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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 901 records · Page 50
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1991

Sensible heat receiver for solar dynamic space power system

A sensible heat receiver is considered which uses a vapor grown carbon fiber-carbon (VGCF/C) composite as the thermal storage medium and which was designed for a 7-kW Brayton engine. This heat receiver stores the required energy to power the system during eclipse in the VGCF/C composite. The heat receiver thermal analysis was conducted through the Systems Improved Numerical Differencing Analyzer and Fluid Integrator (SINDA) software package. The sensible heat receiver compares well with other latent and advanced sensible heat receivers analyzed in other studies, while avoiding the problems associated with latent heat storage salts and liquid metal heat pipes. The concept also satisfies the design requirements for a 7-kW Brayton engine system. The weight and size of the system can be optimized by changes in geometry and technology advances for this new material.

Perez-Davis, Marla E.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Fabrication of Thin Film Heat Flux Sensors

Prototype thin film heat flux sensors have been constructed and tested. The sensors can be applied to propulsion system materials and components. The sensors can provide steady state and fast transient heat flux information. Fabrication of the sensor does not require any matching of the mounting surface. Heat flux is proportional to the temperature difference across the upper and lower surfaces of an insulation material. The sensor consists of an array of thermocouples on the upper and lower surfaces of a thin insulating layer. The thermocouples for the sensor are connected in a thermopile arrangement. A 100 thermocouple pair heat flux sensor has been fabricated on silicon wafers. The sensor produced an output voltage of 200-400 microvolts when exposed to a hot air heat gun. A 20 element thermocouple pair heat flux sensor has been fabricated on aluminum oxide sheet. Thermocouples are Pt-Pt/Rh with silicon dioxide as the insulating material. This sensor produced an output of 28 microvolts when exposed to the radiation of a furnace operating at 1000 C. Work is also underway to put this type of heat flux sensor on metal surfaces.

Will, Herbert A.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Heat pipe fatigue test specimen: Metallurgical evaluation

An innovative creep/fatigue test was run to simulate the temperature, mechanical load, and sodium corrosion conditions expected in a heat pipe designed to supply thermal energy to a Stirling cycle power converter. A sodium-charged Inconel 718 heat pipe with a Nickel 200 screen wick was operated for 1090 hr at temperatures between 950 K (1250 F) and 1050 K (1430 F) while being subjected to creep and fatigue loads in a servo-hydraulic testing machine. After testing, the heat pipe was sectioned and examined using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and electron microprobe analysis with wavelength dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. The analysis concentrated on evaluating topographic, microstructural, and chemical changes in the sodium exposed surfaces of the heat pipe wall and wick. Surface changes in the evaporator, condenser, and adiabatic sections of the heat pipe were examined in an effort to correlate the changes with the expected sodium environment in the heat pipe. This report describes the setup, operating conditions, and analytical results of the sodium heat pipe fatigue test.

Walak, Steven E.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Transient liquid-crystal technique used to produce high-resolution convective heat-transfer-coefficient maps

In this transient technique the preheated isothermal model wall simulates the classic one-dimensional, semi-infinite wall heat transfer conduction problem. By knowing the temperature of the air flowing through the model, the initial temperature of the model wall, and the surface cooling rate measured at any location with time (using the fast-response liquid-crystal patterns recorded on video tape), the heat transfer coefficient can be calculated for the color isothermal pattern produced. Although the test was run transiently, the heat transfer coefficients are for the steady-state case. The upstream thermal boundary condition was considered to be isothermal. This transient liquid-crystal heat-transfer technique was used in a transient air tunnel in which a square-inlet, 3-to-1 exit transition duct was placed. The duct was preheated prior to allowing room temperature air to be suddenly drawn through it. The resulting isothermal contours on the duct surfaces were revealed using a surface coating of thermochromic liquid crystals that display distinctive colors at particular temperatures. A video record was made of the temperature and time data for all points on the duct surfaces during each test. The duct surfaces were uniformly heated using two heating systems: the first was an automatic temperature-controlled heater blanket completely surrounding the test duct like an oven, and the second was an internal hot-air loop through the inside of the test duct. The hot-air loop path was confined inside the test duct by insulated heat dams located at the inlet and exit ends of the test duct. A recirculating fan moved hot air into the duct inlet, through the duct, out of the duct exit, through the oven, and back to the duct inlet. The temperature nonuniformity of the test duct model wall was held very small. Test results are reported for two inlet Reynolds numbers of 200,000 and 1,150,000 (based on the square-inlet hydraulic diameter) and two free-stream turbulence intensities of about 1 percent, which is typical of wind tunnels, and up to 20 percent (using a grid), which is typical of real engine conditions.

Hippensteele, Steven A.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Effect of uneven wall temperature on local heat transfer in a rotating square channel with smooth walls and radial outward flow

The effect of uneven wall temperature on the local heat transfer coefficient in a rotating square channel with smooth walls and radial outward flow is investigated for Reynolds numbers from 2500 to 25,000 and rotation numbers from 0 to 0.352. Three cases of thermal boundary conditions are studied: (1) four walls uniform temperature, (2) four walls uniform heat flux, and (3) leading and trailing walls hot and two side walls cold. It is shown that the heat transfer coefficients on the leading surface are much lower than that of the trailing surface due to rotation. For case 1, the leading surface heat transfer coefficient decreases and then increases with increasing rotation numbers, and the trailing surface heat transfer coefficient increases monotonically with rotation numbers. The trailing surface heat transfer coefficients, as well as those for the side walls, for case 2 are higher than for case 1, and the leading surface heat transfer coefficients for cases 2 and 3 are significantly higher than for case 1.

Han, J.-C.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Dynamical polar wind and its response to kinetic ion heating

The effect of the kinetic ion heating of the polar wind on the dynamic expansion of the polar wind outflow is investigated by incorporating the kinetic ion heating effect into a time-dependent hydrodynamic polar wind model in which the polar wind O(+) and H(+) continuity and momentum equations are solved in a flux tube from ionospheric to magnetospheric altitudes. Two limiting cases were considered: (1) preferential O(+) escape and (2) preferential H(+) heating. It was found that ion heating does not have much effect on the escape of H(+) ions because of the limiting nature of the H(+) escape fluxes. However, O(+) heating can substantially increase the upward O(+) pressure gradient in the heating region, indicating that O(+) heating is a viable explanation for the unexpectedly large O(+) fluxes frequently observed in the polar magnetosphere.

Chen, Margaret W.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Heating of H II regions with application to the Galactic center

The heating and thermal equilibrium of photoionized gas is reviewed. Photon-heating mechanisms (UV photoionization heating, grain photoelectric heating, and X-ray heating) either fail to provide the required heating rates or else require that the ionization state of the gas is very high. Specific application to the Galactic center observations show that the total heating power required to maintain the gas at the derived temperatures, using the observed emission measure in the bar and the temperature distribution derived from the radio recombination lines, is about 7 x 10 exp 6 solar luminosities, comparable to the bolometric luminosity of the central source as measured by the FIR flux from grains. Thus, the cooling emission from this hot gas, if LTE-derived temperatures are correct, would supply a major fraction of the bolometric and ionizing luminosity inferred from the ionized gas in the central 1 pc cavity and the dust and neutral gas in the surrounding torus.

Maloney, Philip R.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Vaporization heat transfer of dielectric liquids on a wick-covered surface

Vaporization heat transfer characteristics were measured for the dielectric liquid FC-72 on a horizontal heated surface covered with wire screen wicks with the mesh number for the screens varying from 24 to 100. In such a situation the liquid level can be either higher or lower than the heated surface. When the liquid level was above the heated surface (shallow pool boiling), the height of the liquid level above the surface, h, was varied from 0 to 10 mm. When the liquid level was below the heated surface (evaporation through capillary pumping), the distance from the liquid level to the edge of the surface, L, was adjusted from 0 to 15 mm. Experimental data revealed that the critical heat flux (CHF) decreases as the mesh number is increased from 24 to 100 for both vaporation and shallow pool boiling, showing that the vapor-escaping limit is more important than the capillary limit in flat plate heat pipe application.

Gu, C. B.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A convective and radiative heat transfer analysis for the FIRE II forebody

A Navier-Stokes flowfield solution method (LAURA code) using finite-rate chemistry and two-temperature thermal nonequilibrium was used in combination with two nonequilibrium radiative heat transfer codes to calculate heating for the FIRE II vehicle. An axisymmetric model of the actual body shape was used. One radiative heating code (NEQAIR) was used in uncoupled fashion with the flowfield solver's energy equations, while the other code (LORAN) was used in both coupled and uncoupled variations. Several trajectory points ranging from highly nonequilibrium flow to near-equilibrium flow were used for a study of both convective and radiative heating over the vehicle. Considerable variation in radiative heating was seen at the extremes, while agreement was good in the intermediate trajectory points. Total heat transfer calculations gave good comparison until the peak heating trajectory points were encountered, and returned to good agreement for the last two equilibrium points.

Greendyke, Robert B.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Two-layer convective heating prediction procedures and sensitivities for blunt body reentry vehicles

This paper provides a description of procedures typically used to predict convective heating rates to hypersonic reentry vehicles using the two-layer method. These procedures were used to compute the pitch-plane heating distributions to the Apollo geometry for a wind tunnel test case and for three flight cases. Both simple engineering methods and coupled inviscid/boundary layer solutions were used to predict the heating rates. The sensitivity of the heating results in the choice of metrics, pressure distributions, boundary layer edge conditions, and wall catalycity used in the heating analysis were evaluated. Streamline metrics, pressure distributions, and boundary layer edge properties were defined from perfect gas (wind tunnel case) and chemical equilibrium and nonequilibrium (flight cases) inviscid flow-field solutions. The results of this study indicated that the use of CFD-derived metrics and pressures provided better predictions of heating when compared to wind tunnel test data. The study also showed that modeling entropy layer swallowing and ionization had little effect on the heating predictions.

Bouslog, Stanley A.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A bi-directional two-phase/two-phase heat exchanger

This paper describes the design and test of a heat exchanger that transfers heat from one two-phase thermal loop to another with very small drops in temperature and pressure. The heat exchanger condenses the vapor in one loop while evaporating the liquid in the other without mixing of the condensing and evaporating fluids. The heat exchanger is bidirectional in that it can transfer heat in reverse, condensing on the normally evaporating side and vice versa. It is fully compatible with capillary pumped loops and mechanically pumped loops. Test results verified that performance of the heat exchanger met the design requirements. It demonstrated a heat transfer rate of 6800 watts in the normal mode of operation and 1000 watts in the reverse mode with temperature drops of less than 5 C between two thermal loops.

Ku, Jentung↗
NASA NTRS1994

Computing Temperatures And Pressures Along Heat Pipes

NASA Lewis Research Center Heat Pipe, LERCHP, computer code developed to predict performances of heat pipes in steady state. Used as design software tool on personal computer or, with suitable calling routine, as subroutine for mainframe-computer radiator code. For accurate mathematical modeling of heat pipes, LERCHP makes variety of wick structures available to user. User chooses among several working fluids, for which monomer/dimer equilibrium considered. Vapor-flow algorithm treats compressibility and axially varying heat input. Facilitates determination of heat-pipe operating temperatures and heat-pipe limits encountered at specified heat input and environmental temperature. Written in FORTRAN 77.

Faker, K. W.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Stagnation Region Heat Transfer: The Influence of Turbulence Parameters, Reynolds Number and Body Shape

The effect of velocity gradient on stagnation region heat transfer augmentation by free stream turbulence was investigated. Heat transfer was measured in the stagnation region of four models with elliptical leading edges with ratios of major to minor axes of 1:1, 1.5:1, 2.25:1, and 3:1. Four geometrically similar, square bar, square mesh, biplane grids were used to generate free stream turbulence with different intensities and length. Heat transfer measurements were made for the following ranges of parameters: Reynolds number, based on leading edge diameter, 37,000 to 228,000; dimensionless leading edge velocity gradient, 1.20 to 1.80; turbulence intensity, 1.1 to 15.9%; and length scale to leading edge diameter ratio, 0.05 to 0.30. Stagnation point heat transfer augmentation by free stream turbulence can be predicted using a modified version of a previously developed correlation for a circular leading edge. Heat transfer augmentation was independent of body shape at the stagnation point. The heat transfer distribution down-stream from the stagnation point can be predicted using the normalized laminar heat transfer distribution.

Vanfossen, G. James↗
NASA NTRS1994

A GIS approach to urban heat island research: The case of Huntsville, Alabama

The urban heat island represents a case of inadvertent human modification of climate in an urban environment. Urbanization changes the nature of the surface and atmospheric properties of a region. As a result, radiation balance in the urban areas is altered and sensible heat is added to the point that urban areas are warmer than surrounding rural areas. At the boundary between the rural and urban area, a sharp rise in temperature occurs, culminating to a peak temperature at the central business district of the city, hence the name 'urban heat island'. The extent and intensity of the urban heat island are a function of population size, land use, and topography. Because the urban heat island exhibits spatial variations of temperatures, the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) is appropriate. The research on the urban heat island focuses on the acquisition of 15 bands of visible and thermal infrared data (ranging from 0.45 to 12.2 microns) from an aerial platform using NASA's ATLAS (Airborne Thermal/Visible Land Application Sensor) over Huntsville, Alabama. The research reported in this paper is an analysis of the impact of population, land use, and topography on the shape of the urban heat island that could be developed in Huntsville using the GIS approach. The outcome of this analysis can then be verified using the acquired remotely sensed data.

Lo, Chor Pong↗
NASA NTRS1994

Heating of the nighttime D region by very low frequency transmitters

VLF signals propagating in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide are used to probe the heated nighttime D region over three U.S. Navy very low frequency (VLF,3-30 kHz) transmitters. Ionospheric cooling and heating are observed when a transmitter turns off and on in the course of normal operations. Heating by the 24.0-kHz NAA transmitter in Cutler, Maine, (1000 kW radiated power) was observed by this method in 41 of 52 off/on episodes during December 1992, increasing the amplitude and retarding the phase of the 21.4-kHz NSS probe wave propagating from Annapolis, Maryland, to Gander, Newfoundland, by as much as 0.84 dB and 5.3 deg, respectively. In 6 of these 41 episodes, the amplitude of the 28.5-kHz NAU probe wave propagating from Puerto Rico to Gander was also perturbed by as much as 0.29 dB. The latter observations were unexpected due to the greater than 770 km distance between NAA and the NAU-Gander great circle path. Heating by the NSS (21.4 kHz, 265 kW) and NLK (24.8 kHz, 850 kW) transmitters was observed serendipitously in data from earlier measurements of the amplitudes of VLF signals propagating in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide. A three-dimensional model of wave absorption and electron heating in a magnetized, weakly ionized plasma is used to calculate the extent nad shape of the collision frequency (i.e., electron temperature) enhancement above a VLF transmitter. The enhancements are annular, with a geomagnetic north-south asymmetry and a radius at the outer half-maximum of the collision frequency enhancement of about 150 km. Heating by the NAA transmitter is predicted to increase the nighttime D region electron temperature by as much as a factor of 3. The calculated changes in the D region conductivity are used in a three-dimensional model of propagation in the Earth-ionosphere wavelength to predict the effect of the heated patch on a subionospheric VLF probe wave. The range of predicted scattered field amplitudes is in general consistent with the observed signal perturbations. Discrepanices in the predictions are attributed to lack of knowledge of the D region electron density profile along the probe wave great circle paths.

Rodriguez, Juan V.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Dynamical consequences on fast subducting slabs from a self-regulating mechanism due to viscous heating in variable viscosity convection

We have studied 2-D time-dependent convection for a rheology which is both non-Newtonian and temperature-dependent. Strong effects associated with viscous heating are found in the downwelling sheets, which are heated on both sides with an intensity around O(100) times the chondritic value. The magnitude of viscous heating increases strongly with the subduction speed. The slab interior is weakened by viscous heating and slab breakoff then takes place. This process provides a self-regulating mechanism for governing the speed of intact slabs able to reach the deep mantle. Timescales associated with viscous heating are quite short, a few million years. Internal heating by radioactivity decreases the amount of shear heating.

Larsen, Tine B.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Liquid metal micro heat pipes for space radiator applications

Micromachining is a chemical means of etching three-dimensional structures, typically in single-crystalline silicon. These techniques are leading toward what is coming to be referred to as MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems), where in addition to the ordinary two dimensional (planar) microelectronics, it is possible to build three-dimensional micromotors, electrically-actuated microvalves, hydraulic systems, and much more on the same microchip. These techniques become possible because of differential etching rates of various crystallographic planes and materials used for semiconductor microfabrication. The University of Cincinnati group in collaboration with NASA Lewis formed micro heat pipes in silicon by the above techniques. Work is ongoing at a modest level, but several essential bonding and packaging techniques have been recently developed. Currently, we have constructed and filled water/silicon micro heat pipes. Preliminary thermal tests of arrays of 125 micro heat pipes etched in a 1 inch x 1 inch x 250 micron silicon wafer have been completed. These pipes are instrumented with extremely small P-N junctions to measure their effective conductivity and their maximum operating power. A relatively simple one-dimensional model has been developed in order to predict micro heat pipes' operating characteristics. This information can be used to optimize micro heat pipe design with respect to length, hydraulic diameter, and number of pipes. Work is progressing on the fabrication of liquid-metal micro heat pipes. In order to be compatible with liquid metal (sodium or potassium), the inside of the micro heat pipes will be coated with a refractory metal (such as tungsten, molybdenum, or titanium).

Gerner, F. M.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Replication of the Apparent Excess Heat Effect in a Light Water-Potassium Carbonate-Nickel Electrolytic Cell

Replication of experiments claiming to demonstrate excess heat production in light water-Ni-K2CO3 electrolytic cells was found to produce an apparent excess heat of 11 W maximum, for 60 W electrical power into the cell. Power gains range from 1.06 to 1.68. The cell was operated at four different dc current levels plus one pulsed current run at 1 Hz, 10% duty cycle. The 28 liter cell used in these verification tests was on loan from a private corporation whose own tests with similar cells are documented to produce 50 W steady excess heat for a continuous period exceeding hundreds of days. The apparent excess heat can not be readily explained either in terms of nonlinearity of the cell's thermal conductance at a low temperature differential or by thermoelectric heat pumping. However, the present data do admit efficient recombination of dissolved hydrogen-oxygen as an ordinary explanation. Calorimetry methods and heat balance calculations for the verification tests are described. Considering the large magnitude of benefit if this effect is found to be a genuine new energy source, a more thorough investigation of evolved heat in the nickel-hydrogen system in both electrolytic and gaseous loading cells remains warranted.

Niedra, Janis M.↗