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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 1,171 records · Page 65

Achieving control and interoperability through unified model-based systems and software engineering

Control and interoperation of complex systems is one of the most difficult challenges facing NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. An integrated but diverse array of vehicles, habitats, and supporting facilities, evolving over the long course of the enterprise, must perform ever more complex tasks while moving steadily away from the sphere of ground support and intervention.

control↗

Improved large perturbation propulsion models for control system design (1988-1989) and large perturbation models of high velocity propulsion systems (1989-1990) and reduced order propulsion models for control system design (1990-1991)

Methods for modeling high speed propulsion systems will be discussed. Included in this category are internal flow propulsion systems without rotating machinery, such as inlets, ramjets, and scramjets. Among the modeling topics discussed are modeling of linear isentropic flow, heat exchange, gasdynamics, lumped parameter systems, and infinite dimensional systems. Furthermore, a generalized overview of modeling high speed propulsion systems is presented in this collection of papers.

Hartley, Tom T.↗

Start-up and Emergency Shutdown Modeling for a Coal-fired 10MWe sCO₂ Power Plant

As part of a Phase II Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study for the DOE Fossil Fuel Large Scale Pilots program, investigations of novel start-up and emergency shutdown methods for a stoker-fed, coal-fired, 10MWe sCO₂ power plant proposal were performed. These investigations were performed using 1D transient system models of the plant created within the GT-SUITE system modeling platform. The system model components were created using vendor quotation data (heat exchangers), performance maps (turbomachines), or FMU models (fired heater). Previously, Echogen Power Systems (Echogen) has used a sCO₂ power cycle start-up method that fills the system with liquid CO₂ to facilitate easy use of an electrically-driven start pump to transition the system from initial CO₂ fill to turbo-compressor initialization. The novel start-up method presented attempts this transition with a minimal filling of the system with liquid CO₂, to reduce the total CO₂ inventory required. This method leaves the start pump vulnerable to a two phase inlet condition as system pressure is below the CO₂ saturation pressure for the condenser cooling water temperature (Tcw). System model cases at Tcw of 18°C, 26°C, and 32°C, corresponding to cold, design, and hot ambient days, were analyzed to determine if the SP inlet condition could be kept as a subcooled liquid and estimate the CO₂ inventory reduction amount./p> Stoker-fed, coal-fired heaters continue to emit heat for some time even after emergency shutdown from events such as a power failure. This heat emission would lead to a failure of the fired heater, as the metal overheats, if the CO₂ flow is shut off. The emergency shutdown method presented utilizes CO₂ vented by a controllable vent valve (CRV) to provide CO₂ cooling flow to the fired heater. To determine the effectiveness of this method at keeping the fired heater peak tubing metal temperature below the ASME material temperature limit, for pressures below 5 MPa, of 816 °C, system model cases with CRV diameters ranging from 4” to 10”, and an alternative CO₂ vent routing with CRV size of 6”, were investigated./p>

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Effort to Accelerate MBSE Adoption and Usage at JSC

This paper describes the authors' experience in adopting Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) at the NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC). Since 2009, NASA/JSC has been applying MBSE using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) to a number of advanced projects. Models integrate views of the system from multiple perspectives, capturing the system design information for multiple stakeholders. This method has allowed engineers to better control changes, improve traceability from requirements to design and manage the numerous interactions between components. As the project progresses, the models become the official source of information and used by multiple stakeholders. Three major types of challenges that hamper the adoption of the MBSE technology are described. These challenges are addressed by a multipronged approach that includes educating the main stakeholders, implementing an organizational infrastructure that supports the adoption effort, defining a set of modeling guidelines to help engineers in their modeling effort, providing a toolset that support the generation of valuable products, and providing a library of reusable models. JSC project case studies are presented to illustrate how the proposed approach has been successfully applied.

Wang, Lui↗

Projection and assembly method for multibody component model reduction

The problem addressed is that of obtaining reduced-order component models for use in simulating the dynamics of a multibody system. In certain cases, nonlinear system models may be constructed using linear dynamic models for each component, but allowing large angle motion between components. Without some form of model reduction, system models constructed in this manner may be too large for use in control system design and simulation trades. This paper analyzes one method of component model reduction that allows systems level requirements (e.g., capturing the effect of body 1 reaction wheel noise on body 2 camera pointing) to aid in the selection of the reduced-order component models. Briefly stated, important modes are selected at the system level and projected onto the components, and reduced-order components are then assembled into a reduced-order system model that retains the projected modes.

Bernard, Douglas E.↗

A Model Based Systems Engineering Approach Towards Developing a Rapid Analysis and Trades Environment

In this work, an integrated and end-to-end modeling environment was developed to assess the system-level impacts of evolving requirements and design parameters. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) collaborated with JPL engineers to develop, implement, and test a modeling environment to assess design changes to a notional Europa Mission called the Jupiter Europa Buzzer (JEB). This environment was developed using a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach and consists of three major components: the Systems Model, the Mission Simulator, and the Web Based Interactive Dashboard. In summary, utilizing this environment in a representative notional end-to-end scenario, performance margins were calculated in hours while maintaining consistent analytical, hardware, and operational assumptions.

Model Based System Engineering↗

An Approach to Evaluating the Impact of Small-Core Turbofan Technologies on Engine and Aircraft Performance

NASA’s Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core (HyTEC) project aims to accelerate the development of small-core turbofan engine technologies to enable a fuel burn reduction of 5 to 10 percent for next-generation aircraft, compared to 2020s best-in-class technology. This paper presents a demonstration of methods for evaluating the potential performance impact of small-core engine technologies developed under Phase 1 of the HyTEC project. The approach involves model-based systems analysis, where small-core innovations are integrated into baseline turbofan and aircraft systems models, creating a notional vision system. Performance of the vision system is examined at both the engine and vehicle level. The examined performance metrics include: engine bypass ratio, overall pressure ratio, high pressure compressor exit corrected mass flow, and aircraft fuel burn. The CFM LEAP-1B28 and Boeing 737 MAX 8 are chosen as the baseline state-of-the-art systems. Preliminary results map a design space for the small-core vision system and quantify the distinct effects of technologies on the key metrics.

Michael A Bennett↗

An Approach to Evaluating the Impact of Small-core Turbofan Technologies on Engine and Aircraft Performance

NASA’s Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core (HyTEC) project aims to accelerate the development of small-core turbofan engine technologies to enable a fuel burn reduction of 5 to 10 percent for next-generation aircraft, compared to 2020s best-in-class technology. This paper presents a demonstration of methods for evaluating the potential performance impact of small-core engine technologies developed under Phase 1 of the HyTEC project. The approach involves model-based systems analysis, where small-core innovations are integrated into baseline turbofan and aircraft systems models, creating a notional vision system. Performance of the vision system is examined at both the engine and vehicle level. The examined performance metrics include: engine bypass ratio, overall pressure ratio, high pressure compressor exit corrected mass flow, and aircraft fuel burn. The CFM LEAP-1B28 and Boeing 737 MAX 8 are chosen as the baseline state-of-the-art systems. Preliminary results map a design space for the small-core vision system and quantify the distinct effects of technologies on the key metrics.

Michael Bennett↗

Integration of software tools for integrative modeling of biomolecular systems

Integrative modeling computes a model based on varied types of input information, be it from experiments or prior models. Often, a type of input information will be best handled by a specific modeling software package. In such a case, we desire to integrate our integrative modeling software package, Integrative Modeling Platform (IMP), with software specialized to the computational demands of the modeling problem at hand. After several attempts, however, we have concluded that even in collaboration with the software's developers, integration is either impractical or impossible. The reasons for the intractability of integration include software incompatibilities, differing modeling logic, the costs of collaboration, and academic incentives. In the integrative modeling software ecosystem, several large modeling packages exist with often redundant tools. So we reason, therefore, that the other development groups have similarly concluded that the benefit of integration does not justify the cost. As a result, modelers are often restricted to the set of tools within a single software package. The inability to integrate tools from distinct software negatively impacts the quality of the models and the efficiency of the modeling. As the complexity of modeling problems grows, we seek to galvanize developers and modelers to consider the long-term benefit that software interoperability yields. In this article, we formulate a demonstrative set of software standards for implementing a model search using tools from independent software packages and discuss our efforts to integrate IMP and the crystallography suite Phenix within the Bayesian modeling framework.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Model-Based Systems Engineering Journey to Developing a Concept of Operations

Starting in 2017, NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) element began a systems engineering transition from traditional, document-centric development to model-centric development when defining its foundation medical systems. These foundation medical systems define a Concept of Operations (ConOps) and identify the generic requirements for a medical system based on assumptions about a generic crew and mission environments and guidance from NASA standards (e.g., Medical “Levels of Care”). By making the transition, ExMC intends to improve communication among stakeholders about foundation medical system requirements and content. In addition, this transition will enable ExMC to lower both development and crew treatment risks for future, mission-specific medical systems. ExMC followed a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) paradigm when developing the foundation medical systems. A model-based approach provides several advantages over a traditional, document-centric approach. First, when Systems Engineers (SE) develop diagrams in a model using a standard modeling language, they produce information dense pictures that facilitate understanding much more efficiently with less room for misinterpretation than text. Second, due to the evolving nature of projects, documentation becomes out of date the minute it is published. This can result in people making decisions based on information that is no longer current, especially if they are referencing a locally-stored copy of a document. A model, on the other hand, is always up to date with the latest approved changes and information. It serves as a single point of truth. Third, a model-centric approach centralizes all important information in one place. Rather than having to flip through separate ConOps documents, design specifications, requirements specifications, and the like to coordinate information, a model captures the content in one, integrated spot. This integration makes tracing information from end-to-end easier with greater reliability. The ExMC Systems Engineering Lifecycle follows a well-defined process. ExMC Systems Engineers perform all major steps of the process, regardless of the development methodology. One of the first steps in the process is developing the ConOps that describes the operation of the system from the point of view of the users. It includes a list of the users and their needs, the goals of the medical system, key assumptions about the system, and definitions of the medical system’s operational environments. For this development effort, ExMC chose to replace the traditional text-based ConOps document with a model. While the decision to change the development workflow was not difficult, implementing the structural and organizational workflows were. It required showing ExMC’s users, most of whom are not Systems Engineers, how the information they require would be presented in the model and to gain their acceptance of this approach. This paper documents key lessons learned during the ConOps transformation by focusing on how the model represents information, the agile workflow used by SEs when developing the model and how it integrates into a project plan, how leadership influenced key users to accept the transformation, and how the users interact with the model information.

Jeffrey Robert Cohen↗

Fault tolerant system performance modeling

With the proliferation of complex digital systems on aircraft, the need to accurately predict system performance early in the system design cycle becomes imperative. In the past, system designers have relied on ad hoc methods for evaluating performance issues. This has produced systems that have not always worked as originally intended. To alleviate these design deficiencies, formal methods, with supporting tools, must be adhered to during the system design process. The use of performance modeling tools is becoming widely accepted as a way to address timing considerations of system design. An additional incentive for the use of these tools is that they allow the system architect to analyze system component interactions (i.e., bus contention, contention of functions for a processing site, and system repair activity on application performance). This inherent flexibility can result in an explicit specification of the system architecture. This paper addresses a method that supports performance modeling of fault tolerant systems using a discrete event simulation tool. An additional focus is on lessons learned from analyzing these classes of problems. The methodology and supporting work provide system architects with the capability to specify candidate architectures and accurately predict their performance in the early stages of design, where changes to system design is most cost effective. The work has been supported under NASA contract NAS1-18099. Integrated Airframe Propulsion Control System Architecture (IAPSA II). This contract addresses methodology, analysis, and detailed design of integrated control system architectures suitable for high-performance aircraft of the 1990's.

Discrete event simulation↗

Applying Model Based Systems Engineering to NASA's Space Communications Networks

System engineering practices for complex systems and networks now require that requirement, architecture, and concept of operations product development teams, simultaneously harmonize their activities to provide timely, useful and cost-effective products. When dealing with complex systems of systems, traditional systems engineering methodology quickly falls short of achieving project objectives. This approach is encumbered by the use of a number of disparate hardware and software tools, spreadsheets and documents to grasp the concept of the network design and operation. In case of NASA's space communication networks, since the networks are geographically distributed, and so are its subject matter experts, the team is challenged to create a common language and tools to produce its products. Using Model Based Systems Engineering methods and tools allows for a unified representation of the system in a model that enables a highly related level of detail. To date, Program System Engineering (PSE) team has been able to model each network from their top-level operational activities and system functions down to the atomic level through relational modeling decomposition. These models allow for a better understanding of the relationships between NASA's stakeholders, internal organizations, and impacts to all related entities due to integration and sustainment of existing systems. Understanding the existing systems is essential to accurate and detailed study of integration options being considered. In this paper, we identify the challenges the PSE team faced in its quest to unify complex legacy space communications networks and their operational processes. We describe the initial approaches undertaken and the evolution toward model based system engineering applied to produce Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) PSE products. We will demonstrate the practice of Model Based System Engineering applied to integrating space communication networks and the summary of its results and impact. We will highlight the insights gained by applying the Model Based System Engineering and provide recommendations for its applications and improvements.

Bhasin, Kul↗

Rainbows and Climate Change: A tutorial on climate model diagnostics and parameterization

Earth System Models (ESMs) must represent processes below the grid scale of a model using representations (parameterizations) of physical and chemical processes. As a tutorial exercise to understand diagnostics and parameterization, this work presents a representation of rainbows for an ESM: the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2). Using the 'state' of the model, basic physical laws, and some assumptions, we generate a representation of this unique optical phenomena as a diagnostic output. Rainbow occurrence and it's possible changes are related to cloud occurrence and rain formation which are critical uncertainties for climate change prediction. The work highlights issues which are typical of many diagnostics parameterizations such as assumptions, uncertain parameters and the difficulty of evaluation against uncertain observations. Results agree qualitatively with limited available global 'observations' of Rainbows. Rainbows are seen in expected locations in the sub-tropics over the ocean where broken clouds and frequent precipitation occurs. The diurnal peak is in the morning over ocean and in the evening over land. The representation of rainbows is found to be quantitatively sensitive to the assumed amount of cloudiness and the amount of stratiform rain. Rainbows are projected to have decreased, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, due to aerosol pollution effects increasing cloud coverage since 1850. In the future, continued climate change is projected to decrease cloud cover, associated with a positive cloud feedback. As a result the rainbow diagnostic projects that rainbows will increase in the future, with the largest changes at mid-latitudes. The diagnostic may be useful for assessing cloud parameterizations, and is an exercise in how to build and test parameterizations of atmospheric phenomena.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Data Assimilation for Robust UQ Within Agent-Based Simulation on HPC Systems

Agent-based simulation provides a powerful tool for in silico system modeling. However, these simulations do not provide built-in methods for uncertainty quantification (UQ). Within these types of models a typical approach to UQ is to run multiple realizations of the model then compute aggregate statistics. This approach is limited due to the compute time required for a solution. When faced with an emerging biothreat, public health decisions need to be made quickly and solutions for integrating near real-time data with analytic tools are needed. We propose an integrated Bayesian UQ framework for agent-based models based on sequential Monte Carlo sampling. Given streaming or static data about the evolution of an emerging pathogen this Bayesian framework provides a distribution over the parameters governing the spread of a disease through a population. These estimates of the spread of a disease may be provided to public health agencies seeking to abate the spread. By coupling agent-based simulations with Bayesian modeling in a data assimilation, our proposed framework provides a powerful tool for modeling dynamical systems in silico. We propose a method which reduces model error and provides a range of realistic possible outcomes. Moreover, our method addresses two primary limitations of ABMs: the lack of UQ and an inability to assimilate data. Our proposed framework combines the flexibility of an agent-based model with UQ provided by the Bayesian paradigm in a workflow which scales well to HPC systems. We provide algorithmic details and results on a simulated outbreak with both static and streaming data.

Spannaus, Adam [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000225213657)↗

Context in Models of Human-Machine Systems

All human-machine systems models represent context. This paper proposes a theory of context through which models may be usefully related and integrated for design. The paper presents examples of context representation in various models, describes an application to developing models for the Crew Activity Tracking System (CATS), and advances context as a foundation for integrated design of complex dynamic systems.

Callantine, Todd J.↗