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At least 955 records · Page 53

Computer Science Research at Langley

A workshop was held at Langley Research Center, November 2-5, 1981, to highlight ongoing computer science research at Langley and to identify additional areas of research based upon the computer user requirements. A panel discussion was held in each of nine application areas, and these are summarized in the proceedings. Slides presented by the invited speakers are also included. A survey of scientific, business, data reduction, and microprocessor computer users helped identify areas of focus for the workshop. Several areas of computer science which are of most concern to the Langley computer users were identified during the workshop discussions. These include graphics, distributed processing, programmer support systems and tools, database management, and numerical methods.

Voigt, S. J.↗

Compliant Metal Enhanced Convection Cooled Reverse-Flow Annular Combustor

A joint Army/NASA program was conducted to design, fabricate, and test an advanced, reverse-flow, small gas turbine combustor using a compliant metal enhanced (CME) convection wall cooling concept. The objectives of this effort were to develop a design method (basic design data base and analysis) for the CME cooling technique and tben demonstrate its application to an advanced cycle, small, reverse-flow combustor with 3000 F (1922 K) burner outlet temperature (BOT). The CME concept offers significant improvements in wall cooling effectiveness resulting in a large reduction in cooling air requirements. Therefore, more air is available for control of burner outlet temperature pattern in addition to the benefit of improved efficiency, reduced emissions, and smoke levels. Rig test results demonstrated the benefits and viability of the CME concept meeting or exceeding the aerothermal performance and liner wall temperature characteristics of similar lower temperature-rise combustors, achieving 0.15 pattern factor at 3000 F (1922 K) BOT, while utilizing approximately 80 percent less cooling air than conventional, film-cooled combustion systems.

Paskin, Marc D.↗

Rapid Structured Volume Grid Smoothing and Adaption Technique

A rapid, structured volume grid smoothing and adaption technique, based on signal processing methods, was developed and applied to the Shuttle Orbiter at hypervelocity flight conditions in support of the Columbia Accident Investigation. Because of the fast pace of the investigation, computational aerothermodynamicists, applying hypersonic viscous flow solving computational fluid dynamic (CFD) codes, refined and enhanced a grid for an undamaged baseline vehicle to assess a variety of damage scenarios. Of the many methods available to modify a structured grid, most are time-consuming and require significant user interaction. By casting the grid data into different coordinate systems, specifically two computational coordinates with arclength as the third coordinate, signal processing methods are used for filtering the data [Taubin, CG v/29 1995]. Using a reverse transformation, the processed data are used to smooth the Cartesian coordinates of the structured grids. By coupling the signal processing method with existing grid operations within the Volume Grid Manipulator tool, problems related to grid smoothing are solved efficiently and with minimal user interaction. Examples of these smoothing operations are illustrated for reduction in grid stretching and volume grid adaptation. In each of these examples, other techniques existed at the time of the Columbia accident, but the incorporation of signal processing techniques reduced the time to perform the corrections by nearly 60%. This reduction in time to perform the corrections therefore enabled the assessment of approximately twice the number of damage scenarios than previously possible during the allocated investigation time.

Alter, Stephen J.↗

Kernel PLS-SVC for Linear and Nonlinear Discrimination

A new methodology for discrimination is proposed. This is based on kernel orthonormalized partial least squares (PLS) dimensionality reduction of the original data space followed by support vector machines for classification. Close connection of orthonormalized PLS and Fisher's approach to linear discrimination or equivalently with canonical correlation analysis is described. This gives preference to use orthonormalized PLS over principal component analysis. Good behavior of the proposed method is demonstrated on 13 different benchmark data sets and on the real world problem of the classification finger movement periods versus non-movement periods based on electroencephalogram.

Rosipal, Roman↗

Rapid Structured Volume Grid Smoothing and Adaption Technique

A rapid, structured volume grid smoothing and adaption technique, based on signal processing methods, was developed and applied to the Shuttle Orbiter at hypervelocity flight conditions in support of the Columbia Accident Investigation. Because of the fast pace of the investigation, computational aerothermodynamicists, applying hypersonic viscous flow solving computational fluid dynamic (CFD) codes, refined and enhanced a grid for an undamaged baseline vehicle to assess a variety of damage scenarios. Of the many methods available to modify a structured grid, most are time-consuming and require significant user interaction. By casting the grid data into different coordinate systems, specifically two computational coordinates with arclength as the third coordinate, signal processing methods are used for filtering the data [Taubin, CG v/29 1995]. Using a reverse transformation, the processed data are used to smooth the Cartesian coordinates of the structured grids. By coupling the signal processing method with existing grid operations within the Volume Grid Manipulator tool, problems related to grid smoothing are solved efficiently and with minimal user interaction. Examples of these smoothing operations are illustrated for reductions in grid stretching and volume grid adaptation. In each of these examples, other techniques existed at the time of the Columbia accident, but the incorporation of signal processing techniques reduced the time to perform the corrections by nearly 60%. This reduction in time to perform the corrections therefore enabled the assessment of approximately twice the number of damage scenarios than previously possible during the allocated investigation time.

Alter, Stephen J.↗

Individual Wave Detection and Tracking within a Rotating Detonation Engine through Computer Vision Object Detection applied to High-Speed Images

Known for their simplistic design and continuous detonation, rotating detonation engines (RDEs) constitute a majority of current pressure gain combustion (PGC) research efforts. Experimental RDE operation times have been continuously extended through the use of rig cooling techniques. As the window of observable behavior is expanded, and as the technology matures toward eventual integration within gas turbines, monitoring techniques must evolve to better match industrial diagnostics. High-speed image analysis techniques prove useful to capture and evaluate the unsteady detonation behavior within the RDE. Traditional image analysis techniques, however, require extensive processing times which prohibit simultaneous monitoring. To better address this problem, a computer vision object detection methodology is proposed to quickly detect individual detonation waves within a single down-axis image. Detonation waves are detected in individual images by the implemented computer vision method You Only Look Once (YOLO) object detection network. In order to detect detonation waves, the network must first be trained using RDE images of interest, for which each required phase of network development is outlined. Detection of waves is improved through proper treatment of the collected image set, variation of Intersection over Union (IoU) and confidence thresholding, and through a parametric study of annotation dimensions. Each detected wave is described by its location and rotational direction, and locations are tracked to calculate wave velocity across each frame, leading to a timestep resolution of 20 µs. Wave velocities are also calculated through a series of frames, leading to a suitable average velocity estimation using as few as 10 frames. Uncertainty analysis accounting for variation in camera framerate, pixel width and annotation centroid locations estimates a total uncertainty of ±4.3% for velocity calculations, using the smallest annotation boxes. This method offers great reductions in processing times, as a step toward real-time monitoring of detonation waves within an RDE. Improving on previous studies, this technique is impartial to wave modes not included in the original training set and calculates wave velocities independent of high-speed pressure data. The ability to isolate waves within predicted bounding boxes will likely facilitate analysis of pixel intensity variation as an estimation of wave strength in future work.

Johnson, Kristyn↗

Diagnostic methods for a high efficiency exhaust aftertreatment system

A method includes acquiring nitrogen oxide (NOx) data indicative of a first amount of NOx in an exhaust flow exiting an engine and a second amount of NOx in the exhaust flow exiting an exhaust aftertreatment system coupled to the engine where the exhaust aftertreatment system including a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system including a SCR catalyst; determining a NOx conversion efficiency fault is present within the exhaust aftertreatment system based on the first amount of NOx and the second amount of NOx; monitoring an actual amount of NOx in the exhaust flow downstream of the SCR catalyst; determining an expected amount of NOx downstream of the SCR catalyst; and determining the SCR catalyst is responsible for the NOx conversion efficiency fault in response to the actual amount of NOx differing from the expected amount of NOx by more than a threshold amount.

Gupta, Aniket↗

Results of the NASA Prediction Uncertainty Reduction Tech Challenge

In January 2021 the Advanced Air Vehicles Program approved a new Tech Challenge (TC) to be run out of the Commercial Supersonic Technology (CST) Project. The objective of the TC was to bring uncertainties in the empirical noise modeling for civilian supersonic aircraft into the same range as that of conventional aircraft. The TC goal statement was to “Produce data and demonstrate tools that reduce the uncertainty in predicting Landing & Takeoff Noise levels of supersonic-relevant designs by 5 EPNdB and are ready for use in studies to inform FAA rule-making.” To make the required improvements in noise prediction methods for supersonic aircraft, NASA decided to validate and use high-fidelity numerical simulations to acquire the needed noise data on supersonic propulsion configurations. High-fidelity component designs were developed, such as a two-stage propulsor behind a supersonic inlet designed by General Electric Aviation and variable area exhaust systems using input from recent contracts with GE and Rolls Royce. A noise database was generated as a function of geometric and flow parameters, providing corrections to the empirical noise models and added new input variables to describe the complexities created by the supersonic-specific design features. Statistically, the new models were able to predict the acoustic impact of supersonic-specific features, the reduction in uncertainty being reduced from the baseline 7.8 EPNdB at the beginning of the TC to 2.0 EPNdB at the end.

noise prediction↗

Integrated top-down process and voxel-based microstructure modeling for Ti-6Al-4V in laser wire direct energy deposition process

Laser-wire metal additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the ideal direct energy deposition (DED) processes for creating large-scale parts with a medium level of complexity. However, the DED process involves complex thermal signatures and wide length scales making the fabrication of realistic AM components and part qualification often reliant on experimental trial-and-error optimization. While experimental measurements over the full volume of a part are valuable and necessary, measuring the entire area of a part is significantly laborious and practically infeasible, particularly for large parts in terms of cost and rapid qualification. Therefore, in this work, we developed an effective thermal and microstructure modeling framework based on the Johnson–Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov (JMAK) and Koistinen & Marburger (KM) models through a top-down approach that considers plate distortion-affected thermal profiles. A voxel-by-voxel simulation method is used to predict individual phase fractions of Ti-6Al-4 V. The predicted results were validated through detailed metallurgical measurements. A combined voxel-by-voxel approach with a sparse data reconstruction technique produced a near-perfect reconstruction of the original data. This approach anticipates a significant reduction in data points and computation time and resources. Lastly, we conclude with potential extensions of this work to other modeling efforts.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

AHIMSA - Ad hoc histogram information measure sensing algorithm for feature selection in the context of histogram inspired clustering techniques

An algorithm is proposed for dimensionality reduction in the context of clustering techniques based on histogram analysis. The approach is based on an evaluation of the hills and valleys in the unidimensional histograms along the different features and provides an economical means of assessing the significance of the features in a nonparametric unsupervised data environment. The method has relevance to remote sensing applications.

Dasarathy, B. V.↗

Randomized Preconditioned Solvers for Strong Constraint 4D-Var Data Assimilation

The Strong Constraint 4D Variational (SC-4DVAR) data assimilation method is widely used in climate and weather applications. SC-4DVAR involves solving a minimization problem to compute the maximum a posteriori estimate, which we tackle using the Gauss-Newton method. The computation of the descent direction is expensive since it involves the solution of a large-scale and potentially ill-conditioned linear system, solved using the preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method. Here, to address this cost, we efficiently construct scalable preconditioners using three different randomization techniques, which all rely on a certain low-rank structure involving the Gauss-Newton Hessian. The proposed techniques come with theoretical guarantees on the condition number, and at the same time, are amenable to parallelization. We also develop an adaptive approach to estimate the sketch size and choose between the reuse or recomputation of the preconditioner. We demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of our methodology on two representative model problems—the Burgers and barotropic vorticity equation—showing a drastic reduction in both the number of PCG iterations and the number of Gauss-Newton Hessian products after including the preconditioner construction cost.

Gauss-Newton↗

Understanding Biases in Sample Preparation Techniques for Coupled Scanning Electron Microscopy and MAMA PuO 2 Morphological Analysis

In this project, the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) sampling method used during the statistical design study (SDS) was investigated to determine if any sampling biases were present in the analyzed data. Using standard particle size distribution powders from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST 1984 standard reference material) with the origin wet dispersion method, it was determined that a bias to smaller particles was present. This was supported by theoretical calculations using Stokes’ law to determine the settling rate of spherical particles of roughly the same size and mass as those found in the SDS. Based on the theoretical calculations, it was determined that the settling rate for each of the 76 powder sets in the SDS could be unique based on specific particle shape and mass distributions, making a universal correction factor/formula not applicable. Therefore, priority shifted to developing an improved wet dispersion method that significantly reduced the particle settling rate for all particle size and shapes. This was achieved by replacing the original solvent (isopropyl alcohol) with a heavy liquid (lithium heteropolytungstates), which dramatically slowed the settling rate and allowed for the capture of a suitable homogeneous aliquot. SEM imaging and Morphological Analysis for Material Attribution (MAMA) software analysis were conducted on the NIST standard, and the SEM/MAMA data were compared to data captured by a dynamic image analysis particle size analyzer. The resulting data confirmed that the new wet dispersion method does indeed deliver an improved representative aliquot to the SEM stub. For instance, in the NIST certificate, the average particle size is ~17.1 µm ± 2.2 µm with a normal distribution. The initial wet dispersion method resulted in a drastically reduced average particle size of 6.1 µm in addition to a non-representative heavy bi-modal distribution whereas the improved LST wet dispersion method resulting in an average particle size that was much closer to the NIST certificate (12.7 µm) with a similar normal distribution. Although the improved method was still short of the NIST certificate average, atomic force microscopy analysis determined that the resulting ~20-25% reduction in size was due to particles sinking into the carbon sticky tape used for SEM imaging. It is believed that that this bias can be calibrated in a much more predicable manner than the original settling rate bias. In addition, the matching normal distribution curves between the NIST certificate and the heavy liquid method indicate a much-improved representative aliquot has been sampled and imaged. A surrogate CeO 2 powder was used to reflect PuO 2 more accurately and to aid in implementing radiological controls and shielding. The resulting data sets from the SEM/MAMA method and the particle size analyzer give almost identical average particle sizes and particle distribution statistics. Future work will re-analyze several select runs from the SDS to determine if morphological signatures can be found with the improved sampling method.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Unified many-worlds browsing of arbitrary physics-based animations

Manually tuning physics-based animation parameters to explore a simulation outcome space or achieve desired motion outcomes can be notoriously tedious. This problem has motivated many sophisticated and specialized optimization-based methods for fine-grained (keyframe) control, each of which are typically limited to specific animation phenomena, usually complicated, and, unfortunately, not widely used. In this paper, we propose Unified Many-Worlds Browsing (UMWB), a practical method for sample-level control and exploration of physics-based animations. Our approach supports browsing of large simulation ensembles of arbitrary animation phenomena by using a unified volumetric WORLDPACK representation based on spatiotemporally compressed voxel data associated with geometric occupancy and other low-fidelity animation state. Beyond memory reduction, the WORLDPACK representation also enables unified query support for interactive browsing: it provides fast evaluation of approximate spatiotemporal queries, such as occupancy tests that find ensemble samples ("worlds") where material is either IN or NOT IN a user-specified spacetime region. WORLDPACKS also support real-time hardware-accelerated voxel rendering by exploiting the spatially hierarchical and temporal RLE raster data structure. Our UMWB implementation supports interactive browsing (and offline refinement) of ensembles containing thousands of simulation samples, and fast spatiotemporal queries and ranking. We show UMWB results using a wide variety of physics-based animation phenomena---not just JELL-O ® .

Computer Science↗

Fe(III) reducing bacterial activities in Old Woman Creek wetland sediments, June 2023

To evaluate the Fe(III) reducing microbiological activities in Old Woman Creek Nature Preserve (OWC) wetland sediments, we incubated OWC sediments under anoxic and oxic conditions and with or without Fe(III) amendment [as hydrous ferric oxide (HFO)]. No Fe(III) reduction was observed in heat-deactivated incubations. In non-sterile anoxic incubations, measurement of 0.5 M HCl-extractable Fe(II) indicated that Fe(III) reduction occurred in both Fe(III)-amended and -unamended incubations, indicating that abundant Fe(III) is associated with the OWC sediments. Little Fe(II) accumulated in solution, indicating that the most biogenic Fe(II) adsorbs to the sediments. When air was added to the headspace of non-sterile incubations, Fe(III) reduction was halted and any biogenic Fe(II) that accumulated was oxidized. These experiments were used to guide preparation and analyses of incubations to determine if electrochemical measuements can be used to detect microbiological activities in contrasting terminal electron accepting regimes (i.e., aerobic and Fe(III) reducing conditions). Data package includes methods and data from experiments, including dissolved anion concentrations, dissolved Fe(II) concentrations, and 0.5 M HCl-extractable Fe(II) concentrations. All files are either .txt or .csv and can be opened by any plain text editor application.

EARTH SCIENCE↗

Research on decreasing the noise of a jet

An investigation was conducted to determine the amount of noise reduction that could be obtained by communicating the axial vibrations of the nozzle of a jet engine to the suspension mechanism. Mathematical models were developed to establish the relationship of the parameters. The pressure pulsations in the jet were recorded by measuring microphones and the data were processed by statistical dynamics methods. It was determined that the jet noise spectrum was successfully changed with various mechanical suspension impedances.

Akelis, M. E.↗

Experimental and theoretical sound transmission

The capabilities of the Kansas University- Flight Research Center for investigating panel sound transmission as a step toward the reduction of interior noise in general aviation aircraft were discussed. Data obtained on panels with holes, on honeycomb panels, and on various panel treatments at normal incidence were documented. The design of equipment for panel transmission loss tests at nonnormal (slanted) sound incidence was described. A comprehensive theory-based prediction method was developed and shows good agreement with experimental observations of the stiffness controlled, the region, the resonance controlled region, and the mass-law region of panel vibration.

Roskam, J.↗

On-orbit performance of LIPS gallium arsenide solar cell experiment

Telemetry from the Living Plume Shield's gallium arsenide solar panel experiment was evaluated to determine degradation. The data were culled to preclude spurious results from possible shadowing or inaccurate measurements on a cold array. Two independent methods were then used to obtain the maximum power points and the various characteristics of the solar array. Fill factor, open circuit voltage, short circuit current, and series and shunt resistances were examined. The data analysis concluded that, to date, nearly all of the solar array degradation is due to the reduction in the short circuit current.

Bavaro, T.↗

Recognition and characterization of hierarchical interstellar structure. II - Structure tree statistics

A new method of image analysis is described, in which images partitioned into 'clouds' are represented by simplified skeleton images, called structure trees, that preserve the spatial relations of the component clouds while disregarding information concerning their sizes and shapes. The method can be used to discriminate between images of projected hierarchical (multiply nested) and random three-dimensional simulated collections of clouds constructed on the basis of observed interstellar properties, and even intermediate systems formed by combining random and hierarchical simulations. For a given structure type, the method can distinguish between different subclasses of models with different parameters and reliably estimate their hierarchical parameters: average number of children per parent, scale reduction factor per level of hierarchy, density contrast, and number of resolved levels. An application to a column density image of the Taurus complex constructed from IRAS data is given. Moderately strong evidence for a hierarchical structural component is found, and parameters of the hierarchy, as well as the average volume filling factor and mass efficiency of fragmentation per level of hierarchy, are estimated. The existence of nested structure contradicts models in which large molecular clouds are supposed to fragment, in a single stage, into roughly stellar-mass cores.

Houlahan, Padraig↗