective, the EOS AM-1 mission design and maneuver operations present a number of interesting challenges. The mission design itself is relatively complex for a low Earth mission, requiring a frozen, Sun-synchronous, polar orbit with a repeating ground track. Beyond the need to design an orbit that meets these requirements, the recent focus on low-cost, 'lights out' operations has encouraged a shift to more automated ground support. Flight dynamics activities previously performed in special facilities created solely for that purpose and staffed by personnel with years of design experience are now being shifted to the mission operations centers (MOCs) staffed by flight operations team (FOT) operators. These operators' responsibilities include flight dynamics as a small subset of their work; therefore, FOT personnel often do not have the experience to make critical maneuver design decisions. Thus, streamlining the analysis and planning work required for such a complicated orbit design and preparing FOT personnel to take on the routine operation of such a spacecraft both necessitated increasing the automation level of the flight dynamics functionality. The FreeFlyer(TM) software developed by AI Solutions provides a means to achieve both of these goals. The graphic interface enables users to interactively perform analyses that previously required many parametric studies and much data reduction to achieve the same result In addition, the fuzzy logic engine enables the simultaneous evaluation of multiple conflicting constraints, removing the analyst from the loop and allowing the FOT to perform more of the operations without much background in orbit design. Modernized techniques were implemented for EOS AM-1 flight dynamics support in several areas, including launch window determination, orbit maintenance maneuver control strategies, and maneuver design and calibration automation. The benefits of implementing these techniques include increased fuel available for on-orbit maneuvering, a simplified orbit maintenance process to minimize science data downtime, and an automated routine maneuver planning process. This paper provides an examination of the modernized techniques implemented for EOS AM-1 to achieve these benefits.

Newman, Lauri Kraft↗

NASA NTRS1998

A Modernized Approach to Meet Diversified Earth Observing System (EOS) AM-1 Mission Requirements

From a flight dynamics perspective, the EOS AM-1 mission design and maneuver operations present a number of interesting challenges. The mission design itself is relatively complex for a low Earth mission, requiring a frozen, Sun-synchronous, polar orbit with a repeating ground track. Beyond the need to design an orbit that meets these requirements, the recent focus on low-cost, "lights out" operations has encouraged a shift to more automated ground support. Flight dynamics activities previously performed in special facilities created solely for that purpose and staffed by personnel with years of design experience are now being shifted to the mission operations centers (MOCs) staffed by flight operations team (FOT) operators. These operators' responsibilities include flight dynamics as a small subset of their work; therefore, FOT personnel often do not have the experience to make critical maneuver design decisions. Thus, streamlining the analysis and planning work required for such a complicated orbit design and preparing FOT personnel to take on the routine operation of such a spacecraft both necessitated increasing the automation level of the flight dynamics functionality. The FreeFlyer(trademark) software developed by AI Solutions provides a means to achieve both of these goals. The graphic interface enables users to interactively perform analyses that previously required many parametric studies and much data reduction to achieve the same result. In addition, the fuzzy logic engine .enables the simultaneous evaluation of multiple conflicting constraints, removing the analyst from the loop and allowing the FOT to perform more of the operations without much background in orbit design. Modernized techniques were implemented for EOS AM-1 flight dynamics support in several areas, including launch window determination, orbit maintenance maneuver control strategies, and maneuver design and calibration automation. The benefits of implementing these techniques include increased fuel available for on-orbit maneuvering, a simplified orbit maintenance process to minimize science data downtime, and an automated routine maneuver planning process. This paper provides an examination of the modernized techniques implemented for EOS AM-1 to achieve these benefits.

Newman, Lauri Kraft↗

DOE OSTI2022

Light Weight Radioisotope Heater Unit User’s Guide

This user's guide provides an overview of Light Weight Radioisotope Heater Units (LWRHU), including aspects of its physical design and performance under normal operations. This guide also identifies the planning and execution involved in launching a nuclear payload. Physical characteristics, interfaces, and environmental characteristics of the LWRHU are discussed in detail. Information relating to project management interfaces and effort.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

NASA NTRS1992

Field-testing the new DECtalk PC system for medical applications

Synthesized human speech has now reached a new level of performance. With the introduction of DEC's new DECtalk PC, the small system developer will have a very powerful tool for creative design. It has been our privilege to be involved in the beta-testing of this new device and to add a medical dictionary which covers a wide range of medical terminology. With the inherent board level understanding of speech synthesis and the medical dictionary, it is now possible to provide full digital speech output for all medical files and terms. The application of these tools will cover a wide range of options for the future and allow a new dimension in dealing with the complex user interface experienced in medical practice.

NASA Discipline Data Analysis↗

DOE OSTI2021

FIERRO V.X

FIERRO is a modern C++ code intended to simulate quasi-static solid mechanics problems and transient, compressible material dynamic problems with Lagrangian methods, which have meshes with constant mass elements that move with the material. FIERRO is designed to aid a) material model research that has historically been done using commercial implicit and explicit finite element codes, b) numerical methods research, and c) computer science research. FIERRO supports user developed material models that adhere to several industry standard formats by using a C++ to Fortran interface to couple the model to the numerical solvers. FIERRO is built on the ELEMENTS library that supports a diverse suite of element types, including high-order elements, and quadrature rules. The mesh class within the ELEMENTS library is designed for efficient calculations on unstructured meshes and to minimize memory usage. FIERRO is designed to readily accommodate a range of numerical methods including continuous finite element, finite volume, and discontinuous Galerkin methods. FIERRO is designed to support explicit and implicit time integration methods. FIERRO only supports a single material in an element. No physical data exists within the code.

Morgan, Nathaniel↗

NASA NTRS1978

Coaxial isolator has versatile interface

Approach increases system-packaging flexibility. Isolators are constructed with removable connectors that can be changed to meet user's requirements. Technique reduces development scheduling problems. Isolators can be procured before package design is firm and then readily reconfigured to meet final design requirements. Changes to existing designs to incorporate removable connectors are minimal. Small adapter plates increase size modestly; weight increase is negligible.

Olsson, D. L.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Simplifying operations with an uplink/downlink integration toolkit

The Operations Engineering Lab (OEL) at JPL has developed a simple, generic toolkit to integrate the uplink/downlink processes, (often called closing the loop), in JPL's Multimission Ground Data System. This toolkit provides capabilities for integrating telemetry verification points with predicted spacecraft commands and ground events in the Mission Sequence Of Events (SOE) document. In the JPL ground data system, the uplink processing functions and the downlink processing functions are separate subsystems that are not well integrated because of the nature of planetary missions with large one-way light times for spacecraft-to-ground communication. Our new closed-loop monitoring tool allows an analyst or mission controller to view and save uplink commands and ground events with their corresponding downlinked telemetry values regardless of the delay in downlink telemetry and without requiring real-time intervention by the user. An SOE document is a time-ordered list of all the planned ground and spacecraft events, including all commands, sequence loads, ground events, significant mission activities, spacecraft status, and resource allocations. The SOE document is generated by expansion and integration of spacecraft sequence files, ground station allocations, navigation files, and other ground event files. This SOE generation process has been automated within the OEL and includes a graphical, object-oriented SOE editor and real-time viewing tool running under X/Motif. The SOE toolkit was used as the framework for the integrated implementation. The SOE is used by flight engineers to coordinate their operations tasks, serving as a predict data set in ground operations and mission control. The closed-loop SOE toolkit allows simple, automated integration of predicted uplink events with correlated telemetry points in a single SOE document for on-screen viewing and archiving. It automatically interfaces with existing real-time or non real-time sources of information, to display actual values from the telemetry data stream. This toolkit was designed to greatly simplify the user's ability to access and view telemetry data, and also provide a means to view this data in the context of the commands and ground events that are used to interpret it. A closed-loop system can prove especially useful in small missions with limited resources requiring automated monitoring tools. This paper will discuss the toolkit implementation, including design trade-offs and future plans for enhancing the automated capabilities.

Murphy, Susan C.↗

DOE OSTI2021

dGPredictor: Automated fragmentation method for metabolic reaction free energy prediction and de novo pathway design

Group contribution (GC) methods are conventionally used in thermodynamics analysis of metabolic pathways to estimate the standard Gibbs energy change ( Δ r G ′ o ) of enzymatic reactions from limited experimental measurements. However, these methods are limited by their dependence on manually curated groups and inability to capture stereochemical information, leading to low reaction coverage. Herein, we introduce an automated molecular fingerprint-based thermodynamic analysis tool called dGPredictor that enables the consideration of stereochemistry within metabolite structures and thus increases reaction coverage. dGPredictor has comparable prediction accuracy compared to existing GC methods and can capture Gibbs energy changes for isomerase and transferase reactions, which exhibit no overall group changes. We also demonstrate dGPredictor’s ability to predict the Gibbs energy change for novel reactions and seamless integration within de novo metabolic pathway design tools such as novoStoic for safeguarding against the inclusion of reaction steps with infeasible directionalities. To facilitate easy access to dGPredictor, we developed a graphical user interface to predict the standard Gibbs energy change for reactions at various pH and ionic strengths. The tool allows customized user input of known metabolites as KEGG IDs and novel metabolites as InChI strings ( https://github.com/maranasgroup/dGPredictor ).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS1978

Planned flight test of a mercury ion auxiliary propulsion system. Part 2: Integration with host spacecraft

The objectives of the flight test and a description on how those objectives are in support of an overall program goal of attaining user application were described. The approach to accomplishment was presented as it applies to integrating the propulsion system with the host spacecraft. A number of known interface design considerations which affect the propulsion system and the spacecraft were discussed. Analogies were drawn comparing the relationship of the organizations involved with this flight test with those anticipated for future operational missions. The paper also expanded upon objectives, system description, mission operations, and measurement of plume effects.

Knight, R. M.↗

NASA NTRS1979

The cost benefits of the Spacelab system to scientific investigations and space applications

Cost advantages of the Spacelab system to scientific experiments in space and space operations are presented. The payload integration concepts developed for Spacelab are examined, and it is shown that Spacelab and Shuttle integration, communications and data processing, launch support requirements and flight operations will provide a considerable savings in the costs of space research relative to previous space systems. Spacelab modular design, incorporating features such as standard payload interfaces, optional mission dependent equipment and standard services, such as the Experiment Computer Operating System, is shown to offer the user a wider range of services than previous programs, also at significantly lower costs. It is concluded that the Spacelab system will greatly reduce the costs and broaden the opportunities for scientific investigation in space.

Jean, O. C.↗

NASA NTRS1990

An approach to a real-time distribution system

The requirements of a real-time data distribution system are to provide fast, reliable delivery of data from source to destination with little or no impact to the data source. In this particular case, the data sources are inside an operational environment, the Mission Control Center (MCC), and any workstation receiving data directly from the operational computer must conform to the software standards of the MCC. In order to supply data to development workstations outside of the MCC, it is necessary to use gateway computers that prevent unauthorized data transfer back to the operational computers. Many software programs produced on the development workstations are targeted for real-time operation. Therefore, these programs must migrate from the development workstation to the operational workstation. It is yet another requirement for the Data Distribution System to ensure smooth transition of the data interfaces for the application developers. A standard data interface model has already been set up for the operational environment, so the interface between the distribution system and the application software was developed to match that model as closely as possible. The system as a whole therefore allows the rapid development of real-time applications without impacting the data sources. In summary, this approach to a real-time data distribution system provides development users outside of the MCC with an interface to MCC real-time data sources. In addition, the data interface was developed with a flexible and portable software design. This design allows for the smooth transition of new real-time applications to the MCC operational environment.

Kittle, Frank P., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Anthropomorphic teleoperation: Controlling remote manipulators with the DataGlove

A two phase effort was conducted to assess the capabilities and limitations of the DataGlove, a lightweight glove input device that can output signals in real-time based on hand shape, orientation, and movement. The first phase was a period for system integration, checkout, and familiarization in a virtual environment. The second phase was a formal experiment using the DataGlove as input device to control the protoflight manipulator arm (PFMA) - a large telerobotic arm with an 8-ft reach. The first phase was used to explore and understand how the DataGlove functions in a virtual environment, build a virtual PFMA, and consider and select a reasonable teleoperation control methodology. Twelve volunteers (six males and six females) participated in a 2 x 3 (x 2) full-factorial formal experiment using the DataGlove to control the PFMA in a simple retraction, slewing, and insertion task. Two within-subjects variables, time delay (0, 1, and 2 seconds) and PFMA wrist flexibility (rigid/flexible), were manipulated. Gender served as a blocking variable. A main effect of time delay was found for slewing and total task times. Correlations among questionnaire responses, and between questionnaire responses and session mean scores and gender were computed. The experimental data were also compared with data collected in another study that used a six degree-of-freedom handcontroller to control the PFMA in the same task. It was concluded that the DataGlove is a legitimate teleoperations input device that provides a natural, intuitive user interface. From an operational point of view, it compares favorably with other 'standard' telerobotic input devices and should be considered in future trades in teleoperation systems' designs.

Hale, J. P., II↗

NASA NTRS1989

PARAGRAPH: A graphics tool for performance and reliability analysis

PARAGRAPH is an animated graphics display package. It consists of two parts: an interface to CSIM (a process based simulation language) and a graphic display system. When a simulation model is executed on CSIM the interface collects pertinent performance analysis data and writes them to a file. This file is then fed to the graphic display system which depicts the execution of the simulation model visually. This report focuses on the graphical display system. Specifically it describes the user interface and features of the display system. It also explains how Interviews (which is based on X-windows) is used as the basis for the design of PARAGRAPH. The last section contains an example in which a basic load balancing simulation model is used to demonstrate the features and the capability of PARAGRAPH.

Lee, Kevin Douglas↗

NASA NTRS2002

A Thermal Management Systems Model for the NASA GTX RBCC Concept

The Vehicle Integrated Thermal Management Analysis Code (VITMAC) was further developed to aid the analysis, design, and optimization of propellant and thermal management concepts for advanced propulsion systems. The computational tool is based on engineering level principles and models. A graphical user interface (GUI) provides a simple and straightforward method to assess and evaluate multiple concepts before undertaking more rigorous analysis of candidate systems. The tool incorporates the Chemical Equilibrium and Applications (CEA) program and the RJPA code to permit heat transfer analysis of both rocket and air breathing propulsion systems. Key parts of the code have been validated with experimental data. The tool was specifically tailored to analyze rocket-based combined-cycle (RBCC) propulsion systems being considered for space transportation applications. This report describes the computational tool and its development and verification for NASA GTX RBCC propulsion system applications.

Traci, Richard M.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Generalized interactions using virtual tools within the spring framework: cutting

We present schemes for real-time generalized mesh cutting. Starting with the a basic example, we describe the details of implementing cutting on single and multiple surface objects as well as hybrid and volumetric meshes using virtual tools with single and multiple cutting surfaces. These methods have been implemented in a robust surgical simulation environment allowing us to model procedures ranging from animal dissection to cleft lip correction.

Feedback↗

NASA NTRS2005

Finite Element Analysis of Adaptive-Stiffening and Shape-Control SMA Hybrid Composites

The usage of shape memory materials has extended rapidly to many fields, including medical devices, actuators, composites, structures and MEMS devices. For these various applications, shape memory alloys (SMAs) are available in various forms: bulk, wire, ribbon, thin film, and porous. In this work, the focus is on SMA hybrid composites with adaptive-stiffening or morphing functions. These composites are created by using SMA ribbons or wires embedded in a polymeric based composite panel/beam. Adaptive stiffening or morphing is activated via selective resistance heating or uniform thermal loads. To simulate the thermomechanical behavior of these composites, a SMA model was implemented using ABAQUS user element interface and finite element simulations of the systems were studied. Several examples are presented which show that the implemented model can be a very useful design and simulation tool for SMA hybrid composites.

Gao, Xiu-Jie↗

NASA NTRS2012

NASA KSC Intern Final Paper

I am finishing up my internship with the Application & Simulation group at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC). During this internship I was working with the Plant Habitat development team. The Plant Habitat provides a large enclosed, environmentally controlled chamber designed to support commercial and fundamental plant research onboard the International Space Station (ISS). The work that I did was for the prototype of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) display. This display is used by the scientists to monitor the system health, start new experiment configurations, and get real-time information about the experiment as its being run. This display is developed using the Qt Framework Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the programming language C++.

Colton, Andrew↗