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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 1,009 records · Page 56

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

DOE OSTI2023

Multi-level parallelization of quantum-chemical calculations

Here, strategies for multiple-level parallelizations of quantum-mechanical calculations are discussed, with an emphasis on using groups of workers for performing parallel tasks. These parallel programming models can be used for a variety ab initio quantum chemistry approaches, including the fragment molecular orbital method and replica-exchange molecular dynamics. Strategies for efficient load balancing on problems of increasing granularity are introduced and discussed. A four-level parallelization is developed based on a multi-level hierarchical grouping, and a high parallel efficiency is achieved on the Theta supercomputer using 131 072 OpenMP threads.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2024

Energy Analysis of Combi Heat Pump System Configurations for Space Conditioning and Domestic Hot Water Heating in Residential Buildings

Combi heat pump systems, also referred to multifunctional variable refrigerant flow heat recovery (MF-VRFHR) systems, are specifically designed for residential applications to manage both space conditioning and domestic hot water (DHW). They have attracted attention due to their potential for energy conservation through heat recovery. The incorporation of a hot water tank introduces various system configurations, each characterized by distinct pros and cons related to energy efficiency, system stability, and maintenance. Despite this, a critical gap exists as the specific energy performance remains unquantified under diverse operational modes (e.g., heating mode and heat recovery mode). This paper aims to bridge this gap by conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis of two prevalent system configurations while considering feasible proposed control logics. Configuration 1 integrates a separate hot water tank and a refrigerant-to-water heat exchanger (HEX), also known as a Hydro Kit while Configuration 2 incorporates a refrigerant-wrapped hot water tank. To facilitate this analysis, we developed high-fidelity system models for both configurations in Modelica, capturing system dynamics and detailed control sequences effectively. These system models were built upon the TIL library for HVAC equipment components and the Buildings library for residential building thermal load calculations. The validation of the simulation testbed utilized data from experiments conducted in the PNNL lab home for Configuration 1. To establish the simulation testbed for Configuration 2, we extended the modeling setup derived from Configuration 1. This extension specifically involved substituting the separate hot water tank and Hydro Kit with a refrigerant-wrapped hot water tank of similar sizing sourced from an actual product. The simulation analysis of heating-only and heat recovery modes reveals that Configuration 2 not only saves energy and maintains warmer tank temperatures but also demonstrates faster water heating capabilities. This is attributed to decreased energy loss and improved heat transfer. The study encompasses a wide range of scenarios, considering diverse thermal loads and water usage patterns across heating and heat recovery modes. Overall, the comprehensive results indicate that Configuration 2 achieves energy savings ranging from 3.5% to 12.2% compared to Configuration 1, depending on factors such as water usage patterns, thermal loads, and operational modes.

Configuration, Comparison, Multi-functional, Resid↗

NASA NTRS1977

Space shuttle orbiter digital data processing system timing sensitivity analysis OFT ascent phase

Dynamic loads were investigated to provide simulation and analysis of the space shuttle orbiter digital data processing system (DDPS). Segments of the ascent test (OFT) configuration were modeled utilizing the information management system interpretive model (IMSIM) in a computerized simulation modeling of the OFT hardware and software workload. System requirements for simulation of the OFT configuration were defined, and sensitivity analyses determined areas of potential data flow problems in DDPS operation. Based on the defined system requirements and these sensitivity analyses, a test design was developed for adapting, parameterizing, and executing IMSIM, using varying load and stress conditions for model execution. Analyses of the computer simulation runs are documented, including results, conclusions, and recommendations for DDPS improvements.

Lagas, J. J.↗

NASA NTRS1983

Control of large space structures: Status report on achievements and current problems

The objectives, state-of-the-art, and problems of large space structures control are outlined. The general objectives range from basic deployment and maneuvering, where some vibration modes may be suppressed, to disturbance rejection for very high performance imaging applications. The controls selected generally must produce some combination of eigenvalue/eigenvector and loads modification in order to achieve the mission objectives. An experiment illustrating the dynamic control of a suspended circular plate is described. Analysis methods used in system modelling, signal processing, and process control and monitoring are discussed. Sensor and actuator performance are assessed.

Lyons, M. G.↗

NASA NTRS1984

Spin-tunnel investigation of a 1/25-scale model of the General Dynamics F-16XL airplane

A spin-tunnel investigation of the spin and recovery characteristics of a 1/25-scale model to the General Dynamics F-16XL aircraft was conducted in the Langley Spin Tunnel. Tests included erect and inverted spins at various symmetric and asymmetric loading conditions. The required size of an emergency spin-recovery parachute was determined.

Whipple, R. D.↗

NASA NTRS1986

A study of boiling heat transfer as applied to the cooling of ball bearings in the high pressure oxygen turbopump of the space shuttle main engine

Two sets of ball bearings support the main shaft within the High Pressure Oxygen Turbopump (HPOTP) in the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). In operation, these bearings are cooled and lubricated with high pressure liquid oxygen (LOX) flowing axially through the bearing assembly. Currently, modifications in the assembly design are being contemplated in order to enhance the lifetime of the bearings and to allow the HPOTP to operate under larger loads. An understanding of the fluid dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of the flowing LOX is necessary for the implementation of these design changes. The proposed computational model of the LOX fluid dynamics, in addition to dealing with a turbulent flow in a complex geometry, must address the complication associated with boiling and two-phase flow. The feasibility of and possible methods for modeling boiling heat transfer are considered. The theory of boiling as pertains to this particular problem is reviewed. Recommendations are given for experiments which would be necessary to establish validity for correlations needed to model boiling.

Schreiber, Will↗

NASA NTRS1987

Dynamic and attitude control characteristics of an International Space Station

The structural dynamic characteristics of the International Space Station (ISS), the interim reference configuration established for NASA's Space Station developmental program, are discussed, and a finite element model is described. Modes and frequencies of the station below 2.0 Hz are derived, and the dynamic response of the station is simulated for an external impulse load corresponding to a failed shuttle-docking maneuver. A three-axis attitude control system regulates the ISS orientation, with control moment gyros responding to attitude and attitude rate signals. No instabilities were found in the attitude control system.

Sutter, Thomas R.↗

NASA NTRS1993

An investigation of the fuel-optimal periodic trajectories of a hypersonic vehicle

Periodic trajectories were found to minimize the range-averaged fuel consumption. For a realistic hypersonic aircraft modeled as a point mass over a nonrotating, spherical Earth, the periodic orbit yielded a 15 percent improvement in fuel consumption over static cruise. Moreover, vehicle dynamic loading was contained within a realistic survivability envelope of 8 g's. The resulting periodic orbit is composed of very distinct flight regimes (Keplerian arc, atmospheric glide and powered climb), which may offer mission advantages over the static path.

Dewell, Larry D.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Parallel Programming Strategies for Irregular Adaptive Applications

Achieving scalable performance for dynamic irregular applications is eminently challenging. Traditional message-passing approaches have been making steady progress towards this goal; however, they suffer from complex implementation requirements. The use of a global address space greatly simplifies the programming task, but can degrade the performance for such computations. In this work, we examine two typical irregular adaptive applications, Dynamic Remeshing and N-Body, under competing programming methodologies and across various parallel architectures. The Dynamic Remeshing application simulates flow over an airfoil, and refines localized regions of the underlying unstructured mesh. The N-Body experiment models two neighboring Plummer galaxies that are about to undergo a merger. Both problems demonstrate dramatic changes in processor workloads and interprocessor communication with time; thus, dynamic load balancing is a required component.

Biswas, Rupak↗

NASA NTRS2005

AOCS Performance and Stability Validation for a 160-m Solar Sail with Control-Structure Interactions

Future solar sail missions, such as NASA's Solar Polar Imager Vision, will require sails with dimensions on the order of 50-500 m. We are examining a square sail design with moving mass (trim control mass, TCM) and quadrant rotation primary actuators plus pulsed plasma thrusters (PPTs) at the mast tips for backup attitude control. Quadrant rotation is achieved via roll stabilizer bars (RSB) at the mast tips. At these sizes, given the gossamer nature of the sail supporting structures, flexible modes may be low enough to interact with the control system, especially as these actuators are located on the flexible structure itself and not on the rigid core. This paper develops a practical analysis of the flexible interactions using state-space systems and modal data from finite element models of the system. Torsion and bending of the masts during maneuvers could significantly affect the function of the actuators while activation of the membrane modes could adversely affect the thrust vector direction and magnitude. Analysis of the RSB and TCM dynamics for developing high-fidelity simulations is included. For control analysis of the flexible system, standard finite-element models of the flexible sail body are loaded and the modal data is used to create a modal coordinate state-space system. Key parameters include which modes to include, which nodes are of interest for force inputs and displacement outputs, connecting nodes through which external forces and torques are applied from the flex body to the core, any nominal momentum in the system, and any steady rates. The system is linearized about the nominal attitude and rate. The state-space plant can then be analyzed with a state-space controller, and Bode, Nyquist, step and impulse responses generated. The approach is general for any rigid core with a flexible appendage. This paper develops a compensator for a simple two-mass flex system and extrapolates the results to the solar sail. A finite element model of the 20 m solar sail by ATK Space Systems, recently validated in ground tests, is used to demonstrate the sail analysis approach.

Wie, Bong↗

DOE OSTI2022

A Data Quality-Aware Framework to Reliably Forecast Photovoltaic Generation and Consumer Load for an Improved Resilience of Microgrids

Photovoltaic (PV) power and consumer load forecasting plays a critical role to ensure operational resilience of the electric grid. Most data-driven forecasting algorithms rely heavily on the continuous availability of good quality data for periodic training and validation. When deployed at the grid’s edge, prolonged disruptions to communications during extreme events degrade data quality. Factors such as missing observations, epistemic uncertainties, data drift, and concept drift are manifestations of data quality that impact the generalization of such field-deployed forecasting models. Currently, there exists no mechanism in the literature to dynamically switch between models under varying degrees of data quality as quantified by certain metrics for each factor highlighted above. This paper addresses this shortcoming by conceptually introducing a data qualityaware framework for reliable PV generation and consumer load forecasting. The framework’s design incorporates components of missing values, divergence tests, and continuous monitoring of generalization performance to detect changes in data quality caused by communications disruptions and trigger specific classes of forecasting models grouped under three use cases (UC1- UC3). As a first step towards validating this framework, real data collected from an actual field microgrid system is used to demonstrate the viability of the three use cases. Results show that the performance is the best in UC1 with an unadjusted R-square value of 0.954, followed by 0.939 for UC2 and 0.757 for UC3.

Sundararajan, Aditya↗

DOE OSTI2023

How good are learning-based control v.s. model-based control for load shifting? Investigations on a single zone building energy system

Both model predictive control (MPC) and deep reinforcement learning control (DRL) have been presented as a way to approximate the true optimality of a dynamic programming problem, and these two have shown significant operational cost saving potentials for building energy systems. Furthermore, there is still a lack of in-depth quantitative studies on their approximation levels to the true optimality, especially in the building energy domain. To fill in the gap, this paper provides a numerical framework that enables the evaluation of the optimality levels of different controllers for building energy systems. This framework is then used to comprehensively compare the optimal control performance of both MPC and DRL controllers with given computation budgets for a single zone fan coil unit system. Note the optimality is estimated based on a user-specific selection of trade-off weights among energy costs, thermal comfort and control slew rates. Compared with the best optimality we can find through expensive optimization simulations, the best DRL agent can maximally approximate the optimality by 96.54%, which outperforms the best MPC whose optimality level is 90.11%. However, due to the stochasticity, the DRL agent is only expected to approximate the optimality by 90.42%, which is almost equivalent to the best MPC. Except for Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), all DRL agents can have a better approximation to the optimality than the best MPC, and are expected to have better approximation than the MPC with a prediction horizon of 32 steps (15 min per step). In terms of reducing energy cost and thermal discomfort, MPC can outperform the rule-based control (RBC) by 18.47%–25.44%. DRL can be expected to outperform RBC by 18.95%–25.65% ,and the best DRL control policy can outperform RBC by 20.29%–29.72%. Although the comparison of the optimality level is performed in a perfect setting, e.g., MPC assumes perfect models, and DRL assumes a perfect offline training process and online deployment process, this can shed insight on their capabilities of approximating to the original dynamic programming problem.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

NASA NTRS2001

Experimental Structural Dynamic Response of Plate Specimens Due to Sonic Loads in a Progressive Wave Tube

The objective of the current study was to assess the repeatability of experiments at NASA Langley's Thermal Acoustic Fatigue Apparatus (TAFA) facility and to use these experiments to validate numerical models. Experiments show that power spectral density (PSD) curves were repeatable except at the resonant frequencies, which tended to vary between 5 Hz to 15 Hz. Results show that the thinner specimen had more variability in the resonant frequency location than the thicker sample, especially for modes higher than the first mode in the frequency range. Root Mean Square (RMS) tended to be more repeatable. The RMS behaved linearly through the SPL range of 135 to 153 dB. Standard Deviations (STDs) of the results tended to be relatively low constant up to about 147 dB. The RMS results were more repeatable than the PDS results. The STD results were less than 10% of the RMS results for both the 0.125 in (0.318 cm) and 0.062 in (0.1588 cm) thick plate. The STD of the PSD results were around 20% to 100% of the mean PSD results for non-resonant and resonant frequencies, respectively, for the 0.125 in (0.318 cm) thicker plate and between 25% to 125% of the mean PSD results, for nonresonant and resonant frequencies, respectively, for the thinner plate.

Betts, Juan F.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Improved Aerodynamic Analysis for Hybrid Wing Body Conceptual Design Optimization

This paper provides an overview of ongoing efforts to develop, evaluate, and validate different tools for improved aerodynamic modeling and systems analysis of Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) aircraft configurations. Results are being presented for the evaluation of different aerodynamic tools including panel methods, enhanced panel methods with viscous drag prediction, and computational fluid dynamics. Emphasis is placed on proper prediction of aerodynamic loads for structural sizing as well as viscous drag prediction to develop drag polars for HWB conceptual design optimization. Data from transonic wind tunnel tests at the Arnold Engineering Development Center s 16-Foot Transonic Tunnel was used as a reference data set in order to evaluate the accuracy of the aerodynamic tools. Triangularized surface data and Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP) models of an X-48B 2% scale wind tunnel model were used to generate input and model files for the different analysis tools. In support of ongoing HWB scaling studies within the NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) program, an improved finite element based structural analysis and weight estimation tool for HWB center bodies is currently under development. Aerodynamic results from these analyses are used to provide additional aerodynamic validation data.

Gern, Frank H.↗

NASA NTRS2016

Damping Effects of Drogue Parachutes on Orion Crew Module Dynamics

Because simulations of the Orion Crew Module (CM) dynamics with drogue parachutes deployed were under-predicting the amount of damping seen in free-flight tests, an attach-point damping model was applied to the Orion system. A key hypothesis in this model is that the drogue parachutes' net load vector aligns with the CM drogue attachment point velocity vector. This assumption seems reasonable and has historically produced good results, but has never been experimentally verified. The wake of the CM influences the drogue parachutes, which makes performance predictions of the parachutes difficult. Many of these effects are not currently modeled in the simulations. A forced oscillation test of the CM with parachutes was conducted in the NASA LaRC 20-Ft Vertical Spin Tunnel (VST) to gather additional data to validate and refine the attach-point damping model. A second loads balance was added to the original Orion VST model to measure the drogue parachute loads independently of the CM. The objective of the test was to identify the contribution of the drogues to CM damping and provide additional information to quantify wake effects and the interactions between the CM and parachutes. The drogue parachute force vector was shown to be highly dependent on the CM wake characteristics. Based on these wind tunnel test data, the attach-point damping model was determined to be a sufficient approximation of the parachute dynamics in relationship to the CM dynamics for preliminary entry vehicle system design. More wake effects should be included to better model the system.

Aubuchon, Vanessa V.↗

DOE OSTI2026

Enhanced accuracy through ensembling of randomly initialized auto-regressive models for dynamical systems

Computational mechanics simulations using traditional finite element methods (FEM) require prohibitively expensive computational resources for real-time engineering applications, design optimization, and digital twin implementations. While machine learning (ML) surrogate models offer significant computational speedups, autoregressive ML models for time-dependent mechanical systems suffer from error accumulation that compromises long-term prediction reliability - a critical concern for engineering applications where accuracy over extended time horizons is essential for safety and performance assessments. Here, we propose a deep ensemble framework specifically designed to address this challenge in computational mechanics applications, where multiple ML surrogate models with random weight initializations are trained in parallel and their predictions aggregated during inference. This approach leverages statistical diversity to maximize information gain from a fixed set of training data and to mitigate error propagation, while maintaining the computational efficiency that makes ML surrogates attractive for engineering practice. We validate the framework on three representative problems spanning critical areas of computational mechanics: stress field evolution in heterogeneous microstructures under complex loading (relevant to advanced materials design and composite analysis), planetary-scale shallow water dynamics (applicable to environmental and geotechnical engineering), and Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion systems (relevant to mass transport and chemical process engineering). Across all test cases, the ensemble approach demonstrates consistent error reduction of 15-33% compared to individual models. The codes for this work are available on GitHub (https://github.com/Graham-Brady-Research-Group/AutoregressiveEnsemble_SpatioTemporal_Evolution).

autoregressive prediction↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Validation of a Two-Phase CFD Model for Predicting Tank Self-Pressurization in the Ground-Based K-Site Experiment

A two-phase CFD model for self-pressurization of a cryogenic storage tank partially filled with liquid hydrogen is presented using the Volume-Of-Fluid approach for representing the phase boundary and the associated interfacial heat, mass and momentum transfer between the liquid and the vapor regions. The CFD model is validated against self-pressurization experiment performed in the K-site flightweight hydrogen storage tank at NASA Glenn Research Center. Laminar and turbulent simulations together with conjugated heat transfer analysis are performed. Effects of turbulence, as well as tank wall conduction are presented and discussed. Predicted tank pressures and fluid temperatures are compared with the experimental data at two different heat loads for validating the CFD model.

phase change↗

DOE OSTI2024

Development of High-Fidelity and Efficient Modeling Capabilities for Enabling Co-Optimization of Fuels and Multi-Mode Engines

The objective of this closely coordinated research project is to develop improved physical sub-models and innovative numerical algorithms to enable accurate and efficient predictions of multi-mode combustion to support EERE’s Co-Optima program. To this end, a research pro-gram is proposed that seeks • to develop accurate submodels for predicting multi-mode combustion regimes, wall-heat transfer, non-equilibrium plasma ignition, and combustion-mode transition, • to develop dynamic load-rebalancing algorithms and efficient semi-implicit time-integration schemes for enabling exascale computing, • to validate the computational submodels against experiments and direct numerical simulation (DNS) data in conjunction with sensitivity analysis, and • to support the direct transition of the resulting sub-models into other engine-simulation tools through the development of self-contained modules. All sub-models will be integrated into the open-source exascale engine-simulation platform Nek5000.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗