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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 1,045 records · Page 58
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1987

Proof of quasi-adaptivity for the m-measurement feedback class of stochastic control policies

Bounds on expected performance are established which show that the m-measurement feedback (mM) policy for nonlinear stochastic control performs as well or better than the open-loop optimal control policy, and thus is quasi-adaptive in the sense of Witenhausen (1966). The chain of performance inequalities indicate a tendency for the mM policy performance to improve with increasing m. It is suggested that the present analytical method, based on the construction of artificial control sequences denoted as utility controls, can be used to establish performance bounds on other well-known policies, avoiding the extensive Monte Carlo simulations necessary in comparing stochastic control policies.

Bayard, David S.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Proof that timing requirements of the FDDI token ring protocol are satisfied

The fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) is an ANSI draft proposed standard for a 100 Mbit/s fiber-optic token ring. The FDDI timed token access protocol provides dynamic adjustment of the load offered to the ring, with the goal of maintaining a specified token rotation time and of providing a guaranteed upper bound on time between successive arrivals of the token at a station. FDDI also provides automatic recovery when errors occur. The bound on time between successive token arrivals is guaranteed only if the token rotates quickly enough to satisfy timer requirements in each station when all ring resources are functioning properly. Otherwise, recovery would be initiated unnecessarily. The purpose of this paper is to prove that FDDI timing requirements are satisfied, i.e., the token rotates quickly enough to prevent initiation of recovery unless there is failure of a physical resource or unless the network management entity within a station initiates the recovery process.

Johnson, Marjory J.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Computing The Compliances Of Gear Meshes

Computer model simulates compliance and sharing of loads in spur-gear mesh. Use of solid-body analysis as lower bound and rim analysis as upper bound for mesh compliance, reasonable approximations obtained for compliance in spur-gear mesh.

Lewicki, D. G.↗
NASA NTRS1987

An adaptive pseudo-spectral method for reaction diffusion problems

The spectral interpolation error was considered for both the Chebyshev pseudo-spectral and Galerkin approximations. A family of functionals I sub r (u), with the property that the maximum norm of the error is bounded by I sub r (u)/J sub r, where r is an integer and J is the degree of the polynomial approximation, was developed. These functionals are used in the adaptive procedure whereby the problem is dynamically transformed to minimize I sub r (u). The number of collocation points is then chosen to maintain a prescribed error bound. The method is illustrated by various examples from combustion problems in one and two dimensions.

Bayliss, A.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Investigation, development and application of optimal output feedback theory. Vol. 4: Measures of eigenvalue/eigenvector sensitivity to system parameters and unmodeled dynamics

Some measures of eigenvalue and eigenvector sensitivity applicable to both continuous and discrete linear systems are developed and investigated. An infinite series representation is developed for the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a system. The coefficients of the series are coupled, but can be obtained recursively using a nonlinear coupled vector difference equation. A new sensitivity measure is developed by considering the effects of unmodeled dynamics. It is shown that the sensitivity is high when any unmodeled eigenvalue is near a modeled eigenvalue. Using a simple example where the sensor dynamics have been neglected, it is shown that high feedback gains produce high eigenvalue/eigenvector sensitivity. The smallest singular value of the return difference is shown not to reflect eigenvalue sensitivity since it increases with the feedback gains. Using an upper bound obtained from the infinite series, a procedure to evaluate whether the sensitivity to parameter variations is within given acceptable bounds is developed and demonstrated by an example.

Halyo, Nesim↗
NASA NTRS1987

The Jeffcott equations in nonlinear rotordynamics

The Jeffcott equations are a system of coupled differential equations representing the behavior of a rotating shaft. This is a simple model which allows investigation of the basic dynamic behavior of rotating machinery. Nolinearities can be introduced by taking into consideration deadband, side force, and rubbing, among others. The properties of the solutions of the Jeffcott equations with deadband are studied. In particular, it is shown how bounds for the solution of these equations can be obtained from bounds for the solutions of the linearized equations. By studying the behavior of the Fourier transforms of the solutions, we are also able to predict the onset of destructive vibrations. These conclusions are verified by means of numerical solutions of the equations, and of power spectrum density (PSD) plots. This study offers insight into a possible detection method to determine pump stability margins during flight and hot fire tests, and was motivated by the need to explain a phenomenon observed in the development phase of the cryogenic pumps of the Space Shuttle, during hot fire ground testing; namely, the appearance of vibrations at frequencies that could not be accounted for by means of linear models.

Zalik, R. A.↗
NASA NTRS1988

SURE reliability analysis: Program and mathematics

The SURE program is a new reliability analysis tool for ultrareliable computer system architectures. The computational methods on which the program is based provide an efficient means for computing accurate upper and lower bounds for the death state probabilities of a large class of semi-Markov models. Once a semi-Markov model is described using a simple input language, the SURE program automatically computes the upper and lower bounds on the probability of system failure. A parameter of the model can be specified as a variable over a range of values directing the SURE program to perform a sensitivity analysis automatically. This feature, along with the speed of the program, makes it especially useful as a design tool.

Butler, Ricky W.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Investigations of a circulation control airfoil flowfield using an advanced laser velocimeter

The flowfield of a Circulation Control Airfoil was examined in detail through the use of a specially designed wind tunnel model and test program. Surface pressures on the model were obtained and the velocity field was surveyed in the trailing edge region of the model airfoil using the nonintrusive Laser Velocimetry technique. In this region mean flow and turbulence measurements indicate that, while the flowfield is similar to other wall-bounded jet flows, the external freestream plays an important role in the overall mixing and structure of the wall bounded flow. Finally, the turbulence measurements were used to compute eddy viscosities for the purpose of aiding computational fluid dynamics model development.

Novak, Charles J.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Robust adaptive regulation without persistent excitation

A globally convergent adaptive regulator for minimum or nonminimum phase systems subject to bounded distrubances and unmodeled dynamics is presented. The control strategy is designed for a particular input-output representation obtained from the state space representation of the system. The leading coefficient of the new representation is the product of the observability and controllability matrices of the system. The controller scheme uses a Least Squares identification algorithm with a dead zone. The dead zone is chosen to obtain convergence properties on the estimates and on the covariance matrix as well. This allows the definition of modified estimates which secure well-conditioned matrices in the adaptive control law. Explicit bounds on the plant output are given.

Lozano-Leal, Rogelio↗
NASA NTRS1986

Dynamic compensator design for robust stability of linear uncertain systems

This paper presents a robust linear dynamic compensator design algorithm for linear uncertain systems whose parameters vary within given bounded sets. The algorithm explicitly incorporates the structure of the uncertainty into the design procedure and utilizes the elemental perturbation bounds developed recently. The special cases of linear state feedback and measurement feedback controllers are considered and the relative trade offs are discussed. The design algorithm is illustrated with the help of a simple example.

Yedavalli, R. K.↗
NASA NTRS1986

On model reduction

Three model reduction methods are described. These are the discrete balanced realizations of Mullis and Roberts (1976) where a characterization of the reduction error is given and a previously unknown L(infinity) norm bound on the reduction error, is obtained. Another method is a new model reduction technique for discrete time systems which has the advantage that the reduced order model is balanced and has an L(infinity) norm bound on the reduction error. The last method derived is a frequency weighting technique for continuous and discrete systems where it is possible to specify the approximation accuracy with frequency and also, for this method, an L(infinity) norm on the weighted reduction error is obtained.

Al-Saggaf, Ubaid M.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Fault-tolerant clock synchronization validation methodology

A validation method for the synchronization subsystem of a fault-tolerant computer system is presented. The high reliability requirement of flight-crucial systems precludes the use of most traditional validation methods. The method presented utilizes formal design proof to uncover design and coding errors and experimentation to validate the assumptions of the design proof. The experimental method is described and illustrated by validating the clock synchronization system of the Software Implemented Fault Tolerance computer. The design proof of the algorithm includes a theorem that defines the maximum skew between any two nonfaulty clocks in the system in terms of specific system parameters. Most of these parameters are deterministic. One crucial parameter is the upper bound on the clock read error, which is stochastic. The probability that this upper bound is exceeded is calculated from data obtained by the measurement of system parameters. This probability is then included in a detailed reliability analysis of the system.

Computer systems↗
NASA NTRS1988

Limiting energy spectrum of a saturated radiation belt

The condition for magnetospheric wave growth in the presence of anisotropic charged particle distributions is used to extend the Kennel-Petschek theory that traditionally imposes an upper bound on the integral flux of charged particles at energies above a certain threshold to provide a limit on the differential flux at any energy above this threshold. A closed-form expression is derived for the limiting energy spectrum consistent with marginal occurrence of a magnetospheric maser at all wave frequencies below a certain fraction of the electron or proton gyrofrequency. The bounded integral can be recast in such a way that repeated differentiations with respect to v(parallel) actually generate a closed expression for the limiting form of the velocity space distribution, and thus for the limiting energy spectrum of the corresponding particles, whenever the anisotropy parameter is an integer.

Schulz, Michael↗
NASA NTRS1987

Nonlinear plants, factorizations and stable feedback systems

For nonlinear plants represented by causal maps defined over extended spaces, right factorization and normalized right-coprime factorization concepts are discussed in terms of well-posed stable feedback systems. This setup covers continuous-time, discrete-time, time-invariant or time-varying input-output maps. The nonlinear maps are factored in terms of causal bounded-input bounded-output stable maps. In factored form, all instabilities of the original map are represented by the inverse of a causal stable `denominator' map. The existence of maps with right factorizations and normalized right-coprime factorizations is shown using a well-posed stable unity-feedback system. In the case where one of the subsystems has a normalized right-coprime factorization, the stability of the feedback system is equivalent to the stability of the pseudostate map.

Desoer, Charles A.↗
NASA NTRS1988

The rate parameters for coupled vibration-dissociation in a generalized SSH approximation

A theoretical study of vibrational excitations and dissociations of nitrogen undergoing a nonequilibrium relaxation process upon heating and cooling is reported. The rate coefficients for collisional induced vibrational transitions and transitions from a bound vibrational state into a dissociative state have been calculated using an extension of the theory originally proposed by Schwarz (SSH) et al. (1952). High-lying vibrational states and dissociative states were explicitly included but rotational energy transfer was neglected. The transition probabilities calculated from the SSH theory were fed into the master equation, which was integrated numerically to determine the population distribution of the vibrational states as well as bulk thermodynamic properties. The results show that: (1) the transition rates have a minimum near the middle of the bound vibrational levels, causing a bottleneck in the vibrational relaxation and dissociation rates; (2) high vibrational states are always in equilibrium with the dissociative state; (3) for the heating case, only the low vibrational states relax according to the Landau-Teller theory; (4) for the cooling case, vibrational relaxation cannot be described by a rate equation; (5) Park's (1985, 1988) two-temperature model is approximately valid; and (6) the average vibrational energy removed in dissociation is about 30 percent of the dissociation energy.

Sharma, Surendra P.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Bayesian inference in geomagnetism

The inverse problem in empirical geomagnetic modeling is investigated, with critical examination of recently published studies. Particular attention is given to the use of Bayesian inference (BI) to select the damping parameter lambda in the uniqueness portion of the inverse problem. The mathematical bases of BI and stochastic inversion are explored, with consideration of bound-softening problems and resolution in linear Gaussian BI. The problem of estimating the radial magnetic field B(r) at the earth core-mantle boundary from surface and satellite measurements is then analyzed in detail, with specific attention to the selection of lambda in the studies of Gubbins (1983) and Gubbins and Bloxham (1985). It is argued that the selection method is inappropriate and leads to lambda values much larger than those that would result if a reasonable bound on the heat flow at the CMB were assumed.

Backus, George E.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Cell separation by immunoaffinity partitioning with polyethylene glycol-modified Protein A in aqueous polymer two-phase systems

Previous work has shown that polyethylene glycol (PEG)-bound antibodies can be used as affinity ligands in PEG-dextran two-phase systems to provide selective partitioning of cells to the PEG-rich phase. In the present work it is shown that immunoaffinity partitioning can be simplified by use of PEG-modified Protein A which complexes with unmodified antibody and cells and shifts their partitioning into the PEG-rich phase, thus eliminating the need to prepare a PEG-modified antibody for each cell type. In addition, the paper provides a more rigorous test of the original technique with PEG-bound antibodies by showing that it is effective at shifting the partitioning of either cell type of a mixture of two cell populations.

Karr, Laurel J.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Semi-Markov Unreliability Range Evaluator (SURE)

Analysis tool for reconfigurable, fault-tolerant systems, SURE provides efficient way to calculate accurate upper and lower bounds for death state probabilities for large class of semi-Markov models. Calculated bounds close enough for use in reliability studies of ultrareliable computer systems. Written in PASCAL for interactive execution and runs on DEC VAX computer under VMS.

Butler, R. W.↗