SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “software packages”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

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

At least 883 records · Page 49

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1992

Characterization of radiation-induced damage in high performance polymers by electron paramagnetic resonance imaging spectroscopy

The potential for long-term human activity beyond the Earth's protective magnetosphere is limited in part by the lack of detailed information on the effectiveness and performance of existing structural materials to shield the crew and spacecraft from highly penetrating space radiations. The two radiations of greatest concern are high energy protons emitted during solar flares and galactic cosmic rays which are energetic ions ranging from protons to highly oxidized iron. Although the interactions of such high-energy radiations with matter are not completely understood at this time, the effects of the incident radiation are clearly expected to include the formation of paramagnetic spin centers via ionization and bond-scission reactions in the molecular matrices of structural materials. Since this type of radiation damage is readily characterized by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, the NASA Langley Research Center EPR system was repaired and brought on-line during the 1991 ASEE term. A major goal of the 1992 ASEE term was to adapt the existing core of the LaRC EPR system to meet the requirements for EPR Imaging--a powerful new technique which provides detailed information on the internal structure of materials by mapping the spatial distribution of unpaired spin density in bulk media. Major impetus for this adaptation arises from the fact that information derived from EPRI complements other methods such as scanning electron microscopy which primarily characterize surface phenomena. The modification of the EPR system has been initiated by the construction of specially designed, counterwound Helmholtz coils which will be mounted on the main EPR electromagnet. The specifications of the coils have been set to achieve a static linear magnetic field gradient of 10 gauss/mm/amp along the principal (Z) axis of the Zeeman field. Construction is also in progress of a paramagnetic standard in which the spin distribution is known in all three dimensions. This sample will be used to assess the linearity of the magnetic field gradient and to ensure authentic image reconstruction. A second major task was to secure the computer capability to enable image reconstruction from projection data generated by the magnetic field gradients. To this end, commercially available and public domain software packages which perform inverse Fourier Transform and convoluted (filtered) back projection functions are being integrated into the existing EPR data processing system.

Suleman, Naushadalli K.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Kinematic analysis of the ARID manipulator

The kinematic structure of the ARID manipulator lends itself to simple forward and inverse kinematics analysis. The purpose of this paper is to fully document and verify an existing analysis. The symbolic software package MATHEMATICA was used to produce and verify the equations presented here. In the analysis to follow, the standard Devenit-Hartenberg kinematic parameters of the ARID were employed.

Doty, Keith L↗

NASA NTRS1992

HSCT mission analysis of waverider designs

In the second quarter the development of the two waverider design tools was continued, and the groundwork necessary for the incorporation of waverider technology into the realm of the High Speed Civil Transports (HSCT's) was laid out. Advances in each of these areas is summarized. Work on the WIPAR code included the addition of an upper surface geometry generator and characteristic flow solver and the inclusion of viscous analysis in the performance computations. Details of these changes are given. In the course of the second project quarter, much of the analysis performed during the first quarter was incorporated into a working computer code. To date, utilities were developed for the definition of arbitrary 3-D shock surfaces, the computation of post-shock flow conditions, and the marching of the solution in a roughly cross-stream direction away from the shock surface. These utilities are briefly described. During the second quarter groundwork for the analysis of complete configurations was initiated. This involved the development of computational utilities for the integration of powerplants with the waverider forebodies, and the acquisition of a number of configuration analysis software packages. Work in these areas is discussed.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1993

Development of a non-linear simulation for generic hypersonic vehicles - ASUHS1

A nonlinear simulation is developed to model the longitudinal motion of a vehicle in hypersonic flight. The equations of motion pertinent to this study are presented. Analytic expressions for the aerodynamic forces acting on a hypersonic vehicle which were obtained from Newtonian Impact Theory are further developed. The control surface forces are further examined to incorporate vehicle elastic motion. The purpose is to establish feasible equations of motion which combine rigid body, elastic, and aeropropulsive dynamics for use in nonlinear simulations. The software package SIMULINK is used to implement the simulation. Also discussed are issues needing additional attention and potential problems associated with the implementation (with proposed solutions).

Salas, Juan↗

NASA NTRS1993

Microcomputer based software for biodynamic simulation

This paper presents a description of a microcomputer based software package, called DYNAMAN, which has been developed to allow an analyst to simulate the dynamics of a system consisting of a number of mass segments linked by joints. One primary application is in predicting the motion of a human occupant in a vehicle under the influence of a variety of external forces, specially those generated during a crash event. Extensive use of a graphical user interface has been made to aid the user in setting up the input data for the simulation and in viewing the results from the simulation. Among its many applications, it has been successfully used in the prototype design of a moving seat that aids in occupant protection during a crash, by aircraft designers in evaluating occupant injury in airplane crashes, and by users in accident reconstruction for reconstructing the motion of the occupant and correlating the impacts with observed injuries.

Rangarajan, N.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Nonlinear rescaling of control values simplifies fuzzy control

Traditional control theory is well-developed mainly for linear control situations. In non-linear cases there is no general method of generating a good control, so we have to rely on the ability of the experts (operators) to control them. If we want to automate their control, we must acquire their knowledge and translate it into a precise control strategy. The experts' knowledge is usually represented in non-numeric terms, namely, in terms of uncertain statements of the type 'if the obstacle is straight ahead, the distance to it is small, and the velocity of the car is medium, press the brakes hard'. Fuzzy control is a methodology that translates such statements into precise formulas for control. The necessary first step of this strategy consists of assigning membership functions to all the terms that the expert uses in his rules (in our sample phrase these words are 'small', 'medium', and 'hard'). The appropriate choice of a membership function can drastically improve the quality of a fuzzy control. In the simplest cases, we can take the functions whose domains have equally spaced endpoints. Because of that, many software packages for fuzzy control are based on this choice of membership functions. This choice is not very efficient in more complicated cases. Therefore, methods have been developed that use neural networks or generic algorithms to 'tune' membership functions. But this tuning takes lots of time (for example, several thousands iterations are typical for neural networks). In some cases there are evident physical reasons why equally space domains do not work: e.g., if the control variable u is always positive (i.e., if we control temperature in a reactor), then negative values (that are generated by equal spacing) simply make no sense. In this case it sounds reasonable to choose another scale u' = f(u) to represent u, so that equal spacing will work fine for u'. In the present paper we formulate the problem of finding the best rescaling function, solve this problem, and show (on a real-life example) that after an optimal rescaling, the un-tuned fuzzy control can be as good as the best state-of-art traditional non-linear controls.

Vanlangingham, H.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Telescience Testbed Program: A study of software for SIRTF instrument control

As a continued element in the Telescience Testbed Program (TTP), the University of Arizona Steward Observatory and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) jointly developed a testbed to evaluate the Operations and Science Instrument System (OASIS) software package for remote control of an instrument for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). SIRTF is a cryogenically-cooled telescope with three focal plane instruments that will be the infrared element of NASA's Great Observatory series. The anticipated launch date for SIRTF is currently 2001. Because of the complexity of the SIRTF mission, it was not expected that the OASIS package would be suitable for instrument control in the flight situation, however, its possible use as a common interface during the early development and ground test phases of the project was considered. The OASIS package, developed at the University of Colorado for control of the Solar Mesosphere Explorer (SME) satellite, serves as an interface between the operator and the remote instrument which is connected via a network. OASIS provides a rudimentary windowing system as well as support for standard spacecraft communications protocols. The experiment performed all of the functions required of the MIPS simulation program. Remote control of the instrument was demonstrated but found to be inappropriate for SIRTF at this time for the following reasons: (1) programming interface is too difficult; (2) significant computer resources were required to run OASIS; (3) the communications interface is too complicated; (4) response time was slow; and (5) quicklook of image data was not possible.

Young, Erick T.↗

NASA NTRS1992

A Spatial Analysis and Modeling System (SAMS) for environment management

This is a proposal to develop a uniform global environmental data gathering and distribution system to support the calibration and validation of remotely sensed data. SAMS is based on an enhanced version of FE MA's Integrated Emergency Management Information Systems and the Department of Defense's Air Land Battlefield Environment Software Systems. This system consists of state-of-the-art graphics and visualization techniques, simulation models, database management and expert systems for conducting environmental and disaster preparedness studies. This software package will be integrated into various Landsat and UNEP-GRID stations which are planned to become direct readout stations during the EOS timeframe. This system would be implemented as a pilot program to support the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). This will be a joint NASA-FEMA-University-Industry project.

Vermillion, Charles H.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Qualitative model-based diagnostics for rocket systems

A diagnostic software package is currently being developed at NASA LeRC that utilizes qualitative model-based reasoning techniques. These techniques can provide diagnostic information about the operational condition of the modeled rocket engine system or subsystem. The diagnostic package combines a qualitative model solver with a constraint suspension algorithm. The constraint suspension algorithm directs the solver's operation to provide valuable fault isolation information about the modeled system. A qualitative model of the Space Shuttle Main Engine's oxidizer supply components was generated. A diagnostic application based on this qualitative model was constructed to process four test cases: three numerical simulations and one actual test firing. The diagnostic tool's fault isolation output compared favorably with the input fault condition.

Maul, William↗

NASA NTRS1991

Microgravity flight testing of a laboratory robot

A review is given of the conditions and preparations for studying the performance of a robotic laboratory manipulator under microgravity conditions and by means of dynamic simulations. The robotic arm is fitted with accelerometers, incorporated into a materials-transfer workcell, and flown on a microgravity simulator. A software package based on the Lagrangian form of the equations of motion is used for dynamic analysis and control-systems development of the arm.

Hinman, Elaine M.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Data acquisition and analysis on a Macintosh

The introduction of inexpensive analog-to-digital boards for the Macintosh opens the way for its use in areas that have previously been filled by either specialized, dedicated or more expensive mainframe based systems. Two such Macintosh-based systems are the Acoustic Laboratory Data Acquisition System (ALDAS) and the Jet Calibration and Hover Test Facility (JCAHT) data acquisition system. ALDAS provides an inexpensive, transportable means to digitize four channels at up to 50,000 samples per second and analyze this data. The ALDAS software package was written for use with rotorcraft acoustics and performs automatic acoustic calibration of channels, data display, and various types of data analysis. The program can use data obtained either from internal analog-to-digital conversion or discrete external data imported in ASCII format. All aspects of ALDAS can be improved as new hardware becomes available and new features are introduced into the code. The JCAHT data acquisition system was built as not only an analysis program but also to act as the online safety monitoring system. This paper will provide an overview of these systems.

Watts, Michael E.↗

NASA NTRS1993

A new parallel-vector finite element analysis software on distributed-memory computers

A new parallel-vector finite element analysis software package MPFEA (Massively Parallel-vector Finite Element Analysis) is developed for large-scale structural analysis on massively parallel computers with distributed-memory. MPFEA is designed for parallel generation and assembly of the global finite element stiffness matrices as well as parallel solution of the simultaneous linear equations, since these are often the major time-consuming parts of a finite element analysis. Block-skyline storage scheme along with vector-unrolling techniques are used to enhance the vector performance. Communications among processors are carried out concurrently with arithmetic operations to reduce the total execution time. Numerical results on the Intel iPSC/860 computers (such as the Intel Gamma with 128 processors and the Intel Touchstone Delta with 512 processors) are presented, including an aircraft structure and some very large truss structures, to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of MPFEA.

Qin, Jiangning↗

NASA NTRS1992

Results of a low power ice protection system test and a new method of imaging data analysis

Tests were conducted on a BF Goodrich De-Icing System's Pneumatic Impulse Ice Protection (PIIP) system in the NASA Lewis Icing Research Tunnel (IRT). Characterization studies were done on shed ice particle size by changing the input pressure and cycling time of the PIIP de-icer. The shed ice particle size was quantified using a newly developed image software package. The tests were conducted on a 1.83 m (6 ft) span, 0.53 m (221 in) chord NACA 0012 airfoil operated at a 4 degree angle of attack. The IRT test conditions were a -6.7 C (20 F) glaze ice, and a -20 C (-4 F) rime ice. The ice shedding events were recorded with a high speed video system. A detailed description of the image processing package and the results generated from this analytical tool are presented.

Shin, Jaiwon↗

NASA NTRS1992

Space crew radiation exposure analysis system based on a commercial stand-alone CAD system

Major improvements have recently been completed in the approach to spacecraft shielding analysis. A Computer-Aided Design (CAD)-based system has been developed for determining the shielding provided to any point within or external to the spacecraft. Shielding analysis is performed using a commercially available stand-alone CAD system and a customized ray-tracing subroutine contained within a standard engineering modeling software package. This improved shielding analysis technique has been used in several vehicle design projects such as a Mars transfer habitat, pressurized lunar rover, and the redesigned Space Station. Results of these analyses are provided to demonstrate the applicability and versatility of the system.

Appleby, Matthew H.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Properties of radar backscatter of forests measured with a multifrequency polarimetric SAR

Fully polarimetric airborne synthetic aperture radar (AIRSAR) data, collected in Germany during the MAC Europe campaign, are calibrated using software packages developed at the Joint Research Center (JRC) in Italy for both L- and C-bands. During the period of the overflight dates, extensive ground truth was collected in order to describe the physical and statistical parameters of the canopy, the understory, and the soil. These parameters are compiled and converted into electromagnetic parameters suitable for input to the new polarimetric three-layer canopy model developed at the Wave Scattering Research Center (WSRC) at the University of Texas at Arlington. Comparisons between the theoretical predictions from the model and the calibrated data are carried out. Initial results reveal that the trend of the average phase difference can be predicted by the model, and that the backscattering ratio *shh/ svv is sensitive to the distribution of the primary branches.

Amar, F.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Research amateur astronomy; Proceedings of the Symposium, La Paz, Mexico, July 7-12, 1991

The present volume on amateur astronomy deals with solar observations; planet, asteroid, and comet studies; photometry; education and communication; and history and sociology. Particular attention is given to the observation of the 1984 annular eclipse in Mexico, amateur solar astronomy in Germany, the Ashen Light of Venus, dust clouds on Mars in 1990, and the importance of comets Encke and Machholz. Also discussed are a UBVRI and occultation photometry acquisition and reduction software package for PC-based observatories, a Skyweek weekly newsletter on astronomy and spaceflight, and the Hubble Space Telescope and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph.

Edberg, Stephen J.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Physical and digital simulations for IVA robotics

Space based materials processing experiments can be enhanced through the use of IVA robotic systems. A program to determine requirements for the implementation of robotic systems in a microgravity environment and to develop some preliminary concepts for acceleration control of small, lightweight arms has been initiated with the development of physical and digital simulation capabilities. The physical simulation facilities incorporate a robotic workcell containing a Zymark Zymate II robot instrumented for acceleration measurements, which is able to perform materials transfer functions while flying on NASA's KC-135 aircraft during parabolic manuevers to simulate reduced gravity. Measurements of accelerations occurring during the reduced gravity periods will be used to characterize impacts of robotic accelerations in a microgravity environment in space. Digital simulations are being performed with TREETOPS, a NASA developed software package which is used for the dynamic analysis of systems with a tree topology. Extensive use of both simulation tools will enable the design of robotic systems with enhanced acceleration control for use in the space manufacturing environment.

Hinman, Elaine↗

NASA NTRS1993

Qualitative model-based diagnostics for rocket systems

Maul, William↗