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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2014

Spinoff 2013

Topics covered include: Innovative Software Tools Measure Behavioral Alertness; Miniaturized, Portable Sensors Monitor Metabolic Health; Patient Simulators Train Emergency Caregivers; Solar Refrigerators Store Life-Saving Vaccines; Monitors Enable Medication Management in Patients' Homes; Handheld Diagnostic Device Delivers Quick Medical Readings; Experiments Result in Safer, Spin-Resistant Aircraft; Interfaces Visualize Data for Airline Safety, Efficiency; Data Mining Tools Make Flights Safer, More Efficient; NASA Standards Inform Comfortable Car Seats; Heat Shield Paves the Way for Commercial Space; Air Systems Provide Life Support to Miners; Coatings Preserve Metal, Stone, Tile, and Concrete; Robots Spur Software That Lends a Hand; Cloud-Based Data Sharing Connects Emergency Managers; Catalytic Converters Maintain Air Quality in Mines; NASA-Enhanced Water Bottles Filter Water on the Go; Brainwave Monitoring Software Improves Distracted Minds; Thermal Materials Protect Priceless, Personal Keepsakes; Home Air Purifiers Eradicate Harmful Pathogens; Thermal Materials Drive Professional Apparel Line; Radiant Barriers Save Energy in Buildings; Open Source Initiative Powers Real-Time Data Streams; Shuttle Engine Designs Revolutionize Solar Power; Procedure-Authoring Tool Improves Safety on Oil Rigs; Satellite Data Aid Monitoring of Nation's Forests; Mars Technologies Spawn Durable Wind Turbines; Programs Visualize Earth and Space for Interactive Education; Processor Units Reduce Satellite Construction Costs; Software Accelerates Computing Time for Complex Math; Simulation Tools Prevent Signal Interference on Spacecraft; Software Simplifies the Sharing of Numerical Models; Virtual Machine Language Controls Remote Devices; Micro-Accelerometers Monitor Equipment Health; Reactors Save Energy, Costs for Hydrogen Production; Cameras Monitor Spacecraft Integrity to Prevent Failures; Testing Devices Garner Data on Insulation Performance; Smart Sensors Gather Information for Machine Diagnostics; Oxygen Sensors Monitor Bioreactors and Ensure Health and Safety; Vision Algorithms Catch Defects in Screen Displays; and Deformable Mirrors Capture Exoplanet Data, Reflect Lasers.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1988

Programmable synaptic chip for electronic neural networks

A binary synaptic matrix chip has been developed for electronic neural networks. The matrix chip contains a programmable 32X32 array of 'long channel' NMOSFET binary connection elements implemented in a 3-micron bulk CMOS process. Since the neurons are kept off-chip, the synaptic chip serves as a 'cascadable' building block for a multi-chip synaptic network as large as 512X512 in size. As an alternative to the programmable NMOSFET (long channel) connection elements, tailored thin film resistors are deposited, in series with FET switches, on some CMOS test chips, to obtain the weak synaptic connections. Although deposition and patterning of the resistors require additional processing steps, they promise substantial savings in silicon area. The performance of synaptic chip in a 32-neuron breadboard system in an associative memory test application is discussed.

Moopenn, A.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Concepts to Support HRP Integration Using Publications and Modeling

Initial efforts are underway to enhance the Human Research Program (HRP)'s identification and support of potential cross-disciplinary scientific collaborations. To increase the emphasis on integration in HRP's science portfolio management, concepts are being explored through the development of a set of tools. These tools are intended to enable modeling, analysis, and visualization of the state of the human system in the spaceflight environment; HRP's current understanding of that state with an indication of uncertainties; and how that state changes due to HRP programmatic progress and design reference mission definitions. In this talk, we will discuss proof-of-concept work performed using a subset of publications captured in the HRP publications database. The publications were tagged in the database with words representing factors influencing health and performance in spaceflight, as well as with words representing the risks HRP research is reducing. Analysis was performed on the publication tag data to identify relationships between factors and between risks. Network representations were then created as one type of visualization of these relationships. This enables future analyses of the structure of the networks based on results from network theory. Such analyses can provide insights into HRP's current human system knowledge state as informed by the publication data. The network structure analyses can also elucidate potential improvements by identifying network connections to establish or strengthen for maximized information flow. The relationships identified in the publication data were subsequently used as inputs to a model captured in the Systems Modeling Language (SysML), which functions as a repository for relationship information to be gleaned from multiple sources. Example network visualization outputs from a simple SysML model were then also created to compare to the visualizations based on the publication data only. We will also discuss ideas for building upon this proof-of-concept work to further support an integrated approach to human spaceflight risk reduction.

Mindock, J.↗
NASA NTRS1977

Applications of thermal infrared imagery for energy conservation and environmental surveys

The survey procedures, developed during the winter and summer of 1976, employ color and color infrared aerial photography, thermal infrared imagery, and a handheld infrared imaging device. The resulting imagery was used to detect building heat losses, deteriorated insulation in built-up type building roofs, and defective underground steam lines. The handheld thermal infrared device, used in conjunction with the aerial thermal infrared imagery, provided a method for detecting and locating those roof areas that were underlain with wet insulation. In addition, the handheld infrared device was employed to conduct a survey of a U.S. Army installation's electrical distribution system under full operating loads. This survey proved to be cost effective procedure for detecting faulty electrical insulators and connections that if allowed to persist could have resulted in both safety hazards and loss in production.

Carney, J. R.↗
NASA NTRS2011

NASA Ares I Launch Vehicle Roll and Reaction Control Systems Lessons Learned

On April 15, 2010 President Barak Obama made the official announcement that the Constellation Program, which included the Ares I launch vehicle, would be canceled. NASA s Ares I launch vehicle was being designed to launch the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, returning humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond. It consisted of a First Stage (FS) five segment solid rocket booster and a liquid J-2X Upper Stage (US) engine. Roll control for the FS was planned to be handled by a dedicated Roll Control System (RoCS), located on the connecting interstage. Induced yaw or pitch moments experienced during FS ascent would have been handled by vectoring of the booster nozzle. After FS booster separation, the US Reaction Control System (ReCS) would have provided the US Element with three degrees of freedom control as needed. The lessons learned documented in this paper will be focused on the technical designs and producibility of both systems along with the partnership between NASA and Boeing, who was on contract to build the Ares I US Element, which included the FS RoCS and US ReCS. In regards to partnership, focus will be placed on integration along with technical work accomplished by Boeing with special emphasis on each task order. In summary, this paper attempts to capture key lessons learned that should be helpful in the development of future launch vehicle RCS designs.

Butt, Adam↗
NASA NTRS2012

Best Practices from the Design and Development of the Ares I Launch Vehicle Roll and Reaction Control Systems

On April 15, 2010 President Barak Obama made the official announcement that the Constellation Program, which included the Ares I launch vehicle, would be canceled. NASA s Ares I launch vehicle was being designed to launch the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, returning humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond. It consisted of a First Stage (FS) five segment solid rocket booster and a liquid J-2X Upper Stage (US) engine. Roll control for the FS was planned to be handled by a dedicated Roll Control System (RoCS), located on the connecting interstage. Induced yaw or pitch moments experienced during FS ascent would have been handled by vectoring of the booster nozzle. After FS booster separation, the US Reaction Control System (ReCS) would have provided the US Element with three degrees of freedom control as needed. The best practices documented in this paper will be focused on the technical designs and producibility of both systems along with the partnership between NASA and Boeing, who was on contract to build the Ares I US Element, which included the FS RoCS and US ReCS. In regards to partnership, focus will be placed on integration along with technical work accomplished by Boeing. This will include detailed emphasis on task orders developed between NASA and Boeing that were used to direct specific work that needed to be accomplished. In summary, this paper attempts to capture key best practices that should be helpful in the development of future launch vehicle and spacecraft RCS designs.

Butt, Adam↗
NASA NTRS1978

Fault-tolerant building-block computer study

Ultra-reliable core computers are required for improving the reliability of complex military systems. Such computers can provide reliable fault diagnosis, failure circumvention, and, in some cases serve as an automated repairman for their host systems. A small set of building-block circuits which can be implemented as single very large integration devices, and which can be used with off-the-shelf microprocessors and memories to build self checking computer modules (SCCM) is described. Each SCCM is a microcomputer which is capable of detecting its own faults during normal operation and is described to communicate with other identical modules over one or more Mil Standard 1553A buses. Several SCCMs can be connected into a network with backup spares to provide fault-tolerant operation, i.e. automated recovery from faults. Alternative fault-tolerant SCCM configurations are discussed along with the cost and reliability associated with their implementation.

Rennels, D. A.↗
NASA NTRS2007

My Rewarding Summer Research Experience at NASA

My summer research experience at the Kennedy Space Center has been a truly rewarding one. As an electrical engineering student at the University of South Florida, I was blessed with a beneficial opportunity to gain valuable knowledge in my career, and also apply it through working at NASA. One of my inspirations in becoming an engineer is to work at NASA someday, and I was very excited and honored to have this opportunity. My goal in this internship was to strengthen my preparation in becoming an engineer by learning new material, acquiring skills by practicing what I learned, and discovering the expectations of engineering work at NASA. Through this summer research, I was able to learn new computer programs and perform various tasks that gave me experience and skills as an engineer. My primary job was to conduct work on the Constellation Test article, which is a simulation model of the Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) tanking system. This is a prototype of a launch facility and an Ares I Vehicle, which God willing will transport astronauts to the moon. Construction of the CLV is in progress and a test launch is anticipated for 2010. Moreover, the Test Article serves as a demonstration too, training test bed, and may be expanded for new simulation of launch system elements, which could be applied to real life operations. The test article is operated and run by a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), which is a digital computer that is used to control all forms of machinery such as those in manufacturing buildings and other industries. PLCs are different than other computers because of the physical protection they have against damaging environmental conditions that would destroy other computers. Also, PLCs are equipped with lots of input and output connections that allow extensive amounts of commands to be executed, which would normally require many computers to do. Therefore, PLCs are small, rugged, and extremely powerful tools that may continue to be employed at NASA. Furthermore, in order to conduct productive work on the Test Article, I needed to learn the computer program called RS Logics 5000.

Aviles, Andres↗
NASA NTRS2020

Harmonization of global land use change and management for the period 850–2100 (LUH2) for CMIP6

Human land use activities have resulted in large changes to the biogeochemical and biophysical properties of the Earth's surface, with consequences for climate and other ecosystem services. In the future, land use activities are likely to expand and/or intensify further to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. As part of the World Climate Research Program Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the international community has developed the next generation of advanced Earth system models (ESMs) to estimate the combined effects of human activities (e.g., land use and fossil fuel emissions) on the carbon–climate system. A new set of historical data based on the History of the Global Environment database (HYDE), and multiple alternative scenarios of the future (2015–2100) from Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) teams, is required as input for these models. With most ESM simulations for CMIP6 now completed, it is important to document the land use patterns used by those simulations. Here we present results from the Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) project, which smoothly connects updated historical reconstructions of land use with eight new future projections in the format required for ESMs. The harmonization strategy estimates the fractional land use patterns, underlying land use transitions, key agricultural management information, and resulting secondary lands annually, while minimizing the differences between the end of the historical reconstruction and IAM initial conditions and preserving changes depicted by the IAMs in the future. The new approach builds on a similar effort from CMIP5 and is now provided at higher resolution (0.25°×0.25°) over a longer time domain (850–2100, with extensions to 2300) with more detail (including multiple crop and pasture types and associated management practices) using more input datasets (including Landsat remote sensing data) and updated algorithms (wood harvest and shifting cultivation); it is assessed via a new diagnostic package. The new LUH2 products contain > 50 times the information content of the datasets used in CMIP5 and are designed to enable new and improved estimates of the combined effects of land use on the global carbon–climate system.

land use land cover change↗
NASA NTRS1983

Economic competitiveness of fuel cell onsite integrated energy systems

The economic competitiveness of fuel cell onsite integrated energy systems (OS/IES) in residential and commercial buildings is examined. The analysis is carried out for three different buildings with each building assumed to be at three geographic locations spanning a range of climatic conditions. Numerous design options and operating strategies are evaluated and two economic criteria are used to measure economic performance. In general the results show that fuel cell OS/IES's are competitive in most regions of the country if the OS/IES is properly designed. The preferred design is grid connected, makes effective use of the fuel cell's thermal output, and has a fuel cell powerplant sized for the building's base electrical load.

Bollenbacher, G.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Integration of the White Sands Complex into a Wide Area Network

The NASA White Sands Complex (WSC) satellite communications facility consists of two main ground stations, an auxiliary ground station, a technical support facility, and a power plant building located on White Sands Missile Range. When constructed, terrestrial communication access to these facilities was limited to copper telephone circuits. There was no local or wide area communications network capability. This project incorporated a baseband local area network (LAN) topology at WSC and connected it to NASA's wide area network using the Program Support Communications Network-Internet (PSCN-I). A campus-style LAN is configured in conformance with the International Standards Organization (ISO) Open Systems Interconnect (ISO) model. Ethernet provides the physical and data link layers. Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are used for the network and transport layers. The session, presentation, and application layers employ commercial software packages. Copper-based Ethernet collision domains are constructed in each of the primary facilities and these are interconnected by routers over optical fiber links. The network and each of its collision domains are shown to meet IEEE technical configuration guidelines. The optical fiber links are analyzed for the optical power budget and bandwidth allocation and are found to provide sufficient margin for this application. Personal computers and work stations attached to the LAN communicate with and apply a wide variety of local and remote administrative software tools. The Internet connection provides wide area network (WAN) electronic access to other NASA centers and the world wide web (WWW). The WSC network reduces and simplifies the administrative workload while providing enhanced and advanced inter-communications capabilities among White Sands Complex departments and with other NASA centers.

Boucher, Phillip Larry↗
NASA NTRS2004

Polymorphic Electronic Circuits

Polymorphic electronics is a nascent technological discipline that involves, among other things, designing the same circuit to perform different analog and/or digital functions under different conditions. For example, a circuit can be designed to function as an OR gate or an AND gate, depending on the temperature (see figure). Polymorphic electronics can also be considered a subset of polytronics, which is a broader technological discipline in which optical and possibly other information- processing systems could also be designed to perform multiple functions. Polytronics is an outgrowth of evolvable hardware (EHW). The basic concepts and some specific implementations of EHW were described in a number of previous NASA Tech Briefs articles. To recapitulate: The essence of EHW is to design, construct, and test a sequence of populations of circuits that function as incrementally better solutions of a given design problem through the selective, repetitive connection and/or disconnection of capacitors, transistors, amplifiers, inverters, and/or other circuit building blocks. The evolution is guided by a search-and-optimization algorithm (in particular, a genetic algorithm) that operates in the space of possible circuits to find a circuit that exhibits an acceptably close approximation of the desired functionality. The evolved circuits can be tested by computational simulation (in which case the evolution is said to be extrinsic), tested in real hardware (in which case the evolution is said to be intrinsic), or tested in random sequences of computational simulation and real hardware (in which case the evolution is said to be mixtrinsic).

Stoica, Adrian↗
NASA NTRS1993

Three-dimensional object recognition using similar triangles and decision trees

A system, TRIDEC, that is capable of distinguishing between a set of objects despite changes in the objects' positions in the input field, their size, or their rotational orientation in 3D space is described. TRIDEC combines very simple yet effective features with the classification capabilities of inductive decision tree methods. The feature vector is a list of all similar triangles defined by connecting all combinations of three pixels in a coarse coded 127 x 127 pixel input field. The classification is accomplished by building a decision tree using the information provided from a limited number of translated, scaled, and rotated samples. Simulation results are presented which show that TRIDEC achieves 94 percent recognition accuracy in the 2D invariant object recognition domain and 98 percent recognition accuracy in the 3D invariant object recognition domain after training on only a small sample of transformed views of the objects.

Spirkovska, Lilly↗
NASA NTRS1995

Performance Evaluation Tools for Next Generation Scalable Computing Platforms

The Federal High Performance and Communications (HPCC) Program continue to focus on R&D in a wide range of high performance computing and communications technologies. Using its accomplishments in the past four years as building blocks towards a Global Information Infrastructure (GII), an Implementation Plan that identifies six Strategic Focus Areas for R&D has been proposed. This white paper argues that a new generation of system software and programming tools must be developed to support these focus areas, so that the R&D we invest today can lead to technology pay-off a decade from now. The Global Computing Infrastructure (GCI) in the Year 2000 and Beyond would consists of thousands of powerful computing nodes connected via high-speed networks across the globe. Users will be able to obtain computing in formation services the GCI with the ease of using a plugging a toaster into the electrical outlet on the wall anywhere in the country. Developing and managing the GO requires performance prediction and monitoring capabilities that do not exist. Various accomplishments in this field today must be integrated and expanded to support this vision.

Yan, Jerry C.↗
NASA NTRS2007

Newton-Euler Dynamic Equations of Motion for a Multi-body Spacecraft

The Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission employs a formation of spinning spacecraft with several flexible appendages and thruster-based control. To understand the complex dynamic interaction of thruster actuation, appendage motion, and spin dynamics, each spacecraft is modeled as a tree of rigid bodies connected by spherical or gimballed joints. The method presented facilitates assembling by inspection the exact, nonlinear dynamic equations of motion for a multibody spacecraft suitable for solution by numerical integration. The building block equations are derived by applying Newton's and Euler's equations of motion to an "element" consisting of two bodies and one joint (spherical and gimballed joints are considered separately). Patterns in the "mass" and L'force" matrices guide assembly by inspection of a general N-body tree-topology system. Straightforward linear algebra operations are employed to eliminate extraneous constraint equations, resulting in a minimum-dimension system of equations to solve. This method thus combines a straightforward, easily-extendable, easily-mechanized formulation with an efficient computer implementation.

Stoneking, Eric↗
NASA NTRS1988

Overview and extensions of a system for routing directed graphs on SIMD architectures

Many problems can be described in terms of directed graphs that contain a large number of vertices where simple computations occur using data from adjacent vertices. A method is given for parallelizing such problems on an SIMD machine model that uses only nearest neighbor connections for communication, and has no facility for local indirect addressing. Each vertex of the graph will be assigned to a processor in the machine. Rules for a labeling are introduced that support the use of a simple algorithm for movement of data along the edges of the graph. Additional algorithms are defined for addition and deletion of edges. Modifying or adding a new edge takes the same time as parallel traversal. This combination of architecture and algorithms defines a system that is relatively simple to build and can do fast graph processing. All edges can be traversed in parallel in time O(T), where T is empirically proportional to the average path length in the embedding times the average degree of the graph. Additionally, researchers present an extension to the above method which allows for enhanced performance by allowing some broadcasting capabilities.

Tomboulian, Sherryl↗
NASA NTRS2015

Center Planning and Development: Multi-User Spaceport Initiatives

The Vehicle Assembly building at NASAs Kennedy Space Center has been used since 1966 to vertically assemble every launch vehicle, since the Apollo Program, launched from Launch Complex 39 (LC-39). After the cancellation of the Constellation Program in 2010 and the retirement of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011, the VAB faced an uncertain future. As the Space Launch System (SLS) gained a foothold as the future of American spaceflight to deep space, NASA was only using a portion of the VABs initial potential. With three high bays connected to the Crawler Way transportation system, the potential exists for up to three rockets to be simultaneously processed for launch. The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Master plan, supported by the Center Planning and Development (CPD) Directorate, is guiding Kennedy toward a 21st century multi-user spaceport. This concept will maintain Kennedy as the United States premier gateway to space and provide multi-user operations through partnerships with the commercial aerospace industry. Commercial aerospace companies, now tasked with transporting cargo and, in the future, astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) via the Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) and Commercial Crew Program (CCP), are a rapidly growing industry with increasing capabilities to make launch operations more economical for both private companies and the government. Commercial operations to Low Earth Orbit allow the government to focus on travel to farther destinations through the SLS Program. With LC-39B designated as a multi-use launch pad, companies seeking to use it will require an integration facility to assemble, integrate, and test their launch vehicle. An Announcement for Proposals (AFP) was released in June, beginning the process of finding a non-NASA user for High Bay 2 (HB2) and the Mobile Launcher Platforms (MLPs). An Industry Day, a business meeting and tour for interested companies and organizations, was also arranged to identify and answer any additional questions posed by potential proposers. After amending the AFP and posting additional material for potential users to consider, proposals are being accepted until July 31, at which point they will be evaluated to determine the proposer which best meets the objectives of the government. By identifying VAB HB2 as available and seeking proposals from the commercial sector for VAB HB2 and MLP use, Center Planning and Development is ensuring Kennedy Space Centers relevance in the evolving launch industry of the 21st century.

AFP↗
NASA NTRS2003

Focused Rocket-Ejector RBCC Experiments

This document reports the results of additional efforts for the Rocket Based Combined Cycle (RBCC) rocket-ejector mode research work carried out at the Perm State Propulsion Engineering Research Center in support of NASA s technology development efforts for enabling 3rd generation Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV). The two tasks conducted under this program build on earlier NASA MSFC funded research program on rocket ejector investigations. The first task continued a systematic investigation of the improvements provided by a gaseous hydrogen (GHz)/oxygen (GO2) twin thruster RBCC rocket ejector system over a single rocket system. In a similar vein, the second task continued investigations into the performance of a hydrocarbon (liquid JP-7)/gaseous oxygen single thruster rocket-ejector system. To gain a systematic understanding of the rocket-ejector s internal fluid mechanic/combustion phenomena, experiments were conducted with both direct-connect and sea-level static diffusion and afterburning (DAB) configurations for a range of rocket operating conditions. For all experimental conditions, overall system performance was obtained through global measurements of wall static pressure profiles, heat flux profiles and engine thrust. For the GH2/GO2 propellant rocket ejector experiments, high frequency measurements of the pressure field within the system were also made to understand the unsteady behavior of the flowfield.

Santoro, Robert J.↗