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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
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1991

Calculation of unsteady airfoil loads with and without flap deflection at -90 degrees incidence

A method has been developed for calculating the viscous flow about airfoils with and without deflected flaps at -90 deg incidence. This unique method provides for the direct solution of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations by means of a fully coupled implicit technique. The solution is calculated on a body-fitted computational mesh incorporating a staggered grid method. The vorticity is determined at the node points, and the velocity components are defined at the mesh-cell sides. The staggered-grid orientation provides for accurate representation of vorticity at the node points and for the conservation of mass at the mesh-cell centers. The method provides for the direct solution of the flow field and satisfies the conservation of mass to machine zero at each time-step. The results of the present analysis and experimental results obtained for a XV-15 airfoil are compared. The comparisons indicate that the calculated drag reduction caused by flap deflection and the calculated average surface pressure are in excellent agreement with the measured results. Comparisons of the numerical results of the present method for several airfoils demonstrate the significant influence of airfoil curvature and flap deflection on the predicted download.

Stremel, Paul M.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Aerodynamics on a transport aircraft type wing-body model

The DFLR-F4 wing-body combination is studied. The 1/38 model is formed by a 9.5 aspect ratio transonic wing and an Airbus A 310 fuselage. The F4 wing geometrical characteristics are described and the main experimental results obtained in the S2MA wind tunnel are discussed. Both wing-fuselage interferences and viscous effects, which are important on the wing due to a high rear loading, are investigated by performing 3D calculations. An attempt is made to find their limitations.

Schmitt, V.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Unsteady inviscid and viscous computations for vortex-dominated flows

The unsteady supersonic flow around a rigid sharp-edged delta wing is solved using the unsteady Euler and thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations. The problem is formulated relative to a moving frame of reference so that computation of the grid motion is not required. A three-dimensional, implicit, aproximately factored, central-differencing, finite-volume scheme is used to obtain the time-accurate, unsteady, locally conical flow. The inviscid and viscous results are compared during the periodic response of a wing undergoing forced rolling-oscillation motion. The results show substantial differences in the surface pressure results and other distributed flow characteristics. These differences are attributed to the inviscid and viscous flow predictions in the vortex-dominated regions. The results of the total loads do not show any significant differences.

Kandil, Osama A.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Laminarization of Turbulent Boundary Layer on Flexible and Rigid Surfaces

An investigation of the control of turbulent boundary layer flow over flexible and rigid surfaces downstream of a concave-convex geometry has been made. The concave-convex curvature induces centrifugal forces and a pressure gradient on the growth of the turbulent boundary layer. The favorable gradient is not sufficient to overcome the unfavorable; thus, the net effect is a destabilizing, of the flow into Gortler instabilities. This study shows that control of the turbulent boundary layer and structural loading can be successfully achieved by using localized surface heating because the subsequent cooling and geometrical shaping downstream over a favorable pressure gradient is effective in laminarization of the turbulence. Wires embedded in a thermally insulated substrate provide surface heating. The laminarized velocity profile adjusts to a lower Reynolds number, and the structure responds to a lower loading. In the laminarization, the turbulent energy is dissipated by molecular transport by both viscous and conductivity mechanisms. Laminarization reduces spanwise vorticity because of the longitudinal cooling gradient of the sublayer profile. The results demonstrate that the curvature-induced mean pressure gradient enhances the receptivity of the flow to localized surface heating, a potentially viable mechanism to laminarize turbulent boundary layer flow; thus, the flow reduces the response of the flexible structure and the resultant sound radiation.

Maestrello, Lucio↗
NASA NTRS2003

An Aerodynamic Analysis of a Spinning Missile with Dithering Canards

A generic spinning missile with dithering canards is used to demonstrate the utility of an overset structured grid approach for simulating the aerodynamics of rolling airframe missile systems. The approach is used to generate a modest aerodynamic database for the generic missile. The database is populated with solutions to the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. It is used to evaluate grid resolution requirements for accurate prediction of instantaneous missile loads and the relative aerodynamic significance of angle-of-attack, canard pitching sequence, viscous effects, and roll-rate effects. A novel analytical method for inter- and extrapolation of database results is also given.

Meakin, Robert L.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Apparatus for consolidating a pre-impregnated, filament-reinforced polymeric prepreg material

An apparatus and method were developed for providing a uniform, consolidated, unidirectional, continuous, fiber-reinforced polymeric material. The apparatus comprises a supply means, a forming means, a shaping means, and a take-up means. The forming means further comprises a pre-melting chamber and a stationary bar assembly. The shaping means is a loaded cooled nip-roller apparatus. Forming takes place by heating a polymeric prepreg material to a temperature where the polymer becomes viscous and applying pressure gradients at separate locations along the prepreg material. Upon exiting the forming means, the polymeric prepreg material is malleable, consolidated, and flattened. Shaping takes place by passing the malleable, consolidated, flattened prepreg material through a shaped, matched groove in a loaded, cooled nip-roller apparatus to provide the final solid product.

Sandusky, Donald A.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Overview of aerothermodynamic loads definition study

The objective of the Aerothermodynamic Loads Definition Study is to develop methods of accurately predicting the operating environment in advanced Earth-to-Orbit (ETO) propulsion systems, such as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) powerhead. Development of time averaged and time dependent three dimensional viscous computer codes as well as experimental verification and engine diagnostic testing are considered to be essential in achieving that objective. Time-averaged, nonsteady, and transient operating loads must all be well defined in order to accurately predict powerhead life. Described here is work in unsteady heat flow analysis, improved modeling of preburner flow, turbulence modeling for turbomachinery, computation of three dimensional flow with heat transfer, and unsteady viscous multi-blade row turbine analysis.

Gaugler, Raymond E.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Numerical Modeling of a Two-Stage Ocean Current Turbine

The Equinox Ocean Turbines (EQOT) current energy converter has a unique design with power generation in two small-diameter turbines attached to the tips of a large-diameter passive rotor. This configuration offers some key advantages for capturing ocean currents. With no centrally placed generator, almost no reaction torque is required at the nacelle of the main large-diameter rotor, and the small-diameter tip turbine generators operate at a higher speed and lower torque. The physics that determine the performance and loads on the turbine are also unique. The interactions of the flow field between the two stages and the general architecture of the system cannot be captured with traditional mid-fidelity modeling tools. For design iterations and large sets of load cases, it is important to have mid-fidelity models that can capture the important phenomenon with enough accuracy to identify global trends. This work uses a limited set of high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to help inform the selection of and construction of a custom mid-fidelity model. Mid-fidelity modeling approaches were verified by comparing key turbine performance quantities to those found with the CFD model. Hydrodynamic interactions of the two-stage rotor were identified through high-fidelity CFD modeling. This highlighted the impact of the main rotor tip vortex and wake on the secondary rotor apparent inflow. This results in a relative flow rotation and sharp deficit, that change the optimal secondary rotor rotation speed and adds unsteadiness to the blade loading respectively. Multiple mid-fidelity approaches were evaluated for their ability to capture these effects. A simple approximation of the combined-stage performance based on single-stage BEM provides a reasonable rough prediction, especially near the peak TSR values, with some larger discrepancy at higher TSRs. Predicting the combined-stage performance based on single-stage CFD data improves this prediction across the TSR range. Although the combined-stage modeling in OLAF was not successful in this stage of the project, it showed promise as a mid-fidelity method, assuming the parameters can be tuned to account for the significant differences in time and length scales between the main and secondary rotors. This may be addressed through code changes in future work. A significant finding from the OLAF work was the agreement between the vortex core radius values found independently via a parameter space search and via CFD. The technique of using single-stage secondary rotor BEM, with a custom inflow taken from single-stage main rotor CFD or OLAF, provides an efficient method to capture one-way coupled flow interactions. This method provided generally good predictions of the impact of the flow rotation on the secondary rotor but struggled to accurately predict the peaks of the unsteady load progression. Future work could include some superposition of a tuned main rotor trailing edge viscous wake into the custom inflow to better predict this interaction.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
NASA NTRS2002

Mystery of Foil Air Bearings for Oil-free Turbomachinery Unlocked: Load Capacity Rule-of-thumb Allows Simple Estimation of Performance

The Oil-Free Turbomachinery team at the NASA Glenn Research Center has unlocked one of the mysteries surrounding foil air bearing performance. Foil air bearings are self-acting hydrodynamic bearings that use ambient air, or any fluid, as their lubricant. In operation, the motion of the shaft's surface drags fluid into the bearing by viscous action, creating a pressurized lubricant film. This lubricating film separates the stationary foil bearing surface from the moving shaft and supports load. Foil bearings have been around for decades and are widely employed in the air cycle machines used for cabin pressurization and cooling aboard commercial jetliners. The Oil-Free Turbomachinery team is fostering the maturation of this technology for integration into advanced Oil-Free aircraft engines. Elimination of the engine oil system can significantly reduce weight and cost and could enable revolutionary new engine designs. Foil bearings, however, have complex elastic support structures (spring packs) that make the prediction of bearing performance, such as load capacity, difficult if not impossible. Researchers at Glenn recently found a link between foil bearing design and load capacity performance. The results have led to a simple rule-of-thumb that relates a bearing's size, speed, and design to its load capacity. Early simple designs (Generation I) had simple elastic (spring) support elements, and performance was limited. More advanced bearings (Generation III) with elastic supports, in which the stiffness is varied locally to optimize gas film pressures, exhibit load capacities that are more than double those of the best previous designs. This is shown graphically in the figure. These more advanced bearings have enabled industry to introduce commercial Oil-Free gas-turbine-based electrical generators and are allowing the aeropropulsion industry to incorporate the technology into aircraft engines. The rule-of-thumb enables engine and bearing designers to easily size and select bearing technology for a new application and determine the level of complexity required in the bearings. This new understanding enables industry to assess the feasibility of new engine designs and provides critical guidance toward the future development of Oil-Free turbomachinery propulsion systems.

DellaCorte, Christopher↗
NASA NTRS1988

Euler equation computations for the flow over a hovering helicopter rotor

A numerical solution technique is developed for computing the flow field around an isolated helicopter rotor in hover. The flow is governed by the compressible Euler equations which are integrated using a finite volume approach. The Euler equations are coupled to a free wake model of the rotary wing vortical wake. This wake model is incorporated into the finite volume solver using a prescribed flow, or perturbation, technique which eliminates the numerical diffusion of vorticity due to the artificial viscosity of the scheme. The work is divided into three major parts: (1) comparisons of Euler solutions to experimental data for the flow around isolated wings show good agreement with the surface pressures, but poor agreement with the vortical wake structure; (2) the perturbation method is developed and used to compute the interaction of a streamwise vortex with a semispan wing. The rapid diffusion of the vortex when only the basic Euler solver is used is illustrated, and excellent agreement with experimental section lift coefficients is demonstrated when using the perturbation approach; and (3) the free wake solution technique is described and the coupling of the wake to the Euler solver for an isolated rotor is presented. Comparisons with experimental blade load data for several cases show good agreement, with discrepancies largely attributable to the neglect of viscous effects. The computed wake geometries agree less well with experiment, the primary difference being that too rapid a wake contraction is predicted for all the cases.

Roberts, Thomas Wesley↗
NASA NTRS2011

Advances in Ceramic Matrix Composite Blade Damping Characteristics for Aerospace Turbomachinery Applications

For advanced aerospace propulsion systems, development of ceramic matrix composite integrally-bladed turbine disk technology is attractive for a number of reasons. The high strength-to-weight ratio of ceramic composites helps to reduce engine weight and the one-piece construction of a blisk will result in fewer parts count, which should translate into reduced operational costs. One shortcoming with blisk construction, however, is that blisks may be prone to high cycle fatigue due to their structural response to high vibration environments. Use of ceramic composites is expected to provide some internal damping to reduce the vibratory stresses encountered due to unsteady flow loads through the bladed turbine regions. A goal of our research was to characterize the vibration viscous damping behavior of C/SiC composites. The vibration damping properties were measured and calculated. Damping appeared to decrease with an increase in the natural frequency. While the critical damping amount of approximately 2% is required for typical aerospace turbomachinery engines, the C/SiC damping at high frequencies was less than 0.2% from our study. The advanced high-performance aerospace propulsion systems almost certainly will require even more damping than what current vehicles require. A purpose of this paper is to review some work on C/SiC vibration damping by the authors for the NASA CMC turbine blisk development program and address an importance of the further investigation of the blade vibration damping characteristics on candidate CMC materials for the NASA s advanced aerospace turbomachinery engine systems.

Min, James B.↗
NASA NTRS1979

Wake curvature and trailing edge interaction effects in viscous flow over airfoils

A theory developed for analyzing viscous flows over airfoils at high Reynolds numbers is described. The theory includes a complete treatment of viscous interaction effects induced by the curved wake behind the airfoil and accounts for normal pressure gradients across the boundary layer in the trailing edge region. A brief description of a computer code that was developed to solve the extended viscous interaction equations is given. Comparisons of the theoretical results with wind tunnel data for two rear loaded airfoils at supercritical conditions are presented.

Melnik, R. E.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Design of Aspirated Compressor Blades Using Three-dimensional Inverse Method

A three-dimensional viscous inverse method is extended to allow blading design with full interaction between the prescribed pressure-loading distribution and a specified transpiration scheme. Transpiration on blade surfaces and endwalls is implemented as inflow/outflow boundary conditions, and the basic modifications to the method are outlined. This paper focuses on a discussion concerning an application of the method to the design and analysis of a supersonic rotor with aspiration. Results show that an optimum combination of pressure-loading tailoring with surface aspiration can lead to a minimization of the amount of sucked flow required for a net performance improvement at design and off-design operations.

Dang, T. Q.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Characteristics of Fluid‐Solid Interaction Constitutive Models Within Poroelastodynamics at Higher Strain‐Rates and Large Deformations Implemented in 1D

The large deformation, mixed formulation, finite element (FE) modeling approach presented in Irwin et al. 2024 is extended herein to include improved constitutive models for representing dynamic solid-fluid interactions at higher strain rates (𝒪⁢(1⁢0 2 −1⁢0 3 )⁢s −1 ) and larger overpressure magnitudes (𝒪⁡(1⁢0 2 )⁢kPa) within a biphasic soft porous material using Theory of Porous Media (TPM) at finite strain. Specifically, these constitutive modeling improvements are the following: (i) a more physically robust constitutive model for pore fluid seepage velocity via inclusion of pore fluid viscous stress, and (ii) a modified deformation-dependent-permeability model and updated hyperelastic constitutive model better suited for handling larger volumetric compressions and extensions. The novelty of the present work is mainly the contribution (i): inclusion of pore fluid viscous stress at higher strain-rate and large deformations, which requires 𝐶 1 continuity in the weak formulation, accomplished by employing Hermite cubic interpolation functions within a mixed nonlinear poromechanical finite element formulation. In (ii), the model is updated to weakly enforce solid phase incompressibility, such that this assumption is not violated numerically, which provides improved numerical stability for achieving larger overpressure magnitudes on 𝒪⁡(1⁢0 2 ) kPa, which were not achievable with the previous Kozeny–Carman model in Irwin et al. 2024. Also in (ii), the volumetric part of the solid skeleton free energy function is modified to ensure proper bounds on the solid skeleton Jacobian of deformation 𝐽 s related to incompressibility of the solid phase. Uniaxial strain, unidirectional flow examples at higher strain rates (𝒪⁢(1⁢0 2 −1⁢0 3 )⁢s −1 ) and larger deformations (up to 0.2 (or 20%) nominal axial strain) demonstrate the improved physical representation—and numerical stability—of these constitutive model improvements.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS1977

Elastohydrodynamic lubrication of elliptical contacts for materials of low elastic modulus. I - Fully flooded conjunction

A complete numerical solution is presented to the problem of isothermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication of elliptical contacts for low-elastic-modulus materials operating under fully loaded conditions. No assumption is made for the pressure or film thickness within the contact, and compressibility and viscous effects are taken into account. Because of the dimensionless representation of the coordinates, the actual Hertzian contact ellipse becomes a circle regardless of the value of the ellipticity parameter. A minimum-film-thickness relation and a central-film-thickness relation are derived from examining 17 different cases. Contour plots for detailed illustration of the pressure distribution and film thickness in the conjunction are provided.

Hamrock, B. J.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Extraterrestrial halogen and sulfur contents of the stratosphere

Interplanetary dust represents a potential source of environmentally important chemical species in the earth's atmosphere. Previous studies have used computational models of atmospheric evolution of meteor debris to conclude that the steady-state stratospheric component of extraterrestrial matter is a small fraction of the total aerosol load. Observational data suggest such calculations may underestimate stratospheric residence times and, thus, concentrations. Two computational methods were employed here to obtain reasonable limits for the stratospheric contents of halogens and sulfur from extraterrestrial sources. The lower limit was based on the total stratospheric aerosol load and the relative influxes from interplanetary dust and tropospheric sources. The upper limit was obtained using a viscous settling method. These results suggest that the steady-state extraterrestrial influxes of halogens are minor compared to tropospheric sources but the sulfur input may be comparable to the present observed stratospheric content. Temporal enhancements in the meteoroid flux, such as passage through comet debris lanes or impact by large bodies, may produce significant chemical perturbations in the atmosphere.

Sutton, S. R.↗
NASA NTRS1983

A review of preflight estimates of real-gas effects on space shuttle aerodynamic characteristics

Preflight estimates of the hypersonic aerodynamic characteristics of the Shuttle orbiter were based on a diverse series of research studies using state of the art techniques developed by basic research in the 60's and 70's. Real-gas viscous calculations on simple shapes that were used to evaluate correlation parameters indicated that real-gas effects reduce aerodynamic forces and moments. Inviscid calculations on winged lifting shapes indicated reduced forces and a slight nose-up pitch resulted because of real-gas effects. Analysis of the extensive wind tunnel data base indicated viscous correlation parameters provided the most appropriate extrapolation technique for estimating flight aerodynamics. Variations because of changes in the ratio of specific heats, which was the only available experimental tool for evaluating real-gas effects, indicated that reduced loads and nose-up pitching moments would occur at high altitudes and Mach numbers but that the values would not exceed the tolerances and variations established about the aerodynamic design data book values derived from viscous correlations. During STS-1, nose-up pitching moments exceeded the established variations.

Woods, W. C.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Inviscid to turbulent transition of trailing vortices

The plateau region in which trailing vortices initially exhibit slow decay of maximum tangential speed is demonstrated with the aid of constant and variable eddy viscosity models. The existence of the plateau is explained by the presence of the viscous core and by the necessity for transition of the initial, nearly inviscid profile to similarity far downstream. Span loading is shown to affect the initial maximum tangential speed as well as the duration of the plateau region. Triangular span loading is shown to present less hazard to trailing aircraft, at least in the near field, than elliptic loading because the inviscid profile for triangular loading exhibits a finite tangential speed at the vortex centerline and a large inviscid core.

Iversen, J. D.↗