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At least 811 records · Page 45
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1994

Design of a Low Aspect Ratio Transonic Compressor Stage Using CFD Techniques

A transonic compressor stage has been designed for the Naval Postgraduate School Turbopropulsion Laboratory. The design relied heavily on CFD techniques while minimizing conventional empirical design methods. The low aspect ratio (1.2) rotor has been designed for a specific head ratio of .25 and a tip relative inlet Mach number of 1.3. Overall stage pressure ratio is 1.56. The rotor was designed using an Euler code augmented by a distributed body force model to account for viscous effects. This provided a relatively quick-running design tool, and was used for both rotor and stator calculations. The initial stator sections were sized using a compressible, cascade panel code. In addition to being used as a case study for teaching purposes, the compressor stage will be used as a research stage. Detailed measurements, including non-intrusive LDV, will be compared with the design computations, and with the results of other CFD codes, as a means of assessing and improving the computational codes as design tools.

Sanger, Nelson L.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Surgery applications of virtual reality

Virtual reality is a computer-generated technology which allows information to be displayed in a simulated, bus lifelike, environment. In this simulated 'world', users can move and interact as if they were actually a part of that world. This new technology will be useful in many different fields, including the field of surgery. Virtual reality systems can be used to teach surgical anatomy, diagnose surgical problems, plan operations, simulate and perform surgical procedures (telesurgery), and predict the outcomes of surgery. The authors of this paper describe the basic components of a virtual reality surgical system. These components include: the virtual world, the virtual tools, the anatomical model, the software platform, the host computer, the interface, and the head-coupled display. In the chapter they also review the progress towards using virtual reality for surgical training, planning, telesurgery, and predicting outcomes. Finally, the authors present a training system being developed for the practice of new procedures in abdominal surgery.

Rosen, Joseph↗
NASA NTRS1994

Design, construction, and testing of a five active axes magnetic bearing system

A high speed electric spindle based on active electromagnetic suspension technology has been designed, built, and tested. The main goal of the research work was the construction of a highly modular unit which can be used for teaching and research purposes. The design of the electromechanical components and of the control unit is described in detail, together with the characterization tests performed on the various subsystems. A description of the preliminary tests on the unit, conducted at speeds not in excess of the first deformation critical speed of the rotor, concludes the work.

Delprete, Cristiana↗
NASA NTRS1994

National Educators' Workshop: Update 1993. Standard Experiments in Engineering Materials Science and Technology

This document contains a collection of experiments presented and demonstrated at the National Educators' Workshop: Update 93 held at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on November 3-5, 1993. The experiments related to the nature and properties of engineering materials and provided information to assist in teaching about materials in the education community.

Gardner, James E.↗
NASA NTRS1994

The life cycles of intense cyclonic and anticyclonic circulation systems observed over oceans

The work over the past six months has focused on the October/November 1985 blocking case study noted in the last progress report. A summary of the results of this effort is contained in the attached preprint papers for the Symposium on the Life Cycles of Extratropical Cyclones. Using this case study as a model, Ph.D. student Anthony Lupo is now initiating the multiple-case diagnosis by first examining two more fall 1985 blocking episodes. In addition, two secondary efforts have been completed, as summarized in the attached M.S. thesis abstracts. Both studies, which were primarily funded by a fellowship and a teaching assistantship, complement the objectives of this study by providing diagnoses of additional cyclone cases to serve as a comparative base for the pre-blocking cyclones to be studied in the multiple-case blocking diagnosis.

Smith, Phillip J.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Climatological targets for Mars Pathfinder

Four areas fit within the elevation and latitude constraints: Chryse, Elysium, Amazonis, and Isidis. There is geomorphic evidence that all have supported standing water. In some cases it would be difficult to pick a landing site that had no hope of teaching us about the climatic history of Mars. The southeast Elysium Basin provides an optimal target in which a variety of materials may be accessible in a near-shore environment. The albedo of the region is moderately low, and the thermal inertia is indicative of moderate rock coverage or some consolidation of fines, arguing that the site has not been covered with eolian dust deposits.

Zent, Aaron P.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Research reports: 1994 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

For the 30th consecutive year, a NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program was conducted at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The basic objectives of the programs, which are in the 31st year of operation nationally, are (1) to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; (2) to stimulate an exchange of ideas between participants and NASA; (3) to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants' institutions; and (4) to contribute to the research objectives of the NASA centers. The Faculty Fellows spent 10 weeks at MSFC engaged in a research project compatible with their interests and background and worked in collaboration with a NASA/MSFC colleague. This document is a compilation of Fellows' reports on their research during the summer of 1994.

Freeman, L. Michael↗
NASA NTRS1992

Hey! What's Space Station Freedom?

This video, 'Hey! What's Space Station Freedom?', has been produced as a classroom tool geared toward middle school children. There are three segments to this video. Segment One is a message to teachers presented by Dr. Jeannine Duane, New Jersey, 'Teacher in Space'. Segment Two is a brief Social Studies section and features a series of Presidential Announcements by President John F. Kennedy (May 1961), President Ronald Reagan (July 1982), and President George Bush (July 1989). These historical announcements are speeches concerning the present and future objectives of the United States' space programs. In the last segment, Charlie Walker, former Space Shuttle astronaut, teaches a group of middle school children, through models, computer animation, and actual footage, what Space Station Freedom is, who is involved in its construction, how it is to be built, what each of the modules on the station is for, and how long and in what sequence this construction will occur. There is a brief animation segment where, through the use of cartoons, the children fly up to Space Station Freedom as astronauts, perform several experiments and are given a tour of the station, and fly back to Earth. Space Station Freedom will take four years to build and will have three lab modules, one from ESA and another from Japan, and one habitation module for the astronauts to live in.

Vonehrenfried, Dutch↗
NASA NTRS1994

1994 NASA-HU American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

Since 1964, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has supported a program of summer faculty fellowships for engineering and science educators. In a series of collaborations between NASA research and development centers and nearby universities, engineering faculty members spend 10 weeks working with professional peers on research. The Summer Faculty Program Committee of the American Society for Engineering Education supervises the programs. Objectives: (1) To further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; (2) To stimulate and exchange ideas between participants and NASA; (3) To enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants' institutions; (4) To contribute to the research objectives of the NASA center.

Spencer, John H.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Teacher Enhancement Institute

In a team building, team teaching strategy with four faculty, can learning strategies such as educational technology and problem based learning be provided to forty local teachers of primary, elementary, and secondary students? The impetus for the effort is to provide information about science and engineering at NASA and motivate students to pursue careers in science and technology. Teachers, identified and selected through a rigorous application procedure, participated in a two week workshop for a graduate credit. Teachers were exposed to computer applications such as INTERNET, MOSAIC, Power Machintosh word processing, NASA scientists, and laboratory experiments. Teachers were evaluated on level and quality of their participation, design of teacher application materials and relevant lesson plans and presentations. The results show that teachers, regardless of preparation and background, can learn science and engineering applications and develop relevant materials to transfer information to their classroom. Follow-up during the academic year will show that teachers are successfully using materials.

Simmons, Ron W.↗
NASA NTRS1994

POINTER: Portable Intelligent Trainer for External Robotics

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS's) play an increasing role in training and education of people with different levels of skill and knowledge. As compared to conventional computer based training (CBT) an ITS provides more tailored instruction by trying to mimic the teaching behavior of a human instructor as much as possible and is therefore much more flexible. This paper starts with an introduction to ITS's, followed by the description of an ITS for training of an (astronaut) operator in monitoring and controlling robotic arm procedures. The robotic arm will be used for exchange of equipment between a space station and a space plane involving critical and accurate movements of the robotic arm. The ITS for this application, called Pointer, is developed by TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory and is based upon an existing ITS that includes procedural training. Pointer has been developed on a workstation whereas the target platform was a portable computer. Therefore, a lot of attention had to be paid to scaling effects and keeping up with user friendliness of the much smaller user interface. Although the learning domain was the control of a robotic arm, it is clear that use of intelligent training technologies on a portable computer has many other applications (payload operations, operation control rooms, etc.). Training can occur at any time and place in an attractive and cost effective way.

Kuiper, Hilbert↗
NASA NTRS1995

Building an adaptive agent to monitor and repair the electrical power system of an orbital satellite

Over several years we have developed a multistrategy apprenticeship learning methodology for building knowledge-based systems. Recently we have developed and applied our methodology to building intelligent agents. This methodology allows a subject matter expert to build an agent in the same way in which the expert would teach a human apprentice. The expert will give the agent specific examples of problems and solutions, explanations of these solutions, or supervise the agent as it solves new problems. During such interactions, the agent learns general rules and concepts, continuously extending and improving its knowledge base. In this paper we present initial results on applying this methodology to build an intelligent adaptive agent for monitoring and repair of the electrical power system of an orbital satellite, stressing the interaction with the expert during apprenticeship learning.

Tecuci, Gheorghe↗
NASA NTRS1995

Space physics educational outreach

The goal of this Space Physics Educational Outreach project was to develop a laboratory experiment and classroom lecture on Earth's aurora for use in lower division college physics courses, with the particular aim of implementing the experiment and lecture at Saint Mary's College of California. The strategy is to teach physics in the context of an interesting natural phenomenon by investigating the physical principles that are important in Earth's aurora, including motion of charged particles in electric and magnetic fields, particle collisions and chemical reactions, and atomic and molecular spectroscopy. As a by-product, the undergraduate students would develop an appreciation for naturally occurring space physics phenomena.

Copeland, Richard A.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Operator modeling in commerical aviation: Cognitive models, intelligent displays, and pilot's assistants

One of the goals of the National Aviation Safety/Automation program is to address the issue of human-centered automation in the cockpit. Human-centered automation is automation that, in the cockpit, enhances or assists the crew rather than replacing them. The Georgia Tech research program focused on this general theme, with emphasis on designing a computer-based pilot's assistant, intelligent (i.e, context-sensitive) displays, and an intelligent tutoring system for understanding and operating the autoflight system. In particular, the aids and displays were designed to enhance the crew's situational awareness of the current state of the automated flight systems and to assist the crew's situational awareness of the current state of the automated flight systems and to assist the crew in coordinating the autoflight system resources. The activities of this grant included: (1) an OFMspert to understand pilot navigation activities in a 727 class aircraft; (2) an extension of OFMspert to understand mode control in a glass cockpit, Georgia Tech Crew Activity Tracking System (GT-CATS); (3) the design of a training system to teach pilots about the vertical navigation portion of the flight management system -VNAV Tutor; and (4) a proof-of-concept display, using existing display technology, to facilitate mode awareness, particularly in situations in which controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) is a potential.

Govindaraj, T.↗
NASA NTRS1995

The Linux operating system: An introduction

Linux is a Unix-like operating system for Intel 386/486/Pentium based IBM-PCs and compatibles. The kernel of this operating system was written from scratch by Linus Torvalds and, although copyrighted by the author, may be freely distributed. A world-wide group has collaborated in developing Linux on the Internet. Linux can run the powerful set of compilers and programming tools of the Free Software Foundation, and XFree86, a port of the X Window System from MIT. Most capabilities associated with high performance workstations, such as networking, shared file systems, electronic mail, TeX, LaTeX, etc. are freely available for Linux. It can thus transform cheap IBM-PC compatible machines into Unix workstations with considerable capabilities. The author explains how Linux may be obtained, installed and networked. He also describes some interesting applications for Linux that are freely available. The enormous consumer market for IBM-PC compatible machines continually drives down prices of CPU chips, memory, hard disks, CDROMs, etc. Linux can convert such machines into powerful workstations that can be used for teaching, research and software development. For professionals who use Unix based workstations at work, Linux permits virtually identical working environments on their personal home machines. For cost conscious educational institutions Linux can create world-class computing environments from cheap, easily maintained, PC clones. Finally, for university students, it provides an essentially cost-free path away from DOS into the world of Unix and X Windows.

Bokhari, Shahid H.↗
NASA NTRS1995

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, 1994, volume 1

The JSC NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program was conducted by Texas A&M University and JSC. The objectives of the program, which began nationally in 1964 and at JSC in 1965 are to: (1) further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members, (2) stimulate an exchange of ideas between participants and NASA, (3) enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants' institutions, and (4) contribute to the research objectives of the NASA centers. Each faculty fellow spent at least 10 weeks at JSC engaged in a research project in collaboration with a NASA JSC colleague. This document is a compilation of the final reports on the research projects completed by the faculty fellows during the summer of 1994.

Bannerot, Richard↗
NASA NTRS1995

Applied virtual reality in aerospace design

A virtual reality (VR) applications program has been under development at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) since 1989. The objectives of the MSFC VR Applications Program are to develop, assess, validate, and utilize VR in hardware development, operations development and support, mission operations training and science training. Before VR can be used with confidence in a particular application, VR must be validated for that class of applications. For that reason, specific validation studies for selected classes of applications have been proposed and are currently underway. These include macro-ergonomic 'control room class' design analysis, Spacelab stowage reconfiguration training, a full-body microgravity functional reach simulator, a gross anatomy teaching simulator, and micro-ergonomic design analysis. This paper describes the MSFC VR Applications Program and the validation studies.

Hale, Joseph P.↗