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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 91 records · Page 5
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NASA NTRS1978

Two-dimensional radiative transfer. I - Planar geometry

Differential-equation methods for solving the transfer equation in two-dimensional planar geometries are developed. One method, which uses a Hermitian integration formula on ray segments through grid points, proves to be extremely well suited to velocity-dependent problems. An efficient elimination scheme is developed for which the computing time scales linearly with the number of angles and frequencies; problems with large velocity amplitudes can thus be treated accurately. A very accurate and efficient method for performing a formal solution is also presented. A discussion is given of several examples of periodic media and free-standing slabs, both in static cases and with velocity fields. For the free-standing slabs, two-dimensional transport effects are significant near boundaries, but no important effects were found in any of the periodic cases studied.

Mihalas, D.↗
NASA NTRS1978

On decentralized control of large-scale systems

A scheme is presented for decentralized control of large-scale linear systems which are composed of a number of interconnected subsystems. By ignoring the interconnections, local feedback controls are chosen to optimize each decoupled subsystem. Conditions are provided to establish compatibility of the individual local controllers and achieve stability of the overall system. Besides computational simplifications, the scheme is attractive because of its structural features and the fact that it produces a robust decentralized regulator for large dynamic systems, which can tolerate a wide range of nonlinearities and perturbations among the subsystems.

Siljak, D. D.↗
NASA NTRS1976

Dust content and particle release experiments

Since dust particles are carried away from a comet nucleus by sublimating ices the effects from the ambient Earth's atmosphere on shuttle-based simulation experiments at lower altitudes are of the same concern to the studies of the dust behavior as they are to the investigation of the volatile component. Also, since the experimental modeling could realistically be performed on a linear scale that is at least three orders of magnitude smaller than required by the true conditions in comets, severe problems of extrapolation may arise in the interpretation of some of the simulation results. Subject to these limitations, future dust-release experiments made on artificial comets could prove fruitful, as they would test the correctness of the understanding of the fundamental properties of the dust emission mechanism in comets, and at the same time insight into the behavior of dust particles after expulsion would be gained.

Sekanina, Z.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Reattaching turbulent shear layers with perturbed structure

The reattachment of a fully turbulent, two-dimensional shear layer downstream of a backward-facing step has been studied experimentally. The work examines the effect of modifications in shear layer structure upstream of reattachment. A series of experiments were conducted in a low-speed wind tunnel using specialized instrumentation suited to the highly turbulent, reversing flow near reattachment. Accurate characterization of the time-mean features of the reattaching flows was possible. Assuming linear scaling normalized on distance from reattachment, distributions of the normalized pressure coefficients, the time-averaged skin friction coefficient, and the forward flow fraction appear universal for two-dimensional reattachment, independent of initial conditions and steep height, for given duct geometry (area ratio) and for high step height Reynolds numbers. The results suggest universal flow structure in the reattachment zone.

Westphal, R. V.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Analysis of the quality of image data acquired by the LANDSAT-4 thematic mapper and multispectral scanners

The geometric quality of the TM and MSS film products were evaluated by making selective photo measurements such as scale, linear and area determinations; and by measuring the coordinates of known features on both the film products and map products and then relating these paired observations using a standard linear least squares regression approach. Quantitative interpretation tests are described which evaluate the quality and utility of the TM film products and various band combinations for detecting and identifying important forest and agricultural features.

Colwell, R. N.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Air fluorescence detection of large air showers below the horizon

In the interest of exploring the cosmic ray spectrum at energies greater than 10 to the 18th power eV, where flux rates at the Earth's surface drop below 100 yr(-1) km(-2) sr(-1), cosmic ray physicists have been forced to construct ever larger detectors in order to collect useful amounts of data in reasonable lengths of time. At present, the ultimate example of this trend is the Fly's Eye system in Utah, which uses the atmosphere around an array of skyward-looking photomultiplier tubes. The air acts as a scintillator to give detecting areas as large as 5000 square kilometers sr (for highest energy events). This experiment has revealed structure (and a possible cutoff) in the ultra-high energy region above 10 o the 19th power eV. The success of the Fly's Eye experiment provides impetus for continuing the development of larger detectors to make accessible even higher energies. However, due to the rapidly falling flux, a tenfold increase in observable energy would call for a hundredfold increase in the detecting area. But, the cost of expanding the Fly's Eye detecting area will approximately scale linearly with area. It is for these reasons that the authors have proposed a new approach to using the atmosphere as a scintillator; one which will require fewer photomultipliers, less hardware (thus being less extensive), yet will provide position and shower size information.

Halverson, P.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Effect of initial conditions on turbulent reattachment downstream of a backward-facing step

The reattachment of a fully turbulent, two-dimentional shear layer downstream of a backward-facing step has been studied experimentally. The work examines the effect of variations in inlet conditions on the process of reattachment. A series of experiments was conducted in a low-speed wind tunnel using specialized instrumentation suited to the highly turbulent reversing flow near reattachment. Accurate characterization of the time-mean features of the reattaching flows was possible. Assuming linear scaling normalized on distance from reattachment, distributions of normalized pressure coefficient and forward flow fraction, and time-averaged skin friction coefficient appear universal for two-dimensional reattachment, independent of initial conditions and step height, for given duct geometry (area ratio) and for high step-height Reyolds numbers with thin separating boundary layers. The results suggest universal flow structure in the reattachment zone.

Westphal, R. V.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Line plotting program using DI-3000/Grafmaker routines

A line plotting program has been developed using the DI-3000 graphics libraries and incorporates Grafmaker subroutines. The program allows multiple lines on a frame and multiple frames per run. Options such as automatic scaling, linear or single-cycle log graphs, and plot text such as titles, legends and axis labels are incorporated in the program. Greek and other fonts can be used in the plot text as well as upper and lower case text. Plot inputs are specified through a control file. The program also allows display of multiple independent data sets on a single graph.

Poppen, William A., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Decentralized control of large-scale systems: Fixed modes, sensitivity and parametric robustness

The problem of stabilization/pole placement under structural constraints of large scale linear systems is discussed. The existence of a solution to this problem is expressed in terms of fixed modes. The aim is to provide a bibliographic survey of the available results concerning the fixed modes (characterization, elimination, control structure selection to avoid them, control design in their absence) and to present the author's contribution to this problem which can be summarized by the use of the mode sensitivity concept to detect or to avoid them, the use of vibrational control to stabilize them, and the addition of parametric robustness considerations to design an optimal decentralized robust control.

Tarras, A.↗
NASA NTRS1987

A radiative bow shock wave (?) driven by nuclear ejecta in a Seyfert galaxy

New VLA maps at 2 cm of the 13-arcsec-scale linear radio source in the center of NGC 1068 are described. The northeast lobe shows a limb-brightened conical morphology, very sharp 'leading' edges, and a magnetic field running parallel to these edges. The spectral index between 2 and 6 cm in these line-brightened regions is near 1.0. The northeast subpeak has a very steep radio spectrum between 18 and 2 cm which is attributed to inverse Compton losses of the relativistic electrons on the infrared photons. The spectral indices in the southwest lobe lie in the range 0.9-1.5 except in its northern parts, where a much larger index is found. The northeast lobe radio emission could arise in either the cocoon of old jet material which has passed through the internal shock in the ejecta and blown out to either side, or in interstellar material compressed by a bow shock wave driven into the galactic ISM.

Wilson, Andrew S.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Closed-Loop Optical Rotation Sensor

Optical/electronic system senses rotation and emits pulses at angular increments. System provides linear scale factor across wide range of rotation rates with no lockup at null. Design needs analog-to-digital converters with elaborate signal-processing circuits. Light from laser diode split evenly into two beams propagating in opposite directions around rotation-sensing coil of optical-fiber waveguide. Beams acquire phase difference proportional to rotation rate as they pass through coil. After emerging from coil, beams recombine in beam splitter, and coherent sum led to photodiode.

Goss, Willis C.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Deep narrow band imagery of the diffuse ISM in M33

Very deep narrow band images were obtained for several fields in the local group spiral galaxy M33 using a wide field reimaging Charge Coupled Device (CCD) camera on the 1.5 m telescope at Palomar Observatory. The reimaging system uses a 306 mm collimator and a 58 mm camera lens to put a 16 minute by 16 minute field onto a Texas Instruments 800 x 800 pixel CCD at a resolution of 1.2 arcseconds pixel (-1). The overall system is f/1.65. Images were obtained in the light of H alpha (S II) lambda lambda 6717, 6731, (O III) lambda 5007, and line-free continuum bands 100A wide, centered at 6450A and 5100A. Assuming a distance of 600 kpc to M33 (Humphreys 1980, Ap. J., 241, 587), this corresponds to a linear scale of 3.5 pc pixel (-1), and a field size of 2.8 kpc x 2.8 kpc. Researchers discuss the H alpha imagery of a field centered approx. equal to 8 minutes NE of the nucleus, including the supergiant HII region complex NGC 604. Two 2000 second H alpha images and two 300 second red continuum images were obtained of two slightly offset fields. The fields were offset to allow for discrimination between real emission and possible artifacts in the images. All images were resampled to align them with one of the H alpha frames. The continuum images were normalized to the line images using the results of aperture photometry on a grid of stars in the field, then the rescaled continuum data were directly subtracted from the line data.

Hester, J. Jeff↗
NASA NTRS1991

Growth morphologies of crystal surfaces

A previously proposed Monte Carlo model (Xiao et al., 1988, 1990) is extended to three dimensions, and reevaporation after accommodation and growth on dislocation-induced steps are included. It is found again that, for a given set of growth parameters, the critical size beyond which a crystal cannot retain its macroscopically faceted shape scales linearly with the mean free path in the vapor. However, the three-dimensional systems show increased shape stability as compared with the corresponding two-dimensional cases. The experimental observation that the critical size of a growing crystal depends on the prevailing growth mechanism is confirmed, and detailed insight into the processes leading to the loss of face and facet stability is obtained.

Xiao, Rong-Fu↗
NASA NTRS1991

Parallelized solvers for heat conduction formulations

Based on multilevel partitioning, this paper develops a structural parallelizable solution methodology that enables a significant reduction in computational effort and memory requirements for very large scale linear and nonlinear steady and transient thermal (heat conduction) models. Due to the generality of the formulation of the scheme, both finite element and finite difference simulations can be treated. Diverse model topologies can thus be handled, including both simply and multiply connected (branched/perforated) geometries. To verify the methodology, analytical and numerical benchmark trends are verified in both sequential and parallel computer environments.

Padovan, Joe↗
NASA NTRS1991

Rotation and emission lines in stars and accretion disks

In the accretion disks of quiescent dwarf novae, Doppler mapping studies reveal that Balmer emission lines increase sharply toward the center of the disk, with surface brightnesses scaling roughly as R exp -3/2 varies as Omega(Kep). Similarly, among chromospherically active stars the H-alpha and Ca II H and K emission cores are stronger in the more rapidly rotating stars, with surface brightnesses scaling again roughly as Omega(rot). Since in both cases the emission lines scale linearly with the rotation frequency, it is proposed that the mechanism powering the emission lines in quiescent accretion disks is the same as that in chromospherically active stars, namely, the emergence of magnetic flux generated by the action of a dynamo, and its interaction with the atmosphere. If this empirical connection between disks and stars is in fact due to magnetic dynamos, the range of rotation rates available for testing dynamo theories expands from a factor of 1000 to 10 to the 7th.

Horne, Keith↗
NASA NTRS1991

All high Tc edge-geometry weak links utilizing Y-Ba-Cu-O barrier layers

High quality YBa2Cu3O(7-x) normal-metal/YBa2Cu3O(7-x) edge-geometry weak links have been fabricated using nonsuperconducting Y-Ba-Cu-O barrier layers deposited by laser ablation at reduced growth temperatures. Devices incorporating 25-100 A thick barrier layers exhibit current-voltage characteristics consistent with the resistively shunted junction model, with strong microwave and magnetic field response at temperatures up to 85 K. The critical currents vary exponentially with barrier thickness, and the resistances scale linearly with Y-Ba-Cu-O interlayer thickness and device area, indicating good barrier uniformity, with an effective mormal metal coherence length of 20 A.

Hunt, B. D.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Multigrid calculation of three-dimensional viscous cascade flows

A three-dimensional code for viscous cascade flow prediction has been developed. The space discretization uses a cell-centered scheme with eigenvalue scaling to weigh the artificial dissipation terms. Computational efficiency of a four-stage Runge-Kutta scheme is enhanced by using variable coefficients, implicit residual smoothing, and a full-multigrid method. The Baldwin-Lomax eddy-viscosity model is used for turbulence closure. A zonal, nonperiodic grid is used to minimize mesh distortion in and downstream of the throat region. Applications are presented for an annular vane with and without end wall contouring, and for a large-scale linear cascade. The calculation is validated by comparing with experiments and by studying grid dependency.

Arnone, A.↗
NASA NTRS1990

A search for Wolf-Rayet stars at the Galactic center

The hypothesis that Wolf-Rayet stars could provide the luminosity and ionization of the central parsec of the Galaxy is explored with infrared spectroscopy in the 3-micron window. The spectra were divided by the spectrum of a reference star to remove atmospheric effects and were plotted on arbitrary linear scales so that equivalent widths could be compared. Incomplete preliminary observation provided no additional evidence for the presence of Wolf-Rayet stars in the Galaxy core.

Werner, M. W.↗