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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 sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1992

A simple node and conductor data generator for SINDA

This paper presents a simple, automated method to generate NODE and CONDUCTOR DATA for thermal match modes. The method uses personal computer spreadsheets to create SINDA inputs. It was developed in order to make SINDA modeling less time consuming and serves as an alternative to graphical methods. Anyone having some experience using a personal computer can easily implement this process. The user develops spreadsheets to automatically calculate capacitances and conductances based on material properties and dimensional data. The necessary node and conductor information is then taken from the spreadsheets and automatically arranged into the proper format, ready for insertion directly into the SINDA model. This technique provides a number of benefits to the SINDA user such as a reduction in the number of hand calculations, and an ability to very quickly generate a parametric set of NODE and CONDUCTOR DATA blocks. It also provides advantages over graphical thermal modeling systems by retaining the analyst's complete visibility into the thermal network, and by permitting user comments anywhere within the DATA blocks.

Gottula, Ronald R.↗
NASA NTRS1975

AUTOTEST - Fully automated testing of spacecraft and experiments

AUTOTEST is a large scale real-time computer program designed to automatically test spacecraft and experiments. Resident portions of the program collect and store incoming real-time data and process test control instructions which control experiment turn-on, select tests to be performed, and select data to be displayed.

Blakeslee, W. D.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Application of an upwind Navier-Stokes code to two-dimensional transonic airfoil flow

An upwind-biased implicit approximate factorization Navier-Stokes algorithm is applied to a variety of steady transonic airfoil cases, using the NACA 0012, RAE 2822, and Jones supercritical airfoils. The thin-layer form of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations is used. Both the CYBER 205 and CRAY 2 supercomputers are utilized, with average computational speeds of about 18 and 16 microsec/gridpoint/iteration, respectively. Lift curves, drag polars, and variations in drag coefficient with Mach number are determined for the NACA 0012 and Jones supercritical airfoils. Also, several cases are computed for comparison with experiment. The effect of grid density and grid extent on a typical turbulent airfoil solution is shown. An algebraic eddy-viscosity turbulence model is used for all of the computations.

Rumsey, Christopher L.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Large Scale Flutter Data for Design of Rotating Blades Using Navier-Stokes Equations

A procedure to compute flutter boundaries of rotating blades is presented; a) Navier-Stokes equations. b) Frequency domain method compatible with industry practice. Procedure is initially validated: a) Unsteady loads with flapping wing experiment. b) Flutter boundary with fixed wing experiment. Large scale flutter computation is demonstrated for rotating blade: a) Single job submission script. b) Flutter boundary in 24 hour wall clock time with 100 cores. c) Linearly scalable with number of cores. Tested with 1000 cores that produced data in 25 hrs for 10 flutter boundaries. Further wall-clock speed-up is possible by performing parallel computations within each case.

Guruswamy, Guru P.↗
NASA NTRS1990

A computer model of the electrostatic positioning system

Positioning systems based upon electrstatic forces are being developed for the containerless processing of materials that cannot use acoustic or electromagnetic positioning techniques. Currently, electrode configurations for these electrostatic systems are designed on the basis of approximate analytical calculations and past experience. A three dimensional computer model is being developed that will predict the electrostatic fields and forces for a given electrode configuration and will allow for a more rapid evaluation of proposed designs. Early results of this model are presented.

Gutt, G. M.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Development and fabrication of a solar cell junction processing system

Experiments were completed which indicate that single-pulse, liquid-phase epitaxial regrowth is the optimum technique for pulsed electron beam annealing of ion implantation damage in silicon wafers. An electron beam which covers the entire area of the wafer was chosen for the solar cell processor. Beam control experiments to improve beam propagation and to test the concept of partial space charge and current neutralization were initiated. The electrical parameters of the pulsed electron beam subsystem were chosen on the basis of computer calculations and past experience in pulsed electron accelerator design and operation. The pulser, designated SPI-PULSE 7000, is designed to anneal 10 cm diameter silicon wafers at a rate of 30 per minute. The preliminary design of the major elements of the SPI-PULSE 7000 was completed, and the detailed design of many of the components begun. These elements include a capacitive energy store and charging system, an electron accelerator, a beam control system, a wafer handling system and pressure and vacuum assemblies.

Halvason, W.↗
NASA NTRS1993

CFD validation of subsonic turbulent planar shear layers

The primary objective of the present study is to assess the limitations and capabilities of RPLUS in predicting the entrainment, mixing, and burning characteristics of a high subsonic planar shear layer; these computations are performed in conjunction with an experiment being conducted at NASA Lewis Research Center. Turbulence is modeled by a two-equation k-epsilon closure modified for compressibility effects. Combustion is modeled by two different models: one in which a finite-rate laminar chemistry model is used for H2-O2 oxidation, and the other based on a composition joint pdf approach to account for the turbulence-chemistry interaction effects. Between upwind and centered differencing schemes, minimal differences are observed for the flow properties of a nonreacting shear layer case studied. In comparison with experimental data, computed growth rates are underpredicted in both reacting and nonreacting cases of a shear layer, but more severely for the reacting flows. However, the qualitative agreement between computation and experiment is reasonably good for the other observable characteristics, and indicative of potential for further improvements.

Lai, H. T.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Ionospheric holes - A review of theory and recent experiments

Artificially induced ionospheric holes result from in situ injections of highly reactive molecules, which greatly enhance the chemical recombination rates between the ions and electrons found in the upper atmosphere. During the past decade, experiment-of-opportunity observations, theory and computer simulations have succeeded in establishing plasma-depletion experiments as a useful tool for probing the normal and disturbed behavior of the ionosphere. Ionospheric-hole experiments now focus on applications of the technique to laboratory-in-space investigations of various space plasma processes.

Mendillo, Michael↗
NASA NTRS1989

Flexible structure control experiments using a real-time workstation for computer-aided control engineering

A Real-Time Workstation for Computer-Aided Control Engineering has been developed jointly by the Communications Research Centre (CRC) and Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum (RUB), West Germany. The system is presently used for the development and experimental verification of control techniques for large space systems with significant structural flexibility. The Real-Time Workstation essentially is an implementation of RUB's extensive Computer-Aided Control Engineering package KEDDC on an INTEL micro-computer running under the RMS real-time operating system. The portable system supports system identification, analysis, control design and simulation, as well as the immediate implementation and test of control systems. The Real-Time Workstation is currently being used by CRC to study control/structure interaction on a ground-based structure called DAISY, whose design was inspired by a reflector antenna. DAISY emulates the dynamics of a large flexible spacecraft with the following characteristics: rigid body modes, many clustered vibration modes with low frequencies and extremely low damping. The Real-Time Workstation was found to be a very powerful tool for experimental studies, supporting control design and simulation, and conducting and evaluating tests withn one integrated environment.

Stieber, Michael E.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Analysis of a thick dichroic plate with rectangular holes at arbitrary angles of incidence

A thick dichroic plate that is transparent to one frequency band while at the same time reflective to other frequencies is needed for high power transmission in the Deep Space Network. Software based on the method of moments was developed to design a thick dichroic plate with rectangular holes. A test dichroic plate was fabricated, and an experiment was performed to verify the computer code. Good agreement was found between theory and experiment.

Chen, J. C.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Training Software in Artificial-Intelligence Computing Techniques

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Toolkit is a computer program for training scientists, engineers, and university students in three soft-computing techniques (fuzzy logic, neural networks, and genetic algorithms) used in artificial-intelligence applications. The program promotes an easily understandable tutorial interface, including an interactive graphical component through which the user can gain hands-on experience in soft-computing techniques applied to realistic example problems. The tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on the workings of soft-computing technology, whereas the hands-on examples allow interaction and reinforcement of the techniques explained throughout the tutorial. In the fuzzy-logic example, a user can interact with a robot and an obstacle course to verify how fuzzy logic is used to command a rover traverse from an arbitrary start to the goal location. For the genetic algorithm example, the problem is to determine the minimum-length path for visiting a user-chosen set of planets in the solar system. For the neural-network example, the problem is to decide, on the basis of input data on physical characteristics, whether a person is a man, woman, or child. The AI Toolkit is compatible with the Windows 95,98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP operating systems. A computer having a processor speed of at least 300 MHz, and random-access memory of at least 56MB is recommended for optimal performance. The program can be run on a slower computer having less memory, but some functions may not be executed properly.

Howard, Ayanna↗
NASA NTRS2020

Experimental Validation of Nozzle Flow Simulations for Rotating Detonation Rocket Engines

Rotating detonation engines (RDEs) promise increased thermodynamic performance that may significantly enhance the capabilities of current rocket platforms. Little work has been conducted thus far to characterize the effect of nozzle design on high chamber pressure RDEs. Previous computational work was completed to understand the nozzle performance of the Purdue methane/oxygen rocket RDE. A new experimental study on a similar kerosene/oxygen RDE was conducted to validate the results of the computational study. Both a nozzleless geometry and several aerospike designs were hot-fire tested. New pressure instrumentation on the different nozzle surfaces were included to better understand the flow physics unique to RDE chamber exit conditions. Both the previous computational study and the new experimental results confirmed that for a nozzleless geometry, the RDE cycle enhances suction on the base region, an important result to determining RDE engine performance separate from nozzle effects. While the aerospike experiments showed agreement with computational results, delay of flow separation due to the RDE cycle could not be confirmed. Two aerospike geometries with different nozzle pressure ratios were experimentally evaluated. This study showed both the strength and the necessity for 3D transient computations to better understand the RDE flow field with nozzle geometries.

Alexis J Harroun↗
NASA NTRS1994

The Bond Dissociation Energies of 1-Butene

The bond dissociation energies of 1-butene and several calibration systems are computed using the G2(MP2) approach. The agreement between the calibration systems and experiment is very good. The computed values for 1-butene are compared with calibration systems and the agreement between the computed results for 1-butene and the "rule of thumb" values from the smaller systems is remarkably good.

Bauschlicher, Charles W., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Simulation of Local Blood Flow in Human Brain under Altered Gravity

In addition to the altered gravitational forces, specific shapes and connections of arteries in the brain vary in the human population (Cebral et al., 2000; Ferrandez et al., 2002). Considering the geometric variations, pulsatile unsteadiness, and moving walls, computational approach in analyzing altered blood circulation will offer an economical alternative to experiments. This paper presents a computational approach for modeling the local blood flow through the human brain under altered gravity. This computational approach has been verified through steady and unsteady experimental measurements and then applied to the unsteady blood flows through a carotid bifurcation model and an idealized Circle of Willis (COW) configuration under altered gravity conditions.

Kim, Chang Sung↗
NASA NTRS1999

Bursting Bubbles from Combustion of Thermoplastic Materials in Microgravity

Many thermoplastic materials in common use for a wide range of applications, including spacecraft, develop bubbles internally as they burn due to chemical reactions taking place within the bulk. These bubbles grow and migrate until they burst at the surface, forceably ejecting volatile gases and, occasionally, molten fuel. In experiments in normal gravity, Kashiwagi and Ohlemiller observed vapor jets extending a few centimeters from the surface of a radiatively heated polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) sample, with some molten material ejected into the gas phase. These physical phenomena complicated the combustion process considerably. In addition to the non-steady release of volatiles, the depth of the surface layer affected by oxygen was increased, attributed to the roughening of the surface by bursting events. The ejection of burning droplets in random directions presents a potential fire hazard unique to microgravity. In microgravity combustion experiments on nylon Velcro fasteners and on polyethylene wire insulation, the presence of bursting fuel vapor bubbles was associated with the ejection of small particles of molten fuel as well as pulsations of the flame. For the nylon fasteners, particle velocities were higher than 30 cm/sec. The droplets burned robustly until all fuel was consumed, demonstrating the potential for the spread of fire in random directions over an extended distance. The sequence of events for a bursting bubble has been photographed by Newitt et al.. As the bubble reaches the fluid surface, the outer surface forms a dome while the internal bubble pressure maintains a depression at the inner interface. Liquid drains from the dome until it breaks into a cloud of droplets on the order of a few microns in size. The bubble gases are released rapidly, generating vortices in the quiescent surroundings and transporting the tiny droplets. The depression left by the escaping gases collapses into a central jet, which rises with a high velocity and may break up, releasing one or more relatively large drops (on the order of a millimeter in these experiments). A better understanding of bubble development and bursting processes, the effects of bursting behavior on burning rate of the bulk material, and the circumstances under which large droplets are expelled, as well as their trajectories, sizes, and burning rates, is sought through computer modeling compared with experiment.

Butler, K. B.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Generic Divide and Conquer Internet-Based Computing

The growth of Internet-based applications and the proliferation of networking technologies have been transforming traditional commercial application areas as well as computer and computational sciences and engineering. This growth stimulates the exploration of Peer to Peer (P2P) software technologies that can open new research and application opportunities not only for the commercial world, but also for the scientific and high-performance computing applications community. The general goal of this project is to achieve better understanding of the transition to Internet-based high-performance computing and to develop solutions for some of the technical challenges of this transition. In particular, we are interested in creating long-term motivation for end users to provide their idle processor time to support computationally intensive tasks. We believe that a practical P2P architecture should provide useful service to both clients with high-performance computing needs and contributors of lower-end computing resources. To achieve this, we are designing dual -service architecture for P2P high-performance divide-and conquer computing; we are also experimenting with a prototype implementation. Our proposed architecture incorporates a master server, utilizes dual satellite servers, and operates on the Internet in a dynamically changing large configuration of lower-end nodes provided by volunteer contributors. A dual satellite server comprises a high-performance computing engine and a lower-end contributor service engine. The computing engine provides generic support for divide and conquer computations. The service engine is intended to provide free useful HTTP-based services to contributors of lower-end computing resources. Our proposed architecture is complementary to and accessible from computational grids, such as Globus, Legion, and Condor. Grids provide remote access to existing higher-end computing resources; in contrast, our goal is to utilize idle processor time of lower-end Internet nodes. Our project is focused on a generic divide and conquer paradigm and on mobile applications of this paradigm that can operate on a loose and ever changing pool of lower-end Internet nodes.

Follen, Gregory J.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Telescience at the University of California, Berkeley

The University of California at Berkeley (UCB) is a member of a university consortium involved in telescience testbed activities under the sponsorship of NASA. Our Telescience Testbed Project consists of three experiments using flight hardware being developed for the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer project at UCB's Space Sciences Laboratory. The first one is a teleoperation experiment investigating remote instrument control using a computer network such as the Internet. The second experiment is an effort to develop a system for operation of a network of remote workstations allowing coordinated software development, evaluation, and use by widely dispersed groups. The final experiment concerns simulation as a method to facilitate the concurrent development of instrument hardware and support software. We describe our progress in these areas.

Telemetry/instrumentation/methods↗
NASA NTRS1994

A Cartesian, cell-based approach for adaptively-refined solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations

A Cartesian, cell-based approach for adaptively-refined solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in two dimensions is developed and tested. Grids about geometrically complicated bodies are generated automatically, by recursive subdivision of a single Cartesian cell encompassing the entire flow domain. Where the resulting cells intersect bodies, N-sided 'cut' cells are created using polygon-clipping algorithms. The grid is stored in a binary-tree structure which provides a natural means of obtaining cell-to-cell connectivity and of carrying out solution-adaptive mesh refinement. The Euler and Navier-Stokes equations are solved on the resulting grids using a finite-volume formulation. The convective terms are upwinded: a gradient-limited, linear reconstruction of the primitive variables is performed, providing input states to an approximate Riemann solver for computing the fluxes between neighboring cells. The more robust of a series of viscous flux functions is used to provide the viscous fluxes at the cell interfaces. Adaptively-refined solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations using the Cartesian, cell-based approach are obtained and compared to theory, experiment, and other accepted computational results for a series of low and moderate Reynolds number flows.

Coirier, William J.↗