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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
DOE OSTI2025

Serpentine Magnet Designs for the Interaction Region of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC)

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), hosted by Brookhaven National Laboratory, is designed to deliver a peak luminosity of 1 × 10 34 cm −2 sec −1 . The interaction region (IR) of the EIC imposes several constraints in terms of field quality, aperture, and spatial layout, which necessitates the development of several unique superconducting serpentine direct wind magnets. These magnets are constructed using either a single strand or a small-diameter 6-around-1 NbTi cable, presenting unique challenges for design and optimization. This paper introduces a new computational code specifically developed to streamline and integrate the design process for these magnets, enabling faster design iterations while addressing their complex requirements. Here, in this paper, we first introduce the code, which builds on established electromagnetic fundamentals. The code incorporates tools for optimizing winding patterns and for correcting magnetic multipoles; additionally, it interfaces with established magnet design software. We also present the design of several serpentine magnets for the EIC IR, demonstrating the code’s capability to deliver precise and efficient solutions. These designs highlight the code’s ability to accelerate the development cycle, ensuring the serpentine magnets meet the demanding specifications of the EIC project.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2013

Ionospheric Specifications for SAR Interferometry (ISSI)

The ISSI software package is designed to image the ionosphere from space by calibrating and processing polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data collected from low Earth orbit satellites. Signals transmitted and received by a PolSAR are subject to the Faraday rotation effect as they traverse the magnetized ionosphere. The ISSI algorithms combine the horizontally and vertically polarized (with respect to the radar system) SAR signals to estimate Faraday rotation and ionospheric total electron content (TEC) with spatial resolutions of sub-kilometers to kilometers, and to derive radar system calibration parameters. The ISSI software package has been designed and developed to integrate the algorithms, process PolSAR data, and image as well as visualize the ionospheric measurements. A number of tests have been conducted using ISSI with PolSAR data collected from various latitude regions using the phase array-type L-band synthetic aperture radar (PALSAR) onboard Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Advanced Land Observing Satellite mission, and also with Global Positioning System data. These tests have demonstrated and validated SAR-derived ionospheric images and data correction algorithms.

Pi, Xiaoqing↗
DOE OSTI2023

Manufacturing Demonstration Facility: Development and Evaluation of Hybrid Manufacturing Toolpaths

The integration of additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities on Computer Numerical Control (CNC) systems allows for the expansion of additive manufacturing to a wide range of part and tool repair operations. This multi-tasking integration, termed hybrid manufacturing, has been researched by others in the past, and Autodesk has been critical in developing process planning and toolpath algorithms for hybrid systems. Objectives and Tasks: Hybrid manufacturing systems enable both additive and subtractive capabilities in a single manufacturing workcell. These systems have the potential to impact a variety of industries, including the tool and die industry due to their repair, refurbishment, and complex geometry manufacturing capabilities. While there has been significant development of toolpath planning for both subtractive and additive processes independently, there has been little, if any, development of hybrid toolpath planning to integrate both processes during the manufacturing design and toolpath generation stage of a product’s lifecycle. Furthermore, additive toolpath planning has been limited to planar manufacturing, but this limitation could be overcome as hybrid CNC machines have multi-axis control. The objectives of this research include: - Development and demonstration of independent three-, four-, and five-axis toolpath generation algorithms for both additive and subtractive processes, and - Development, demonstration, and integration of three-, four-, and five-axis hybrid process planning and toolpath generation algorithms for hybrid additive and subtractive processes. The team will leverage the widely used Autodesk Fusion 360 product design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) platform to achieve these objectives. Autodesk will provide the expertise in CAD tools, as well as access to their new CAD/CAM manufacturing tools (3-, 4-, and 5-axis milling, additive toolpath generation). ORNL will provide expertise in additive manufacturing toolpath generation, process planning, and manufacturing validation. By the end of the program, the team will have developed and validated multi-axis milling, additive manufacturing, and hybrid manufacturing on an industrial hybrid CNC system (Mazak 500-VC).

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS1985

Creep fatigue life prediction for engine hot section materials (isotropic): Third year progress review

This program is designed to investigate fundamental damage processes, identify modeling strategies, and develop practical models which can be used to guide the early design and development of new engines and to increase the durability of existing engines. A review is given of the base program, completed in 1984, which included the comparison and evaluation of several popular high-temperature life prediction approaches as applied to continuously cycled isothermal specimen tests. The option program, of which one year is completed, is designed to develop models which can account for complex cycles and loadings, such as thermomechanical cycling, cumulative damage, multiaxial stress/strain rates, and environmental effects.

Nelson, Richard S.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Maturation of Additive Manufactured Aerospace Alloys and Development of Mechanical and Thermophysical Properties for Space Applications

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been involved in the development and maturation of metal additive manufacturing (AM) for space applications since the late 2000’s. Several efforts have focused on the understanding of AM processes through design optimization, component fabrication, material characterization, testing, standards development, and infusion into propulsion development for flight applications. NASA and partners have matured commonly used aerospace alloys from various alloy families (Nickel, Steel, Iron, Aluminum, and Titanium) and AM processes. An extensive effort has been ongoing between NASA, industry partners, and academia to complete detailed AM process and heat treatment characterization, in addition to generating temperature-dependent mechanical and thermophysical properties. This presentation highlights the characterization and property results using laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) and laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED) processes among various alloys. In addition to commonly used alloys, there is a need for ongoing AM optimized alloys using integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) and process development for high performance applications. The applications targeted are launch vehicles, liquid rocket engines, advanced propulsion systems, advanced power systems, and in-space propulsion with high heat fluxes, high pressure, and that utilize propellants such as hydrogen, which can degrade alloys. This presentation will also discuss some of the ongoing novel alloy development and maturation using AM for use in these harsh environments, such as GRCop-42, GRCop-84, NASA HR-1, and C-103. The results from these processes have demonstrated that AM can enable rapid development and new AM optimized alloys can yield higher performance. These alloys have undergone modeling, fundamental metallurgical evaluations, heat treatment studies, and microstructure characterization and mechanical testing campaigns. This, combined with direct application-specific component fabrication and hot-fire testing, can enable the increase of the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) through high duty-cycle testing. This presentation provides a background and overview of these various common and AM-enabled alloys and processing developments including the initial effort related to metallurgical, mechanical, and thermophysical property studies. It also covers the latest advancement in the parallel component development, hot-fire testing, and future developments for these alloys.

Additive Manufacturing↗
NASA NTRS2006

Standardized Radiation Shield Design Methods: 2005 HZETRN

Research committed by the Langley Research Center through 1995 resulting in the HZETRN code provides the current basis for shield design methods according to NASA STD-3000 (2005). With this new prominence, the database, basic numerical procedures, and algorithms are being re-examined with new methods of verification and validation being implemented to capture a well defined algorithm for engineering design processes to be used in this early development phase of the Bush initiative. This process provides the methodology to transform the 1995 HZETRN research code into the 2005 HZETRN engineering code to be available for these early design processes. In this paper, we will review the basic derivations including new corrections to the codes to insure improved numerical stability and provide benchmarks for code verification.

Wilson, John W.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Additive Manufacturing (AM) for Propulsion Component and System Applications

NASA MSFC is developing several areas of additive manufacturing (AM) for propulsion component and system applications. These developments include new AM process and material development, large-scale AM pathfinder component fabrication and hot-fire testing, AM-centric design methodology, modeling and simulation, post-processing advancements, and new design applications of AM in aerospace. Some specific areas NASA has focused is the development and commercial infusion of AM supply chain for materials such as copper-alloy GRCop (Cu-Cr-Nb), Hydrogen-resistant alloys (NASA HR-1, JBK-75), refractory-based alloys (C-103, W, Mo, new formulations), and bimetallic and multi-metallic AM processes. Additional efforts have been focused on large scale AM demonstrating complex thin-wall structures up to 60” diameter using directed energy deposition. Material characterization, properties and component hot-fire testing has been completed using many of these newly developed AM alloys/processes. NASA has also focused on improvements to post-processing including powder removal, surface enhancements, and support removal to further realize cost and schedule benefits to the overall supply chain. These developments are part of the NASA Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology (RAMPT), Low Cost Upper Stage Propulsion (LCUSP) and Long Life Additive Manufacturing (LLAMA) projects, in addition to internal IRAD, and external collaborations.

Additive Manufacturing↗
NASA NTRS2011

External Tank Program - Legacy of Success

The largest single element of Space Shuttle is the External Tank (ET), which serves as the structural backbone of the vehicle during ascent and provides liquid propellants to the Orbiter s three Main Engines. The ET absorbs most of the seven million pounds of thrust exerted by the Solid Rocket Boosters and Main Engines. The design evolved through several block changes, reducing weight each time. Because the tank flies to orbital velocity with the Space Shuttle Orbiter, minimization of weight is mandatory, to maximize payload performance. The initial configuration, the standard weight tank, weighed 76,000 pounds and was an aluminum 2219 structure. The light weight tank weighed 66,000 pounds and flew 86 missions. The super light weight tank weighed 58,500 pounds and was primarily an aluminum-lithium structure. The final configuration and low weight enabled system level performance sufficient for assembly of the International Space Station in a high inclination orbit, vital for international cooperation. Another significant challenge was the minimization of ice formation on the cryogenic tanks. This was essential due to the system configuration and the choice of ceramic thermal protection system materials on the Orbiter. Ice would have been a major debris hazard. Spray on foam insulation materials served multiple functions including thermal insulation, conditioning of cryogenic propellants, and thermal protection for the tank structure during ascent and entry. The tank is large, and unique manufacturing facilities, tooling, and handling, and transportation operations were developed. Weld processes and tooling evolved with the design as it matured through several block changes. Non Destructive Evaluation methods were used to assure integrity of welds and thermal protection system materials. The aluminum-lithium alloy was used near the end of the program and weld processes and weld repair techniques had to be refined. Development and implementation of friction stir welding was a substantial technology development incorporated during the Program. Automated thermal protection system application processes were developed for the majority of the tank surface. Material obsolescence was an issue throughout the multi-decade program. Process controls were implemented to assure cleanliness in the production environment, to control contaminants, and to preclude corrosion. Each tank was accepted via rigorous inspections, including non-destructive evaluation techniques, proof testing, and all systems testing. In the post STS-107 era, the project focused on ascent debris risk reduction. This was accomplished via stringent process controls, post flight assessment using substantially improved imagery, and selective redesigns. These efforts were supported with a number of test programs to simulate combined environments. The debris risk was reduced by two orders of magnitude. During this time a major natural disaster was overcome when hurricane Katrina damaged the manufacturing facility. Numerous lessons from these efforts, the manufacturing and material processing issues, the key design features, and evolution of the design will be discussed.

Pilet, Jeffery C.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Validation of an Advanced High-Pressure PEM Electrolyzer and Composite Hydrogen Storage

One of the challenges associated with transitioning our nation’s transportation economy to any alternative fuel is bringing fuel production, storage, transportation, and end-customer delivery infrastructure online. There are challenges associated with planning and implementing hydrogen fueling stations at locations relevant to the parallel effort of bringing the related transportation vehicles into the market. There are additional challenges associated with the operation of hydrogen fueling stations and reducing operating costs through energy reduction. Through calculation and design efforts it was concluded that elevating the pressure of a PEM cell stack and further developing hydrogen processing equipment that support elevated pressures while maintaining similar characteristics to their current production counterparts will yield in energy savings and by extension cost reductions. In this report, the design of a 57-bar (827-psig) electrolysis system and electrolysis cell stack is described. Furthermore, the fabrication, component verification, and integrated testing are summarized. Prior to this development effort, Proton had demonstrated thousand of hours of durability on 30-bar (435-psig) differential pressure PEM electrolysis hardware. Proton has sold and installed many of these 30-bar devices at customer sites. Through this project, Proton has developed and tested 57-bar PEM electrolysis, thereby extending the proven capability of PEM electrolysis as a hydrogen generation and electrochemical compression device. A design and validation effort to arrange hydrogen processioning equipment for refueling OEM vehicles was also undertaken within this project. By arranging equipment within two 6-meter ISO shipping containers and further developing NFPA 2 Hydrogen Technologies Code to support containerized hydrogen equipment, efforts to site, install, and commission, and approve hydrogen fueling stations were reduced and now provide a groundwork for future installations.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2021

Development of phenomena identification and ranking table for Westinghouse lead fast reactor’s safety

The Westinghouse Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR) is a medium-size, passively safe, economic, Gen-IV nuclear reactor. An important effort within the Westinghouse LFR program is the development of the safety analysis methodology, which comprises computer code development, model development, and experimental testing. A key initial task associated with the development of the safety analysis methodology is the identification of processes and phenomena that affect the plant's capability to meet selected safety performance indicators. This is accomplished through the development of a Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table (PIRT) for selected accident scenarios which, for this specific PIRT effort, included selected postulated design basis accidents and hypothetical beyond design basis accidents in LFRs. This paper describes the role of PIRT in the development of the Westinghouse LFR safety analysis methodology and the process used in the PIRT development. Specifically, the Westinghouse LFR PIRT assessed importance of pertinent phenomena and identified gaps in their knowledge-base by evaluating current modeling capabilities and data available for validation. The ultimate goal was to provide guidance on computer code development and validation efforts and to prioritize testing to support LFR design and licensing. The key phenomena and processes that are deemed highly important for the safety performance indicators, but for which the state of knowledge is low, are presented. The testing program and analyses development are planned to address significant phenomena in the PIRT.

Lead fast reactor↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

TPSAS-NF1676L-32640-DND

Computational fluid dynamics is now considered to be an indispensable tool for the design and development of scramjet engine components. Unfortunately, the quantification of uncertainties is rarely addressed with anything other than sensitivity studies, so the degree of confidence associated with the numerical results remains exclusively with the subject matter expert that generated them. This practice must be replaced with a formal uncertainty quantification process for computational fluid dynamics to play an expanded role in the system design, development, and flight certification process. Given the limitations of current hypersonic ground test facilities, this expanded role is believed to be a requirement by some in the hypersonics community if scramjet engines are to be given serious consideration as a viable propulsion system. The present effort describes a simple, relatively low cost, nonintrusive approach to uncertainty quantification that includes the basic ingredients required to handle both aleatoric (random) and epistemic (lack of knowledge) sources of uncertainty.

Robert A Baurle↗
NASA NTRS1995

Design of launch systems using continuous improvement process

The purpose of this paper is to identify a systematic process for improving ground operations for future launch systems. This approach is based on the Total Quality Management (TQM) continuous improvement process. While the continuous improvement process is normally identified with making incremental changes to an existing system, it can be used on new systems if they use past experience as a knowledge base. In the case of the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), the Space Shuttle operations provide many lessons. The TQM methodology used for this paper will be borrowed from the United States Air Force 'Quality Air Force' Program. There is a general overview of the continuous improvement process, with concentration on the formulation phase. During this phase critical analyses are conducted to determine the strategy and goals for the remaining development process. These analyses include analyzing the mission from the customers point of view, developing an operations concept for the future, assessing current capabilities and determining the gap to be closed between current capabilities and future needs and requirements. A brief analyses of the RLV, relative to the Space Shuttle, will be used to illustrate the concept. Using the continuous improvement design concept has many advantages. These include a customer oriented process which will develop a more marketable product and a better integration of operations and systems during the design phase. But, the use of TQM techniques will require changes, including more discipline in the design process and more emphasis on data gathering for operational systems. The benefits will far outweigh the additional effort.

Brown, Richard W.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Pilot-Scale Modular Research Facility for Acidic Water Pollution Cleanup and Domestic Production of Critical Minerals for National Security

A recent study by Penn State researchers revealed that Pennsylvania AMD streams originate from abandoned mines, with coal refuse piles of the lower Kittanning coal seam containing the most valuable heavy rare earth elements. Penn State has developed a three-stage process to recover these critical minerals, tested it for proof of concept, and secured a patent. Funded by the US DOE, a modular pilot-scale research and development unit has been designed and built to process 1,000 gallons per day of AMD from a site managed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP). The system will selectively recover iron, aluminum, rare earth elements, and cobalt-nickel-manganese concentrates from AMD, followed by a proprietary downstream purification process. These operations aim to produce concentrates of critical minerals while treating acid mine drainage to meet environmental standards and evaluate different feedstocks. This presentation will describe the design, operation, and innovations of the proposed process and pilot facility, emphasizing its role in promoting sustainable recovery of critical minerals from legacy waste streams.

Pisupati, Sarma V [Center for Critical Minerals, T↗
NASA NTRS1987

Computer architecture for efficient algorithmic executions in real-time systems: New technology for avionics systems and advanced space vehicles

Improvements and advances in the development of computer architecture now provide innovative technology for the recasting of traditional sequential solutions into high-performance, low-cost, parallel system to increase system performance. Research conducted in development of specialized computer architecture for the algorithmic execution of an avionics system, guidance and control problem in real time is described. A comprehensive treatment of both the hardware and software structures of a customized computer which performs real-time computation of guidance commands with updated estimates of target motion and time-to-go is presented. An optimal, real-time allocation algorithm was developed which maps the algorithmic tasks onto the processing elements. This allocation is based on the critical path analysis. The final stage is the design and development of the hardware structures suitable for the efficient execution of the allocated task graph. The processing element is designed for rapid execution of the allocated tasks. Fault tolerance is a key feature of the overall architecture. Parallel numerical integration techniques, tasks definitions, and allocation algorithms are discussed. The parallel implementation is analytically verified and the experimental results are presented. The design of the data-driven computer architecture, customized for the execution of the particular algorithm, is discussed.

Carroll, Chester C.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Adoption of image-driven machine learning for microstructure characterization and materials design: A Perspective

Microstructure characterization enables the development of structure-processing-property relationships critical to several research areas within the broad field of materials science, from alloy design to the assessment of corrosion resistance, and failure analysis. Conventional approaches to material characterization have relied on either qualitative inference by the human ex-pert or software applications that can extract high-level features from images, such as boundary segmentation, average grain diameter, etc. Such approaches rely heavily on subject matter expert user intervention and knowledge of what phases or more generally, what microstructural features, are of interest. The recent surge in the adoption of machine learning techniques to address problems in materials engineering has brought with it an increased interest and application of Image Driven Machine Learning (IDML) approaches. In this work, we review the applications of IDML to the field of materials characterization. A canonical hierarchy of stages is defined, which when put sequentially together completes an IDML study: problem definition, dataset building, model selection and training, model evaluation, and integration with existing instrumentation or simulation workflow. The studies reviewed in this work are analyzed from the perspective of each of these stages. Such a review permits agranular assessment of the field, for example the impact of IDML on materials characterization at the nanoscale, the size of a typical dataset required to train a semantic segmentation model on electron microscopy images, ubiquitousness of transfer learning in the domain, etc. Finally, we discuss the importance of interpretability and explainability in the field of IDML for materials characterization, and provide an overview of two emerging techniques in the field: semantic segmentation and generative adversarial networks.

Baskaran, Arun↗