Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “acceleration response”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 757 records · Page 42

Antarctic Rebound and the Time-Dependence of the Earth's Shape

Great strides have been made during the past 30 years in refining models of the last global glaciation. The refinements draw upon a vastly expanded relative sea level and sedimentary core record. Furthermore, we now possess a sharpened understanding of the mechanisms that drive climate changes associated with deglaciation. Some 15 years ago, using only 5.5 years of ranging data, analyses of the drift in LAGEOS I node acceleration was used to infer that postglacial rebound was responsible for a secular change in the Earth's ellipsoidal shape (Yoder et al., .1983]. Today there exists a wealth of geodynamics satellite orbit data that constrain the secular time-dependence of the Earth's shape and low order gravity field, which includes mass redistribution from present-day glacier and great ice sheet imbalance and from postglacial rebound. We have shown that an unambiguous determination of the secular variation in the Earth's pear shaped harmonic (l = 3, m = 0) might provide information that bears on the present-day mass balance of Antarctica. This issue is revisited in light of new constraints on glacial loading during the late-Pleistocene and Holocene. An especially critical issue for the interpretation of secular odd degree zonal harmonics, l = 3 to 7, is the timing and magnitude of the deglaciation of Antarctica from Last Glacial Maximum. We explore ways in which the recovery of secular variation in both zonal and non-zonal harmonics for l = 2 through 7 can improve constraints on both rebound and present-day ice sheet balance.

Ivins, Erik R.↗

A Study of Airline Passenger Susceptibility to Atmospheric Turbulence Hazard

A simple, generic, simulation math model of a commercial airliner has been developed to study the susceptibility of unrestrained passengers to large, discrete gust encounters. The math model simulates the longitudinal motion to vertical gusts and includes (1) motion of an unrestrained passenger in the rear cabin, (2) fuselage flexibility, (3) the lag in the downwash from the wing to the tail, and (4) unsteady lift effects. Airplane and passenger response contours are calculated for a matrix of gust amplitudes and gust lengths of a simulated mountain rotor. A comparison of the model-predicted responses to data from three accidents indicates that the accelerations in actual accidents are sometimes much larger than the simulated gust encounters.

Stewart, Eric C.↗

Publicly Available Numerical Codes for Modeling the X-ray and Microwave Emissions from Solar and Stellar Activity

We have posted numerical codes on the Web for modeling the bremsstrahlung x-ray emission and the a gyrosynchrotron radio emission from solar and stellar activity. In addition to radiation codes, steady-state and time-dependent Fokker-Planck codes are provided for computing the distribution and evolution of accelerated electrons. A 1-D hydrodynamics code computes the response of the stellar atmosphere (chromospheric evaporation). A code for modeling gamma-ray line spectra is also available. On-line documentation is provided for each code. These codes have been developed for modeling results from the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) along related microwave observations of solar flares. Comprehensive codes for modeling images and spectra of solar flares are under development. The posted codes can be obtained on NASA/Goddard's HESSI Web Site at http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/modelware.htm. This work is supported in part by the NASA Sun-Earth Connection Program.

Holman, Gordon D.↗

Standards Development Activities at White Sands Test Facility

The development of standards and standard activities at the JSC White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) has been expanded to include the transfer of technology and standards to voluntary consensus organizations in five technical areas of importance to NASA. This effort is in direct response to the National Technology Transfer Act designed to accelerate transfer of technology to industry and promote government-industry partnerships. Technology transfer is especially important for WSTF, whose longterm mission has been to develop and provide vital propellant safety and hazards information to aerospace designers, operations personnel, and safety personnel. Meeting this mission is being accomplished through the preparation of consensus guidelines and standards, propellant hazards analysis protocols, and safety courses for the propellant use of hydrogen, oxygen, and hypergols, as well as the design and inspection of spacecraft pressure vessels and the use of pyrovalves in spacecraft propulsion systems. The overall WSTF technology transfer program is described and the current status of technology transfer activities are summarized.

Baker, D. L.↗

Vibroacoustic Response Data of Stiffened Panels and Cylinders

NASA has collected vibroacoustic response data on a variety of complex, aerospace structures to support research into numerical modeling of such structures. This data is being made available to the modeling community to promote the development and validation of analysis methods for these types of structures. Existing data from two structures is described, as well as plans for a data set from a third structure. The first structure is a 1.22 m by 1.22 m stiffened aluminum panel, typical of a commercial aircraft sidewall section. The second is an enclosed, stiffened aluminum cylinder, approximately 3.66 m long and 1.22 m in diameter, constructed to resemble a small aircraft fuselage with no windows and a periodic structure. The third structure is a filament-wound composite cylinder with composite stiffeners. Numerous combinations of excitation and response variables were measured on the structures, including: shaker excitation; diffuse acoustic field; velocity response from a laser vibrometer; intensity scans; and point acceleration.

Cabell, Randolph↗

Ares Launch Vehicle Transonic Buffet Testing and Analysis Techniques

It is necessary to define the launch vehicle buffet loads to ensure that structural components and vehicle subsystems possess adequate strength, stress, and fatigue margins when the vehicle structural dynamic response to buffet forcing functions are considered. In order to obtain these forcing functions, the accepted method is to perform wind-tunnel testing of a rigid model instrumented with hundreds of unsteady pressure transducers designed to measure the buffet environment across the desired frequency range. The buffet wind-tunnel test program for the Ares Crew Launch Vehicle employed 3.5 percent scale rigid models of the Ares I and Ares I-X launch vehicles instrumented with 256 unsteady pressure transducers each. These models were tested at transonic conditions at the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel at NASA Langley Research Center. The ultimate deliverable of the Ares buffet test program are buffet forcing functions (BFFs) derived from integrating the measured fluctuating pressures on the rigid wind-tunnel models. These BFFs are then used as input to a multi-mode structural analysis to determine the vehicle response to buffet and the resulting buffet loads and accelerations. This paper discusses the development of the Ares I and I-X rigid buffet model test programs from the standpoint of model design, instrumentation system design, test implementation, data analysis techniques to yield final products, and presents normalized sectional buffet forcing function root-mean-squared levels.

Piatak, David J.↗

Sand Impact Tests of a Half-Scale Crew Module Boilerplate Test Article

Although the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is being designed primarily for water landings, a further investigation of launch abort scenarios reveals the possibility of an onshore landing at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). To gather data for correlation against simulations of beach landing impacts, a series of sand impact tests were conducted at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC). Both vertical drop tests and swing tests with combined vertical and horizontal velocity were performed onto beds of common construction-grade sand using a geometrically scaled crew module boilerplate test article. The tests were simulated using the explicit, nonlinear, transient dynamic finite element code LS-DYNA. The material models for the sand utilized in the simulations were based on tests of sand specimens. Although the LSDYNA models provided reasonable predictions for peak accelerations, they were not always able to track the response through the duration of the impact. Further improvements to the material model used for the sand were identified based on results from the sand specimen tests.

Vassilakos, Gregory J.↗

Developing a Drilling Optimization System for Improved Overall Rate of Penetration in Geothermal Wells

Geothermal energy is renewable, reliable and environmentally friendly source of energy. The major cost in the development of geothermal wells is the actual drilling of the wells. The main objective of this paper is to introduce a new real-time drilling optimization system designed for granite formation to reduce the overall drilling cost. In this study, a drilling optimization system is verified using drilling data from Utah-Forge well 58-32. The drilling optimization system used the Utah-Forge well 58-32 data to achieve real-time unconfined compressive strength (UCS). Based on the UCS value from the previous feet, the system simulates the ROP for the next drilling feet. The drilling optimization system utilizes the Differential Evolution Algorithm (DEA), which is a metaheuristic method to search the space of solution, to find the best operating parameters (i.e. WOB and RPM) for the next drilling foot. The optimization algorithm takes a maximum cutter temperature into account as a constraint and avoids the accelerated wear. The developed drilling optimization system improves ROP responses and reduces the drilling cost of geothermal wells. The simulated ROP results from the system show a good agreement with the ROP from Utah-Forge well 58-32 drilling data. The drilling time before and after optimization for both intervals were presented.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

An investigation into the probabilistic combination of quasi-static and random accelerations

The development of design load factors for aerospace and aircraft components and experiment support structures, which are subject to a simultaneous vehicle dynamic vibration (quasi-static) and acoustically generated random vibration, require the selection of a combination methodology. Typically, the procedure is to define the quasi-static and the random generated response separately, and arithmetically add or root sum square to get combined accelerations. Since the combination of a probabilistic and a deterministic function yield a probabilistic function, a viable alternate approach would be to determine the characteristics of the combined acceleration probability density function and select an appropriate percentile level for the combined acceleration. The following paper develops this mechanism and provides graphical data to select combined accelerations for most popular percentile levels.

Schock, R. W.↗

Passenger comfort response times as a function of aircraft motion

The relationship between a passenger's response time of changes in level of comfort experienced as a function of aircraft motion was examined. The aircraft used in this investigation was capable of providing a wide range of vertical and transverse accelerations by means of direct lift flap control surfaces and side force generator surfaces in addition to normal control surfaces. Response times to changes in comfort were recorded along with the passenger's rating of comfort on a five point scale. In addition, a number of aircraft motion variables including vertical and transverse accelerations were also recorded. Results indicate some relationship between human comfort response times to reaction time data.

Rinalducci, E. J.↗

Proton Quenching in Rare-Earth Inorganic Scintillators: GAGG:Ce and YSO:Ce

Scintillator detectors are an integral component of radiation detection systems for a variety of applications such as medical imaging, accelerator diagnostics, and space science. Typically, a scintillator detector’s response is characterized using gamma sources to understand the detection response to different types of radiation, including charged particle detection. However, there exists a nonlinearity of the amount of light produced from an incident gamma ray of specific energy and the light produced from an incident charged particle of the same energy. This important effect, known as quenching, must be accounted for to interpret energies from charged particles incident on detectors. In this article, we present results of quenching parameterization for two types of cerium-doped inorganic scintillators, Y2SiO5:Ce (YSO:Ce) and Gd3Al2Ga3O12:Ce (GAGG:Ce). We measured the light output from incident proton energies from 1 to 25 MeV using a 3-MV tandem accelerator and two reactions: Au(p,p)Au and 3He(d,p)⁴He. Using gamma-ray sources to calibrate the detectors, we compared the measured electron-equivalent energy versus the incident energy expected. Using an adaptation of the Birks semi-empirical formula, we extracted the Birks parameter (kB) to understand quenching. For one of the GAGG:Ce samples, the kB parameter of 0.0072 [g cm-2 MeV-1] is comparable to a similar study where the value of kB was 0.0065 [g cm-2 MeV-1]. For YSO:Ce, no other kB values were found in the literature. Three different types of GAGG:Ce were used to collect measurements of kB as a function of dopant concentration.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Evaluating Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) frameworks for the Accelerator Control System

As particle accelerator control systems evolve in complexity and scale, the need for responsive, scalable, and cost-effective computational infrastructure becomes increasingly critical. Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) offers an alternative to traditional monolithic architecture by enabling event-driven execution, automatic scaling, and fine-grained resource utilization. This paper explores the applicability and performance of FaaS frameworks in the context of a modern particle accelerator control system, with the objective of evaluating their suitability for short lived and triggered workloads. In this paper, we evaluate prominent open-source FaaS platforms in executing functional logic, triggers, and diagnostics routines. Evaluation metrics consist of cold-start latency, scalability, performance, integration with other open-source tools like Kafka. Experimental workloads were designed to simulate real-world control tasks when implemented as stateless FaaS functions. These workloads were benchmarked under various invocation loads and network conditions. Self-hosted FaaS platforms, when deployed within accelerator networks, offer greater control over execution environment, better integration with legacy systems, and support for real-time guarantees when paired with message queues. Based on lessons learned and evaluation metrics, this paper describes reliability of the FaaS framework for the Accelerator Control Systems (ACS).

Jaikar, A. [Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000332046217)↗

Sounding rocket measurements of suprathermal ion acceleration

Transverse ion acceleration has been observed at rocket altitudes between 500 and 1000 km due to (1) the injection of 100-200 eV argon plasma; (2) auroral electron precipitation; and (3) the injection of electromagnetic waves. Field-aligned currents necessary to neutralize the plasma injection payloads and naturally occurring in the aurora could be responsible for the ions observed in (1) and (2) above. Associated with the aurora, both bulk heating and tail heating are observed, sometimes simultaneously. In this case, either different masses are accelerated or different mechanisms are responsible. The bulk heating is closely correlated with the aurora structure while tail heating is not so well correlated. Recent high-time-resolution rocket ion data have revealed that the transverse acceleration process is of very short duration (about 100 ms) and occurs in a very limited volume (a few hundred kilometers along B and on the order of the ion gyrodiameter across B). Such impulse acceleration events are correlated with waves near the lower hybrid resonance.

Arnoldy, Roger L.↗

A 30-cm mercury ion thruster performance with a 1 kW capacitor-diode voltage multiplier beam supply

A 1 kW solar array and capacitor-diode voltage multiplier converter (S/A-CDVM) was successfully integrated with a 30 cm diameter mercury ion thruster system to provide ion beam power. Measurements were made to compare steady state and transient response performance of a conventional bridge converter with the S/A-CDVM converter used for the ion beam supply. The ability to recover from screen to accelerator arcs and promptly re-establish stable thruster performance was demonstrated. Solar array transient response to thruster arcing was measured.

Terdan, F. F.↗

30-cm mercury ion thruster performance with a 1 kW capacitor-diode voltage multiplier beam supply

A 1 kW Solar Array and Capacitor-Diode Voltage Multiplier Converter (S/A-CDVM) has been successfully integrated with a 30 cm-diameter mercury ion thruster system to provide ion beam power. Measurements were made to compare steady state and transient response performance of a conventional bridge converter with the S/A-CDVM converter used for the ion beam supply. The ability to recover from screen to accelerator arcs and promptly re-establish stable thruster performance was demonstrated. Solar array transient response to thruster arcing was also measured.

Terdan, F. F.↗

Kilometric shock-associated events and microwave bursts

The peak times of impulsive microwaves bursts are compared with those of shock-associated (SA) kilometric radio events. The first peaks in these two frequency regimes are usually well-correlated in time, but the last peaks of the SA events observed at 1 MHz occur an average of 20 min after the last impulsive microwave peaks. In some cases, the SA events overlap in time with the post-burst increases of microwave bursts; sometimes there is general correspondence in their intensity time profiles. These observations suggest that the earlier components of the SA events are usually caused by electrons accelerated in or near the microwave source region. The possibility that the later components of some SA events could be associated with nonthermal electrons responsible for microwave post-burst increases, although they have traditionally been attributed to electrons accelerated at type II burst producing shocks in the upper corona is discussed.

Kundu, M. R.↗

Discovering Innovations in Stress Tolerance through Comparative Gene Regulatory Network Analysis and Cell-Type Specific Expression Maps (Final Technical Report with Cover Page)

Through this grant, we developed a comparative framework to elucidate the mechanisms behind variations in environmental stress responses among a diverse group of species within the Brassicaceae family. Our focus was on the differences in physiological and transcriptomic responses to abscisic acid (ABA), a hormone associated with water stress. We examined the differential growth responses of four Brassicaceae species, finding that most exhibited reduced root growth correlated with smaller meristem size. In contrast, Schrenkiella parvula showed accelerated growth due to increased root cell elongation. We employed RNA sequencing to analyze the transcriptional responses to ABA across these species, and innovative bioinformatics techniques were used to pinpoint biological pathways with significant divergence. Additionally, we utilized DAP-seq to map the gene regulatory networks associated with ABAresponsive transcription factors, revealing that variations in the regulation of growth hormone biosynthesis play a critical role in the distinct ABA effects on root growth among the species. This research sets a new standard for comparative physiology by integrating comparative genomics and transcriptomics to uncover pathway divergences.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Detailed design of a Ride Quality Augmentation System for commuter aircraft

The design of a Ride Quality Augmentation System (RQAS) for commuter aircraft is documented. The RQAS is designed for a Cessna 402B, an 8 passenger prop twin representative to this class of aircraft. The purpose of the RQAS is the reduction of vertical and lateral accelerations of the aircraft due to atmospheric turbulence by the application of active control. The detailed design of the hardware (the aircraft modifications, the Ride Quality Instrumentation System (RQIS), and the required computer software) is examined. The aircraft modifications, consisting of the dedicated control surfaces and the hydraulic actuation system, were designed at Cessna Aircraft by Kansas University-Flight Research Laboratory. The instrumentation system, which consist of the sensor package, the flight computer, a Data Acquisition System, and the pilot and test engineer control panels, was designed by NASA-Langley. The overall system design and the design of the software, both for flight control algorithms and ground system checkout are detailed. The system performance is predicted from linear simulation results and from power spectral densities of the aircraft response to a Dryden gust. The results indicate that both accelerations are possible.

Suikat, Reiner↗