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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 847 records · Page 47
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2012

Demonstration of Passive Fuel Cell Thermal Management Technology

The NASA Glenn Research Center is developing advanced passive thermal management technology to reduce the mass and improve the reliability of space fuel cell systems for the NASA Exploration program. The passive thermal management system relies on heat conduction within highly thermally conductive cooling plates to move the heat from the central portion of the cell stack out to the edges of the fuel cell stack. Using the passive approach eliminates the need for a coolant pump and other cooling loop components within the fuel cell system which reduces mass and improves overall system reliability. Previous development demonstrated the performance of suitable highly thermally conductive cooling plates and integrated heat exchanger technology to collect the heat from the cooling plates (Ref. 1). The next step in the development of this passive thermal approach was the demonstration of the control of the heat removal process and the demonstration of the passive thermal control technology in actual fuel cell stacks. Tests were run with a simulated fuel cell stack passive thermal management system outfitted with passive cooling plates, an integrated heat exchanger and two types of cooling flow control valves. The tests were run to demonstrate the controllability of the passive thermal control approach. Finally, successful demonstrations of passive thermal control technology were conducted with fuel cell stacks from two fuel cell stack vendors.

Burke, Kenneth A.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Development of a PEMFC Power System with Integrated Balance of Plant

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV s) have received increasing attention in recent years as military and commercial users look for means to maintain a mobile and persistent presence in the undersea world. Compact, neutrally buoyant power systems are needed for both small and large vehicles. Batteries are usually employed in these applications, but the energy density and therefore the mission duration are limited with current battery technology. At a certain energy or mission duration requirement, other means to get long duration power become feasible. For example, above 10 kW-hrs liquid oxygen and hydrogen have better specific energy than batteries and are preferable for energy storage as long as a compact system of about 100 W/liter is achievable to convert the chemical energy in these reactants into power. Other reactant forms are possible, such as high pressure gas, chemical hydrides or oxygen carriers, but it is essential that the power system be small and light weight. Recent fuel cell work, primarily focused on NASA applications, has developed power systems that can meet this target power density. Passive flow-through systems, using ejector driven reactant (EDR) flow, integrated into a compact balance of plant have been developed. These systems are thermally and functionally integrated in much the same way as are automotive, air breathing fuel cell systems. These systems fit into the small volumes required for AUV and future NASA applications. Designs have been developed for both a 21" diameter and a larger diameter (LD) AUV. These fuel cell systems occupy a very small portion of the overall energy system, allowing most of the system volume to be used for the reactants. The fuel cell systems have been optimized to use reactants efficiently with high stack efficiency and low parasitic losses. The resulting compact, highly efficient fuel cell system provides exceptional reactant utilization and energy density. Key design variables and supporting test data are presented. Future development activities are described.

Wynne, B.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Transonic flow simulation of prop-fan configurations

This paper presents the results of a study that used a three-dimensional transonic analysis method to analyze flow around a wing-mounted prop-fan configuration. The transonic analysis method employs a cell-oriented finite volume approach to solve the full potential equation in conservative form over a numerically generated surface-fitted grid. The propeller slipstream effects are simulated using a linearized transpiration boundary condition. The results of analyses of flow over clean wing/body, wing/body/nacelle, and wing/body nacelle with slipstream are compared to test data.

Samant, S. S.↗
NASA NTRS2007

Compact Fuel-Cell System Would Consume Neat Methanol

In a proposed direct methanol fuel-cell electric-power-generating system, the fuel cells would consume neat methanol, in contradistinction to the dilute aqueous methanol solutions consumed in prior direct methanol fuel-cell systems. The design concept of the proposed fuel-cell system takes advantage of (1) electro-osmotic drag and diffusion processes to manage the flows of hydrogen and water between the anode and the cathode and (2) evaporative cooling for regulating temperature. The design concept provides for supplying enough water to the anodes to enable the use of neat methanol while ensuring conservation of water for the whole fuel-cell system.

Narayanan, Sekharipuram↗
NASA NTRS2004

Topography Modeling in Atmospheric Flows Using the Immersed Boundary Method

Numerical simulation of flow over complex geometry needs accurate and efficient computational methods. Different techniques are available to handle complex geometry. The unstructured grid and multi-block body-fitted grid techniques have been widely adopted for complex geometry in engineering applications. In atmospheric applications, terrain fitted single grid techniques have found common use. Although these are very effective techniques, their implementation, coupling with the flow algorithm, and efficient parallelization of the complete method are more involved than a Cartesian grid method. The grid generation can be tedious and one needs to pay special attention in numerics to handle skewed cells for conservation purposes. Researchers have long sought for alternative methods to ease the effort involved in simulating flow over complex geometry.

Ackerman, A. S.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Ionospheric convection signatures observed by DE 2 during northward interplanetary magnetic field

Observations of the ionospheric convection signature at high latitudes are examined during periods of prolonged northward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). The data from Dynamics Explorer 2 show that a four-cell convection pattern can frequently be observed in a region that is displaced to the sunward side of the dawn-dusk meridian regardless of season. In the eclipsed ionosphere, extremely structured or turbulent flow exists with no identifiable connection to a more coherent pattern that may simultaneously exist in the dayside region. The two highest-latitude convection cells that form part of the coherent dayside pattern show a dependence on the y component of the IMF. This dependence is such that a clockwise circulating cell displaced toward dawn dominates the high-latitude region when B(Y) is positive. Anti-clockwise circulation displaced toward dusk dominates the highest latitudes when B(Y) is negative. Examination of the simultaneously observed energetic particle environment suggests that both open and closed field lines may be associated with the high-latitude convection cells. On occasions these entire cells can exist on open field lines. The existence of closed field lines in regions of sunward flow is also apparent in the data.

Heelis, R. A.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Rheological properties of nondilute suspensions of deformable particles

The creeping flow equations have been solved to account for effects of shear on drop shape when the influence of neighboring drops is considered. A cell model is used to account for finite concentrations of the dispersed phase. From these results a constitutive equation is derived and implications for several flows are discussed. The shape and orientation of drops are computed and compared with existing data. Finally, dynamic viscosity and rigidity are obtained for nondilute suspensions of viscoelastic particles in an oscillatory shear flow.-

Choi, S. J.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Silicon Schottky photovoltaic diodes for solar energy conversion

Various factors in Schottky barrier solar cell fabrication are evaluated in order to improve understanding of the current flow mechanism and to isolate processing variables that improve efficiency. Results of finger design, substrate resistivity, surface finishing and activation energy studies are detailed. An increased fill factor was obtained by baking of the vacuum system to remove moisture.

Anderson, W. A.↗
NASA NTRS1979

VLSI system for synthetic aperture radar /SAR/ processing

The paper discusses an SAR problem based on actual requirements set forth by NASA for a spaceborne application. The requirements for high resolution and high quality necessitate a data sampling rate of 7.5 MHz. For each data value 1,025 4-bit complex multiply + add operations are needed, which is equivalent to 7.7 GHz complex multiply + add operation rate. Since this rate is much too high for general purpose systems, a special-purpose device was sought. This paper discusses two architectures based on parallel operation of 1,025 identical cells, each of which is capable of performing arithmetic, storage, and several control operations. The operation rate in each device is only 7.5 MHz, which is quite manageable, especially with the help of a substantial degree of pipelining. A computational-mathematical analysis is used as a primary tool for evaluating the design and some of its tradeoffs. Two different approaches are discussed and compared; both are based on having 1,025 identical cells working in parallel, but differ in their dual approaches to the flow of data.

Cohen, D.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Preliminary measurements of aerodynamic damping of a transonic compressor rotor

The aeroelastic behavior of a transonic compressor rotor operated in the MIT Blowdown Compressor Facility has been examined by means of piezoelectric motion sensors at the base of each of the 23 blades. Excitation has been observed due to rotating stall, due to an incipient flutter, and due to the facility startup transient. A method has been found for determining the aerodynamic damping force by modal analysis of the blade motion. Application of this technique to the example of excitation by rotating stall has led to the conclusions that the blade loading decreases in the stall cell, and that the damping force on the blades in the clean flow is in phase with blade velocity but opposite it in sign, leading to a logarithmic decrement of 0.2. This method of force derivation has quite general applicability as it requires only blade motion data such as are routinely acquired with strain gages. It is argued that models are needed for aerodynamic damping which focus on the effects of near neighbors of a given blade, since flutter often results in large response of isolated blades or small groups of blades.

Crawley, E. F.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Single-pulse gas thermometry at low temperatures using two-photon laser-induced fluorescence in NO-N2 mixtures

A technique suitable for measuring fluctuating temperatures in supersonic turbulent flows of N2 seeded with NO has been demonstrated in a nonflowing cell. The method relies on the two photon excitation of two selected ro-vibronic transitions in the NO gamma (alpha 2 sigma+, v prime = 0 yields ch1zp1, v double prime = 0). Previously announced in STAR as N83-20079

Gross, K. P.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Kidney cell electrophoresis

Tasks were undertaken in support of two objectives. They are: (1) to carry out electrophoresis experiments on cells in microgravity; and (2) assess the feasibility of using purified kidney cells from embryonic kidney cultures as a source of important cell products. Investigations were carried out in the following areas: (1) ground based electrophoresis technology; (2) cell culture technology; (3) electrophoresis of cells; (4) urokinase assay research; (5) zero-g electrophoresis; and (6) flow cytometry.

Todd, P. W.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Ozone profile measurements at McMurdo Station Antarctica during the spring of 1987

During the Antarctic spring of 1986, 33 ozone soundings were conducted from McMurdo Station. These data indicated that the springtime decrease in ozone occurred rapidly between the altitudes of 12 and 20 km. During 1987, these measurements were repeated with 50 soundings between 29 August and 9 November. Digital conversions of standard electrochemical cell ozonesondes were again employed. The ozonesonde pumps were individually calibrated for flow rate as the high altitude performance of these pumps have been in question. While these uncertainties are not large in the region of the ozone hole, they are significant at high altitude and apparently resulted in an underestimate of total ozone of about 7 percent (average) as compared to the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) in 1986, when the flow rate recommended by the manufacturer was used. At the upper altitudes (approx. 30 km) the flow rate may be overestimated by as much as 15 percent using recommended values (see Harder et al., The UW Digital Ozonesonde: Characteristics and Flow Rate Calibration, poster paper, this workshop). These upper level values are used in the extrapolation, at constant mixing ratio, required to complete the sounding for total ozone. The first sounding was on 29 August, prior to major ozone depletion, when 274 DU total ozone (25 DU extrapolated) was observed. By early October total ozone had decreased to the 150 DU range; it then increased during mid-October owing to motion of the vortex and returned to a value of 148 DU (29 DU extrapolated) on 27 October.

Hofmann, D. J.↗