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NASA NTRS1972

Observations of the diffuse galactic light.

Systematic observations during five nights were made with a field of 137 arc seconds at a fixed declination of 20 deg 42 min through one arm of the Milky Way over a range of right ascension from 257 to 336 deg. Corrections for zodiacal light, airglow, and integrated starlight leave a residual which is interpreted as the diffuse galactic light. The residual, plotted against galactic latitude, suggests that the diffuse light in the sample studied emanates from several discrete sources.

Roach, F. E.↗

NASA NTRS1995

Hubble Space Telescope far-ultraviolet imaging of M31, M32, and NGC 205

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Faint Object Camera (FOC) f/48 images of M31, M32, and NGC 205 (field of view 23 sec x 23 sec with 0.45 sec pixel size) are analyzed as observed through the combined UV filters F150W and F130LP. The absolute calibration of the data and the internal disagreement between observed and expected count rates in the UV region lead us to suggest that the filter combination F150W+F130LP suffers from a 5 times degraded UV sensitivity. A corrected efficiency curve is construced using the UV/optical spectral energy distributions of these three galaxies, which is consistent with all of the data analyzed here. Eighty-one individual stars are detected in M31, 10 stars in M32, and 78 stars in NGC 205. Comparisons with other UV images and optical images indicates that these stars are hot, UV-bright stars, even though our corrected efficiency curve suggests that flux from 1200-2450 A contributes only 7% of the counts in M32, 19% in M31, and 60% in NGC 205. The complex nucleus of M31 as seen by Lauer et al. (1993) is confirmed; M32 has a generally smooth appearance and NGC 205 is dominated by a UV-bright, somewhat resolved nucleus. Analysis of these data is done through the new, extensive stellar isochrones of Bertelli et al. (1994) and the population synthesis models of Bressan, Chiosi, and Fagotto (1994). This analysis shows that high-metal stars (Z greater than 0.05) evolve into UV-bright stars (P-EAGB, H-HB, and AGB-manque stars) that are less luminous and cooler but are significantly longer lived than the P-AGB stars produced by stars with Z less than 0.05. Moreover, the proportion of P-EAGB, H-HB, and AGB-manque stars is also a function of age, with older stars of fixed mean metallicity having a higher proportion than younger stars. Hence, with either metallicity or age differences as an interpretation of the line-strength luminosity correlation for ellipticals, the high-metallicity 'tail' of the stellar content of a galaxy can produce far-UV flux in much greater proportion than its actual proportion of galaxy mass. The resulting model of the sources of far-UV flux is inherently composite, with the total UV flux from a stellar population both rapidly increasing and changing its mean spectrum with increasing mean metallicity (or mean age). This model is consistent with several pieces of observational evidence.

Bertola, F.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Regenerable Incinerator Exhaust Purification and Trace Contaminant Control System

In this novel approach to air purification, contaminants removed from a process air stream by a high-capacity adsorbent are displaced periodically by a warm, high-humidity, reverse-flow air stream. Displaced contaminants flow into a closed regeneration loop, in which organic compounds are oxidized catalytically and acid gases are removed by a gas- water contactor (which also serves as the source of the water vapor). These features are expected to result in a design that has few expendables and lower energy consumption than alternative regenerable techniques. The joint project between NASA Ames Research Center and Vanderbilt University has completed its third year. Breadboard development continues at NASA Ames, while Vanderbilt has completed most of its adsorption equilibria development. Vanderbilt has completed its fixed-bed apparatus for investigation of dynamic adsorption and desorption processes for trace organic compounds and water vapor, and is continuing its development of the mathematical model describing the column dynamics.

Finn, John E.↗

NASA NTRS2008

Polar Rain Gradients and Field-Aligned Polar Cap Potentials

ACE SWEPAM measurements of solar wind field-aligned electrons have been compared with simultaneous measurements of polar rain electrons precipitating over the polar cap and detected by DMSP spacecraft. Such comparisons allow investigation of cross-polar-cap gradients in the intensity of otherwise-steady polar rain. The generally good agreement of the distribution functions, f, from the two data sources confirms that direct entry of solar electrons along open field lines is indeed the cause of polar rain. The agreement between the data sets is typically best on the side of the polar cap with most intense polar rain but the DMSP f's in less intense regions can be brought into agreement with ACE measurements by shifting all energies by a fixed amounts that range from tens to several hundred eV. In most cases these shifts are positive which implies that field-aligned potentials of these amounts exist on polar cap field lines which tend to retard the entry of electrons and produce the observed gradients. These retarding potentials undoubtedly appear in order to prevent the entry of low-energy electrons and maintain charge quasi-neutrality that would otherwise be violated since most tailward flowing magnetosheath ions are unable to follow polar rain electrons down to the polar cap. In more limited regions near the boundary of the polar cap there is sometimes evidence for field-aligned potentials of the opposite sign that accelerate polar rain electrons. A solar electron burst is also studied and it is concluded that electrons from such bursts can enter the magnetotail and precipitate in the same manner as polar rain.

Fairfield, D. H.↗

NASA NTRS1997

The Climate Signal in Regional Moisture Fluxes: A Comparison of Three Global Data Assimilation Products

This study assesses the quality of estimates of climate variability in moisture flux and convergence from three assimilated data sets: two are reanalysis products generated at the Goddard Data Assimilation Office (DAO) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Centers for Atmospheric Research (NCEPJNCAR), and the third consists of the operational analyses generated at the European Center for Medium Range Forecasts (ECMWF). The regions under study (the United States Great Plains, the Indian monsoon region, and Argentina east of the Andes) are characterized by frequent low level jets (LLJs) and other interannual low level wind variations tied to the large-scale flow. While the emphasis is on the reanalysis products, the comparison with the operational product is provided to help assess the improvements gained from a fixed analysis system. All three analyses capture the main moisture flux anomalies associated with selected extreme climate (drought and flood) events during the period 1985-93. The correspondence is strongest over the Great Plains and weakest over the Indian monsoon region reflecting differences in the observational coverage. For the reanalysis products, the uncertainties in the lower tropospheric winds is by far the dominant source of the discrepancies in the moisture flux anomalies in the middle latitude regions. Only in the Indian Monsoon region, where interannual variability in the low level winds is comparatively small, does the moisture bias play a substantial role. In contrast, the comparisons with the operational product show differences in moisture which are comparable torhe differences in the wind in all three regions. Compared with the fluxes, the anomalous moisture convergences show substantially larger differences among the three products. The best agreement occurs over the Great Plains region where all three products show vertically-integrated moisture convergence during the floods and divergence during the drought with differences in magnitude of about 25%. The reanalysis products, in particular, show good agreement in depicting the different roles of the mean flow and transients during the flood and drought periods. Differences between the three products in the other two regions exceed 100% reflecting differences in the low level jets and the large scale circulation patterns. The operational product tends to have locally larger amplitude convergence fields which average out in area-mean budgets: this appears to be at least in part due to errors in the surface pressure fields and aliasing from the higher resolution of the original ECMWF fields. On average, the reanalysis products show higher coherence with each other than with the operational product in the estimates of interannual variability. This result is less clear in the Indian monsoon region where differences in the input observations appears to be an important factor. The agreement in the anomalous convergence patterns is, however, still rather poor even over relatively data dense regions such as the United States Great Plains. These differences are attributed to deficiencies in the assimilating GCM's representations of the planetary boundary layer and orography, and a global observing system incapable of resolving the highly confined low level winds associated with the climate anomalies.

Min, Wei↗

NASA NTRS2008

Polar Rain Gradients and Field-Aligned Polar Cap Potentials

ACE SWEPAM measurements of solar wind field-aligned electrons have been compared with simultaneous measurements of polar rain electrons precipitating over the polar cap and detected by DMSP spacecraft. Such comparisons allow investigation of cross-polarcap gradients in the intensity of otherwise-steady polar rain. The generally good agreement of the distribution functions, f, from the two data sources confirms that direct entry of solar electrons along open field lines is indeed the cause of polar rain. The agreement between the data sets is typically best on the side of the polar cap with most intense polar rain but the DMSP f's in less intense regions can be brought into agreement with ACE measurements by shifting all energies by a fixed amounts that range from tens to several hundred eV. In most cases these shifts are positive which implies that field-aligned potentials of these amounts exist on polar cap field lines which tend to retard the entry of electrons and produce the observed gradients. These retarding potentials undoubtedly appear in order to prevent the entry of low-energy electrons and maintain charge quasi-neutrality that would otherwise be violated since most tailward flowing magnetosheath ions are unable to follow polar rain electrons down to the polar cap. In more limited regions near the boundary of the polar cap there is sometimes evidence for field-aligned potentials of the opposite sign that accelerate polar rain electrons. A solar electron burst is also studied and it is concluded that electrons from such bursts can enter the magnetotail and precipitate in the same manner as polar rain.

Fairfield, D. H.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Insect-Inspired Flight Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Flight-control and navigation systems inspired by the structure and function of the visual system and brain of insects have been proposed for a class of developmental miniature robotic aircraft called "biomorphic flyers" described earlier in "Development of Biomorphic Flyers" (NPO-30554), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 28, No. 11 (November 2004), page 54. These form a subset of biomorphic explorers, which, as reported in several articles in past issues of NASA Tech Briefs ["Biomorphic Explorers" (NPO-20142), Vol. 22, No. 9 (September 1998), page 71; "Bio-Inspired Engineering of Exploration Systems" (NPO-21142), Vol. 27, No. 5 (May 2003), page 54; and "Cooperative Lander-Surface/Aerial Microflyer Missions for Mars Exploration" (NPO-30286), Vol. 28, No. 5 (May 2004), page 36], are proposed small robots, equipped with microsensors and communication systems, that would incorporate crucial functions of mobility, adaptability, and even cooperative behavior. These functions are inherent to biological organisms but are challenging frontiers for technical systems. Biomorphic flyers could be used on Earth or remote planets to explore otherwise difficult or impossible to reach sites. An example of an exploratory task of search/surveillance functions currently being tested is to obtain high-resolution aerial imagery, using a variety of miniaturized electronic cameras. The control functions to be implemented by the systems in development include holding altitude, avoiding hazards, following terrain, navigation by reference to recognizable terrain features, stabilization of flight, and smooth landing. Flying insects perform these and other functions remarkably well, even though insect brains contains fewer than 10(exp -4) as many neurons as does the human brain. Although most insects have immobile, fixed-focus eyes and lack stereoscopy (and hence cannot perceive depth directly), they utilize a number of ingenious strategies for perceiving, and navigating in, three dimensions. Despite their lack of stereoscopy, insects infer distances to potential obstacles and other objects from image motion cues that result from their own motions in the environment. The concept of motion of texture in images as a source of motion cues is denoted generally as the concept of optic or optical flow. Computationally, a strategy based on optical flow is simpler than is stereoscopy for avoiding hazards and following terrain. Hence, this strategy offers the potential to design vision-based control computing subsystems that would be more compact, would weigh less, and would demand less power than would subsystems of equivalent capability based on a conventional stereoscopic approach.

Thakoor, Sarita↗

DOE OSTI2021

Progress on Optimizing Wind Farms and Rotor Designs Using Adjoints

Modern wind plants are increasingly tasked with multiple performance objectives. In addition to designing plants that maximize power output and minimize the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), the design and operation of wind plants is increasingly influenced by challenges regarding grid integration of variable generation renewables. This places a growing emphasis on making wind plants more controllable and predictable. WindSE is a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) model designed around analytical gradient and adjoint methods, with the ability to capture terrain-induced effects, as shown in Figure 1. The recent addition of an unsteady solver with an actuator line method (ALM) and ongoing work to enable massively parallel optimizations gives it a unique niche to explore coupled plant-level controls and design problems. This code is an open source python package built on the FEniCS framework that utilizes fast, parallel PETSc solvers to model fluid flow throughout wind-farm scale domains. Two recent studies performed using WindSE demonstrate the capability to optimize under a wide variety of flow conditions and objective functions. In the first, we present an optimization focused on modifying the layout of a wind farm with a fixed number of turbines for maximum total power output [1]. This study highlights the ability to quickly perform simulations using the steady Navier-Stokes solver combined with rotors represented as actuator disks while also stressing the importance of capturing terrain-induced effects. Gradient-based optimization using the RANS equations is viable due to the inclusion of efficiently computed adjoint derivatives. We interpret the physical results of the optimal layout and also discuss the computational cost of scaling to larger problems. In the second study, we present the capabilities of the unsteady Navier-Stokes solver, where rotor-blade profiles represented by actuator lines are optimized to enhance wake steering effects and overall power production [2]. We quantify the wind plant performance gains obtained from this type of simultaneous control co-design optimization as compared to optimizing the blade design and yaw independently. Figure 2 shows the differences between a baseline two-turbine system and an optimized system where we fine-tune the blade chord profile. Results and challenges from each study are quickly summarized and used to motivate the current development efforts within WindSE. Current and future work is focused on enabling higher-resolution studies with more degrees of freedom through parallelization of both the simulation and optimization algorithms. We present benchmarking results to show that WindSE performs well in both weak- and strong-scaling tests and further demonstrate that the optimizer obtains the same convergence rates in both shared- and distributed-memory environments. Using larger wind farms, we can study deep-array effects within an optimization context, allowing the use of objective functions that have been previously unstudied. As an example, we present ongoing work on a blockage metric which characterizes the loss of available kinetic energy due to wake effects from multiple upstream turbines.

adjoint optimization↗

DOE OSTI2021

Progress report on analytic and numerical studies of x-ray-induced impulse

In a variety of high-energy-density (HED) systems, x-rays of a given energy are used to generate shockwaves, bulk motion, and impulse in materials. As radiation energy is deposited within the material, the material is heated. The number of photons of a certain wavelength absorbed is determined by the spectral intensity of the radiation and the material’s opacity evaluated at that wavelength. This heating results in a pressure increase dictated by the material’s equation of state. Depending on the intensity of the absorbed radiation, it may also cause the material to change phase into a liquid, gas, or plasma. The increased pressure drives the heated surface layer to blow off, imparting impulse and sending a compressive wave into the bulk of the material. Additionally, the compression wave interacts with the solid boundary of the material, resulting in a tensile wave that may cause the material to spall. The impulse generated by the deposition of x-ray energy within the sample can be modeled using purely analytical methods, e.g. the Bethe, Bade, Averell, and Yost (BBAY) model. However, the blow-off process is rather complicated, and proper modeling efforts must account for material ejected by spallation, vaporization, jetting, and plasma ablation. For this reason, analytical models have an unclosed term describing the final energy of the blown-off material Ef(z). Prior modeling efforts have arbitrarily fixed this at some value or modeled it using a limiting set of thermodynamic assumptions. The work we are currently performing uses validated simulations using sophisticated photon transport, equation of state, and strength models/data to provide a fit for Ef(z) that is useful for predictive calculation of impulse. We will apply our methodology and show results for different materials and x-ray sources. This work is particularly useful for the design of experiments studying x-ray impulse generation. The present report is outlined as follows. Section 1.2 describes a series of HED experiments investigating x-ray-generated impulse in materials. Section 1.3 describes the computational approach we employ in this study, and presents validation results against the aforementioned experiments. Section 1.4 introduces analytical models for impulse generation, as well as our method for utilizing impulse from simulations to close the models. We discuss the concept of impulse-spectrum sensitivity, it’s application to uncertainty quantification, and derive a very useful analytical expression for it in 1.5. We then summarize recent progress in this project and discuss future work in section 1.6.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

NASA NTRS1985

Utilization of Mobile VLBI for Geodetic Measurements

Three mobile very long base interferometry (VLBI) systems were fabricated for the NASA Crustal Dynamics Project. These systems include the 9-meter-diameter MV-3 telescope. Since 1980, mobile systems operated in conjunction with several fixed base stations in the western United States as part of a geodetic survey program to determine relative motions and regional strain fields near the tectonic plate boundaries in California and Alaska. A description is given of the three mobile systems and the environment in which they must function. The inherent accuracy of mobile VLBI measurements is assessed, based on a consideration of major sources of error. Some recent results are presented which serve to illustrate various aspects of the error model and are of geodetic interest as they span the broad region surrounding the surface trace of the San Andreas Fault. These results indicate that baseline measurements utilizing the current mobile VLBI systems attained an accuracy of 2 cm or better in the horizontal plane. It is likely that crustal motions will be detected within the next few years, provided they are presently occurring at the geological rates.

Davidson, J. M.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Utilization of mobile VLBI for geodetic measurements

Davidson, J. M.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Handheld White Light Interferometer for Measuring Defect Depth in Windows

Accurate quantification of defects (scratches and impacts) is vital to the certification of flight hardware and other critical components. The amount of damage to a particular component contributes to the performance, reliability, and safety of a system, which ultimately affects the success or failure of a mission or test. The launch-commit criteria on a Space Shuttle Orbiter window are governed by the depth of the defects that are identified by a visual inspection. This measurement of a defect is not easy to obtain given the environment, size of the defect, and location of the window(s). The determination of depth has typically been performed by taking a mold impression and measuring the impression with an optical profiling instrument. Another method of obtaining an estimate of the depth is by using a refocus microscope. To use a refocus microscope, the surface of the glass and bottom of the defect are, in turn, brought into focus by the operator. The amount of movement between the two points corresponds to the depth of the defect. The refocus microscope requires a skilled operator and has been proven to be unreliable when used on Orbiter windows. White light interferometry was chosen as a candidate to replace the refocus microscope. The White Light Interferometer (WLI) was developed to replace the refocus microscope as the instrument used for measuring the depth of defects in Orbiter windows. The WLI consists of a broadband illumination source, interferometer, detector, motion control, displacement sensor, mechanical housing, and support electronics. The illumination source for the WLI is typically a visible light emitting diode (LED) or a near-infrared superluminescent diode (SLD) with power levels of less than a milliwatt. The interferometer is a Michelson configuration consisting of a 1-in. (2.5-cm) cube beam splitter, a 0.5-in. (1.3-cm) optical window as a movable leg (used to closely match the return intensity of the fixed leg from the window), and a mirrored prism to fold the optics into the mechanical housing. The detector may be one of many C-mount CCD (charge-coupled device) cameras. Motion is provided by a commercial nanostepping motor with a serial interface. The displacement sensor is a custom device specifically designed for this application. The mechanical housing and support electronics were designed to integrate the various components into an instrument that could be physically handled by a technician and easily transported.

Youngquist, Robert↗

DOE OSTI2021

Microbe-Encapsulated Silica Gel Biosorbents for Selective Extraction of Scandium from Coal Byproducts

Establishing an inexpensive and environmentally friendly scandium (Sc) supply is critical for the development of clean energy technologies. However, refining Sc from Sc-bearing sources using current technologies poses economic and environmental challenges due to its low concentration relative to base metals and chemically similar lanthanides. In this work, we developed a biosorption-based flow-through process for extraction of Sc from low-grade feedstocks. A novel biosorbent material was synthesized by encapsulating Arthrobacter nicotianae, a bacterium that selectively adsorbs Sc, within a porous silica matrix. Through the use of several complementary microscopy techniques, we demonstrated a highly porous biosorbent structure with a high cell-loading density and a homogenous cell distribution. Batch adsorption assays revealed selective Sc adsorption over lanthanides and common based metals, with the exception of Fe(III), as evidenced by separation factors greater than 50. The MESG particles were packed into fixed-bed columns to enable adsorption under flow-through conditions, which demonstrated effective Sc extraction at flow rates up to 0.08 cm/s and high stability for reuse; greater than 95% of the adsorption capacity was maintained after 10 consecutive adsorption/desorption cycles. When applied to a lignite coal leachate, whose Fe content was depleted through pH-mediated precipitation, the MESG particles yielded Sc breakthrough at 30 bed volumes, whereas all other metals broke through after only a few bed volumes. Following desorption, an eluate with a 124-fold increase in Sc purity was achieved relative to the lignite leachate with Sc constituting 96.4% of the total REEs. This study established a rapid, facile, and scalable cell immobilization approach that enables the use of microbial biomass for Sc recovery from low-grade sources.

Dong, Ziye↗

DOE OSTI2020

X-ray properties of the X-CLASS-redMaPPer galaxy cluster sample: the luminosity–temperature relation

ABSTRACT This article presents the results of a spectroscopic analysis of the X-CLASS-redMaPPer (XC1-RM) galaxy cluster sample. X-CLASS is a serendipitous search for clusters in X-ray wavebands based on the XMM–Newton archive, whereas redMaPPer is an optical cluster catalogue derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The present sample comprises 92 X-ray extended sources identified in optical images within 1 arcmin separation. The area covered by the cluster sample is ∼ 27 deg2. The clusters span a wide redshift range (0.05 < z < 0.6) and 88 clusters benefit from spectrosopically confirmed redshifts using data from SDSS Data Release 14. We present an automated pipeline to derive the X-ray properties of the clusters in three distinct apertures: R500 (at fixed mass overdensity), Rfit (at fixed signal-to-noise ratio) and ${R}_{300\, {\rm kpc}}$ (fixed physical radius). The sample extends over wide temperature and luminosity ranges: from 1–10 keV and from 6 × 1042 to 11 × 1044 erg s−1, respectively. We investigate the luminosity–temperature (L–T) relation of the XC1-RM sample and find a slope equal to 3.03 ± 0.26. It is steeper than predicted by self-similar assumptions, in agreement with independent studies. A simplified approach is developed to estimate the amount and impact of selection biases that might be affecting our recoveredL–Tparameters. The result of this simulation process suggests that the measuredL–Trelation is biased to a steeper slope and higher normalization.

Molham, Mona↗

NASA NTRS1986

An electromagnetic/electrostatic dual cathode system for electron beam instruments

A method of providing cathode redundancy which consists of two fixed cathodes and uses electromagnetic and/or electrostatic fields to direct the electron beam to the electron optical axis is presented, with application to the cathode system of the Scanning Electron Microscope and Particle Analyzer proposed for NASA's Mariner Mark II Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby projected for the 1990s. The symmetric double deflection system chosen has the optical property that the image of the effective electron source is formed above the magnet assembly near the apparent position of the effective source, and it makes the transverse positions of the electron sources independent of the electron beam energy. Good performance of the system is found, with the sample imaging resolution being the same as for the single-axis cathode.

Bradley, J. G.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Airborne Sun photometry and Closure Studies in SAFARI-2000 Dry Season Campaign

From August 13 to September 25, the Southern African Regional Science Initiative's (SAFARI 2000) dry-season airborne campaign studied the complex interactions between the region's ecosystems, air pollution, atmospheric circulation, land-atmosphere interactions, and land use change. The field campaign was timed to coincide with the annual winter fire season in Southern Africa. This challenging campaign. which coordinated ground-based measurement teams, multiple research aircraft, and satellite overpasses across nine African nations, was head quartered at the Petersburg International Airport in South Africa's Northern Province. Among many others, unique coordinated observations were made of the evolution of massive, thick haze layers produced by industrial emissions, biomass burning, marine and biogenic sources. The NASA Ames Airborne Tracking 14-channel Sunphotometer (AATS-14) was operated successfully aboard the University of Washington CV-580 during 24 data flights. The AATS-14 instrument measures the transmission of the direct solar beam at 14 discrete wavelengths (3501558 nm) from which we derive spectral aerosol optical depths (AOD), columnar water vapor (CWV) and columnar ozone. Flying at different altitudes over a fixed location allows derivation of layer AOD and CWV. Data taken during feasible vertical profiles allows derivation of aerosol extinction and water vapor density. In the talk, we show comparisons with ground-based AERONET sun/sky photometer results, with ground based MPL-Net lidar data, and with measurements from a lidar aboard the high flying ER-2 aircraft. We will use measurements from the Ames Solar Spectral Flux Radiometer to derive estimates of solar spectral forcing as a function of aerosol thickness. Validations of TOMS and Terra satellite aerosol and water-vapor retrievals will also be discussed.

Schmid, B.↗

DOE OSTI2021

High-Rate Long Cycle-Life Li-Air Battery Aided by Bifunctional InX3 (X = I and Br) Redox Mediators

Redox mediators (RMs) are solution-based additives that have been extensively used to reduce the charge potential and increase the energy efficiency of Li–oxygen (Li–O 2 ) batteries. However, in the presence of RMs, achieving a long cycle-life operation of Li–O 2 batteries at a high current rate is still a major challenge. In this study, we discover a novel synergy among InX 3 (X = I and Br) bifunctional RMs, molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) nanoflakes as the air electrode, dimethyl sulfoxide/ionic liquid hybrid electrolyte, and LiTFSI as a salt to achieve long cycle-life operations of Li–O 2 batteries in a dry air environment at high charge–discharge rates. Our results indicate that batteries with InI3 operate up to 450 cycles with a current density of 0.5 A g –1 and 217 cycles with a current density of 1 A g –1 at a fixed capacity of 1 A h g –1 . Batteries with InBr 3 operate up to 600 cycles with a current density of 1 A g –1 . These batteries can also operate at a higher charge rate of 2 A g –1 up to 200 cycles (for InBr 3 ) and 160 cycles (for InI 3 ). Our experimental and computational results reveal that while X 3 – is the source of the redox mediator, LiX at the MoS 2 cathode, In 3+ reacts on the lithium anode side to form a protective layer on the surface, thus acting as an effective bifunctional RM in a dry air environment. This evidence for a simultaneous improvement in the current rates and cycle life of a battery in a dry air atmosphere opens a new direction for research for advanced energy storage systems.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

NASA NTRS1978

Potential acoustic benefits of circulation control rotors

The fundamental aeroacoustic mechanisms responsible for noise generation on a rotating blade are theoretically examined. Their contribution to the overall rotor sound pressure level is predicted. Results from a theory for airfoil trailing edge noise are presented. Modifications and extensions to other source theories are described where it is necessary to account for unique aspects of circulation control (CC) aerodynamics. The circulation control rotor (CCR), as embodied on an X-wing vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, is used as an example for computational purposes, although many of the theoretical results presented are generally applicable to other CC applications (such as low speed rotors, propellers, compressors, and fixed wing aircraft). Using the analytical models, it is shown that the utilization CC aerodynamics theoretically makes possible unprecedented advances in rotor noise reduction. For the X-wing VTOL these reductions appear to be feasible without incurring significant attendant performance and weight penalties.

Williams, R. M.↗