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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 NTRS2011

Reliability and Maintainability Engineering - A Major Driver for Safety and Affordability

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is in the midst of an effort to design and build a safe and affordable heavy lift vehicle to go to the moon and beyond. To achieve that, NASA is seeking more innovative and efficient approaches to reduce cost while maintaining an acceptable level of safety and mission success. One area that has the potential to contribute significantly to achieving NASA safety and affordability goals is Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) engineering. Inadequate reliability or failure of critical safety items may directly jeopardize the safety of the user(s) and result in a loss of life. Inadequate reliability of equipment may directly jeopardize mission success. Systems designed to be more reliable (fewer failures) and maintainable (fewer resources needed) can lower the total life cycle cost. The Department of Defense (DOD) and industry experience has shown that optimized and adequate levels of R&M are critical for achieving a high level of safety and mission success, and low sustainment cost. Also, lessons learned from the Space Shuttle program clearly demonstrated the importance of R&M engineering in designing and operating safe and affordable launch systems. The Challenger and Columbia accidents are examples of the severe impact of design unreliability and process induced failures on system safety and mission success. These accidents demonstrated the criticality of reliability engineering in understanding component failure mechanisms and integrated system failures across the system elements interfaces. Experience from the shuttle program also shows that insufficient Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability (RMS) engineering analyses upfront in the design phase can significantly increase the sustainment cost and, thereby, the total life cycle cost. Emphasis on RMS during the design phase is critical for identifying the design features and characteristics needed for time efficient processing, improved operational availability, and optimized maintenance and logistic support infrastructure. This paper discusses the role of R&M in a program acquisition phase and the potential impact of R&M on safety, mission success, operational availability, and affordability. This includes discussion of the R&M elements that need to be addressed and the R&M analyses that need to be performed in order to support a safe and affordable system design. The paper also provides some lessons learned from the Space Shuttle program on the impact of R&M on safety and affordability.

Safie, Fayssal M.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Probabilistic risk assessment of the Space Shuttle. Phase 3: A study of the potential of losing the vehicle during nominal operation, volume 1

This document is the Executive Summary of a technical report on a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of the Space Shuttle vehicle performed under the sponsorship of the Office of Space Flight of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It briefly summarizes the methodology and results of the Shuttle PRA. The primary objective of this project was to support management and engineering decision-making with respect to the Shuttle program by producing (1) a quantitative probabilistic risk model of the Space Shuttle during flight, (2) a quantitative assessment of in-flight safety risk, (3) an identification and prioritization of the design and operations that principally contribute to in-flight safety risk, and (4) a mechanism for risk-based evaluation proposed modifications to the Shuttle System. Secondary objectives were to provide a vehicle for introducing and transferring PRA technology to the NASA community, and to demonstrate the value of PRA by applying it beneficially to a real program of great international importance.

Fragola, Joseph R.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Contribution of Pilots to Resilience in Normal Operations. Part II: A closer look at briefings: Anticipation and Monitoring Also Known as Planning and Coordination

Much of our knowledge about human performance in flight safety has come from the analysis of undesired events, whether accidents, incidents, or crew behaviors identified via flight exceedance monitoring or observational techniques. In recent years, there has been an acknowledgement that operational personnel are not merely sources of “human error”, but also make a unique human contribution to safe outcomes. In a few celebrated cases, this takes the form of “heroic saves”, but on many more occasions, operational personnel contribute to safety through everyday, often-unnoticed actions that turn potentially hazardous situations into non-events. An emerging approach to safety, frequently referred to as “Safety II,” proposes that the positive human contribution is an important and largely untapped source of safety information. Some airlines have successfully trained observers to identify and record the positive behaviors exhibited by the crew over the course of a flight. In other cases, flight crew are interviewed about good practices or positive behaviors. However, each of these methods are relatively limited in scale and resource intensive. A survey could provide a relatively low-cost approach to systematically gather this information on a larger scale. The primary purpose of the research was to develop and assess a surveys methodology for assessing crews' activities in normal flights and the operational perturbations encountered during normal operations. We hope that such a survey could be both a research tool as well as a safety management aid for the aviation industry. We collected responses concerning revenue flights from two groups of airline pilots (N = 25 & N= 65). The results indicated that relatively few flights proceeded exactly as in the original flight plan. Pilots routinely anticipated and adapted to changing circumstances. We will review the challenges encountered in developing the survey and summarize preliminary findings from two administrations of the survey to airline pilots.

human contribution safety↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advancing Multi-Hazard Risk and Safety Considerations for Aging Nuclear Facilities

While probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of nuclear facilities is expected to include internal and external hazards for a risk-informed and performance-based design, the current state of practice treats each hazard independently. However, such an independent treatment of hazards may not account for the correlations between different hazards and their response of and damage to the structures, systems, and components (SSCs) in a plant resulting in underestimating the overall risk. This project proposes to advance the multi-hazard PRA of nuclear facilities to more adequately evaluate concurrent hazards and contribute to an increased safety of nuclear plants. A framework for multi-hazard PRA will be developed by identifying concurrent hazard events (both internal and external) and event sequences that include interdependencies through the response of SSCs. An example application of the multi-hazard PRA framework will be demonstrated by considering a generic pressurized water reactor (PWR) subjected to seismic and internal flooding hazards. Computational models for the response of components will be developed to generated multi-hazard fragility surfaces under seismic and flooding loads. A PRA model consisting of event and fault trees will also be developed to quantify the multi-hazard risk profile and compare it with the independent hazard risk profile. Overall, by advancing the multi-hazard PRA of nuclear facilities, this project enhances nuclear safety and reduces costs by mitigating unforeseen consequences caused by correlations between concurrent hazards.

97 - MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2007

Engineering and Safety Partnership Enhances Safety of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP)

Project Management must use the risk assessment documents (RADs) as tools to support their decision making process. Therefore, these documents have to be initiated, developed, and evolved parallel to the life of the project. Technical preparation and safety compliance of these documents require a great deal of resources. Updating these documents after-the-fact not only requires substantial increase in resources - Project Cost -, but this task is also not useful and perhaps an unnecessary expense. Hazard Reports (HRs), Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEAs), Critical Item Lists (CILs), Risk Management process are, among others, within this category. A positive action resulting from a strong partnership between interested parties is one way to get these documents and related processes and requirements, released and updated in useful time. The Space Shuttle Program (SSP) at the Marshall Space Flight Center has implemented a process which is having positive results and gaining acceptance within the Agency. A hybrid Panel, with equal interest and responsibilities for the two larger organizations, Safety and Engineering, is the focal point of this process. Called the Marshall Safety and Engineering Review Panel (MSERP), its charter (Space Shuttle Program Directive 110 F, April 15, 2005), and its Operating Control Plan emphasizes the technical and safety responsibilities over the program risk documents: HRs; FMEA/CILs; Engineering Changes; anomalies/problem resolutions and corrective action implementations, and trend analysis. The MSERP has undertaken its responsibilities with objectivity, assertiveness, dedication, has operated with focus, and has shown significant results and promising perspectives. The MSERP has been deeply involved in propulsion systems and integration, real time technical issues and other relevant reviews, since its conception. These activities have transformed the propulsion MSERP in a truly participative and value added panel, making a difference for the safety of the Space Shuttle Vehicle, its crew, and personnel. Because of the MSERP's valuable contribution to the assessment of safety risk for the SSP, this paper also proposes an enhanced Panel concept that takes this successful partnership concept to a higher level of 'true partnership'. The proposed panel is aimed to be responsible for the review and assessment of all risk relative to Safety for new and future aerospace and related programs.

Duarte, Alberto↗
NASA NTRS2021

Decentralized Control Synthesis for Air Traffic Management in Urban Air Mobility

Urban air mobility (UAM) refers to air transportation services within an urban area, often in an on-demand fashion. We study air traffic management (ATM) for vehicles in a UAM fleet, while guaranteeing system safety requirements such as traffic separation. Existing ATM methods for unmanned aerial systems, such as UAS traffic management, utilize alternative approaches which do not provide strict safety guarantees. No established infrastructure exists for providing ATM at scale for UAM. We provide a decentralized, hierarchical approach for UAM ATM that allows for scalability to high traffic densities as well as providing theoretical guarantees of correctness with respect to user-provided safety specifications. Our main contributions are two-fold. First, we propose a novel UAM ATM architecture that divides the control authority between vertihubs that are each in charge of all UAM vehicles in their local airspace. Each vertihub also contains a number of vertiports that are in charge of UAM vehicle takeoffs and landings. The resulting architecture is decentralized and hierarchical, which not only enables scalability, but also robustness in the event of any individual vertihub or vertiport no longer being operational. Second, we provide a contract-based correct-by-construction reactive synthesis approach that provably guarantees safety properties with respect to user-provided specifications in linear temporal logic. We demonstrate the approach on large-volume UAM air traffic data.

Urban Air Mobility↗
DOE OSTI2020

Functionalized separator for next-generation batteries

Advancements in battery technology have dramatically increased demand for improvements in separator design, as the separator plays a critical role in ensuring the safety and electrochemical performance of the cells. Current separators, either in commercial usage or under investigation, have yet to meet the high stability and lifespan performance standards necessary to prevent deterioration in the efficiency and reliability of the battery technologies. Recently, considerable effort has been devoted to developing functionalized separators, ranging from designing a variety of new materials and modification methods, and increasingly, to optimizing advanced preparation processes. In order to understand how the mechanisms of separator performance are affected by different properties, we will first summarize recent research progress and then have in-depth discussions regarding the separator's significant contribution to enhancing the safety and performance of the cell. Additionally, we then provide our design strategy for future separators, which not only meets the requirements of different type of batteries, but also aims for multifunctionality. We hope such a perspective could provide new inspiration in the development of separator research for future battery technologies.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
NASA NTRS1977

Air Safety Spinoffs

Weight saving-even a matter of a few pounds-is an important consideration in airplane design and . construction. Boeing saved 200 pounds simply by substituting a new type of compressed gas cylinder on their 747 commercial airliners. For quickly evacuating passengers in the event of a ground emergency the 747 escape chutes allow ' passengers to slide to safety from the two-story height of the cabin deck. The chutes pop out of exitways and are automatically inflated in seconds by compressed air stored in pressure vessels. Boeing's weight saving resulted from a recent changeover to a new type of pressure vessel built by Structural Composites Industries Inc. of Azusa, Cal. The company employs technology originally developed for rocket motor casings; the cylinders are constructed by winding fibers around an aluminum liner. This technique offers high strength for very low weight-in this case 60 percent less than the pressure vessels earlier used on the 747. Another contribution to improved air safety is an underwater locator device. Called the "Pinger," it uses sonar techniques to locate aircraft crashed in water-or, more specifically, to recover the flight recorder aboard the airplane. Its recovery provides clues as to what caused the accident and suggests measures to prevent similar future occurrences. Until recently, there was no way to recover flight recorders aboard aircraft lost in water crashes. The Pinger, now serving 95 percent of the airline industry, provides an answer. Key element of the Pinger system is a small, battery-powered transmitter, or homing beacon, included as part of the recorder package. For as long as 30 days, the transmitter sends out an acoustic signal from water depths up to 20,000 feet. The other element of the system is a receiver, used by search crews to home in on the transmitter's signal. Originating as a U.S. Navy project, this device was refined and further developed by NASA's Langley Research Center to retrieve submerged nose cones from research rockets. NASA's contractor for the transmitter portion of the system was Dukane Corp., St. Charles, Ill. who subsequently developed the commercial version.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2020

Changes in Frequency of the Severity and Type of Aviation Accidents (1987 to 2016)

This document reports the fourth analysis to identify the types of accidents with the greatest impact on the overall safety risk in U.S. civil aviation. The first three analyses examined accidents in 1997-20061, in 2001-20102 and in 2005-20143. The safety risks herein are defined to include four elements: (1) the number of total accidents; (2) the number of fatal accidents; (3) the number of total injuries; (4) the number of fatal injuries. Two of the previous analyses also included the number of incidents, but incident data since 2007 are difficult to separate by flight operation. Other incident details are no longer recorded as well. Due to these changes, the author’s working copy of the incident data has not been updated since 2011 (for incidents through 2010), and the incident data were not included in this analysis. Powerplant and non-powerplant system component failures were the only categories with a greater contribution to the overall safety risk from incidents than from accidents. Accident types, as well as accident rates, have been shown to vary considerably among different flight operations (e.g., large air carriers versus general aviation). For this reason, all analyses were done separately for four types of flight operations (Part 121, Scheduled Part 135, Non- Scheduled Part 135 and Part 91).

Evans, Joni K.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advancing Multi-Hazard Risk and Safety Considerations for Aging Nuclear Facilities (Revision 1)

This project will demonstrate a multi-hazard time-dependent probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) approach for nuclear facilities considering aging-related deterioration of structures. A generic pressurized water reactor (PWR) reactor subjected to seismic mainshock-aftershock sequences considering the aging of the containment structure will be used as a case study to demonstrate the multi-hazard PRA approach. Using advanced modeling and simulation, seismic mainshock-aftershock fragility functions will be simulated for the containment structure considering aging effects. A multi-hazard PRA model for a generic PWR reactor will be built to quantify the multi-hazard core damage frequency (CDF) and large early release frequency (LERF) with explicit time-dependent modeling of event sequences. To date, the cascading impacts of multi-hazards are not adequately accounted for in the PRA models for nuclear facilities. In addition, for both initial and periodic evaluation of facilities to withstand natural phenomena hazards (NPH), deterioration of the SSCs due to aging and other effects is not adequately considered. By advancing multi-hazard considerations accounting for aging effects, this project will contribute to improved understanding of the safety of aging nuclear facilities. Project outcomes such as the multi-hazard CDF and LERF will also allow facility owners to optimize upgrade and retrofit protocols. This project is divided into two components: (1) advanced modeling and simulations; and (2) multi-hazard PRA. For the first component, Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Multi-hazard Analysis for STOchastic time-DOmaiN phenomena (MASTODON) and BlackBear codes will be used to simulate the seismic response and damage of a containment structure under cascading mainshock-aftershock sequences with aging effects. Uncertainties related to the seismic inputs, material parameters, and environmental factors such as temperature and humidity will be identified and propagated to the fragility functions. These fragility functions, which consider aging effects, will be time dependent. The second component will take the fragility information from the first component to build a multi-hazard time-dependent PRA model starting from a generic PWR model to evaluate the multi-hazard CDF and LERF and characterize the associated consequences. For this component, OpenPRA Web Application and SAPHIRE code will be used. Events such as the Fukushima Daiichi accident have highlighted the importance of considering the cascading impacts of multi-hazards for PRA. Moreover, many of the reactors in the current nuclear fleet in the United States (US) are already operating well beyond their initially planned design life, and applications for further extensions to operating licenses are being considered. Therefore, considering multi-hazard effects and aging deterioration in the NPH risk assessment process will contribute to the safety of both existing and future nuclear facilities. Outcomes of this project will thus directly benefit the standards DOE-STD-1020-16 and DOE-HDBK-1224-18.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
NASA NTRS2011

The Parable of the Boiled Safety Professional

Common and unique issues contribute to system failures. This paper touches on the concept of drift to failure as a cautionary message. Managers and leaders, design team members, fabricators and assemblers, analysis and assurance personnel, and others associated with operating and maintaining systems, need to pay attention to identify the manifestation of individual and collective behaviors that might indicate slips in rigor or focus or decisions that might eat away at safety margins as our system drifts to failure. Corrections to drift made during design and development phases may efficiently prevent or mitigate drift problems occurring in the operational phase.

Shivers, Charles H.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Destabilizing effects of edge infernal components on resistive wall modes in advanced tokamak scenarios

The stability of the n = 1 resistive wall modes (RWMs) dominated by the pressure-driven infernal components is investigated using the ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) code AEGIS for the advanced tokamak scenarios. Here, n is the toroidal mode number. In the advanced tokamak scenarios, due to the large fraction of bootstrap current contribution, the profile of safety factor q is deeply reversed in magnetic shear in the central core region and locally flattened within the edge pedestal. Consequently, the pressure-driven infernal components develop in the corresponding flat-q regions of both core and edge. However, the edge infernal components dominate the n = 1 RWM structure and lead to lower β N limits for the advanced tokamak scenarios. In the framework of ideal MHD, the edge rotation is found the most critical to the stabilization due to the dominant influence of the edge infernal components, which should be maintained sufficiently large in magnitude and range in order for the rotation alone to fully suppress the n = 1 RWM in typical advanced tokamak scenarios.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Evaluation of the first version of the new RFPI system dedicated to PIP-II project accelerator

The Low-Level Radio Frequency (LLRF) control system is one of the most critical superconducting linac infrastructures responsible for the parameters of the beam acceleration. The LLRF system mainly focuses on the electromagnetic field parameters inside the cavity. While it incorporates fast feedback algorithms to optimize energy transfer to the passing particle beam it does not follow other cryomodule or cavity parameter changes. The Radio Frequency Protection Interlock (RFPI) system closely monitors various factors (like cryomodule vacuum, beamline vacuum, field emission probe current level, temperature, RF signal leakage, etc). Its simple but reliable logic has to provide an instant decision about the LLRF system or high-power amplifier output signal blocking in case of safety region excitation. This contribution presents a new version of the RFPI system which logic is implemented in the FPGA chip. The initial work on the prototype of the new system design resulted in the PoC (Proof of Concept) device. The PoC offers the possibility of various protection logic configurations, input signals parameters evaluation, and modularity aspects verification. The structure and test results from the device evaluation are summarized and discussed in this contribution.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Firmware Tampering Detection in Heavy-Duty Vehicles through J1939 CAN Analysis

Modern heavy-duty vehicles rely on complex networks of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that communicate using the J1939 protocol. While this system makes it easier to update and configure vehicle components, it also opens the door to serious cybersecurity risks if not properly secured. This work investigates the potential for firmware tampering through the J1939 communication protocol, which enables ECU configuration and reprogramming over the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. By monitoring CAN traffic during legitimate maintenance operations and reverse-engineering OEM diagnostic software, we identified common and proprietary J1939 message identifiers, authentication patterns, and vulnerabilities within Unified Diagnostic Services (UDS). These findings demonstrate that inadequate authentication mechanisms can allow malicious actors to alter ECU firmware or disable safety functions, posing severe operational and safety risks. Our analysis contributes to the development of vehicle intrusion detection systems capable of recognizing abnormal reprogramming activity and future firmware fingerprinting methods to verify software integrity across ECUs. This work highlights the importance of standardizing secure firmware authentication across manufacturers to strengthen cyber resilience in heavy-duty vehicle systems.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Genesis Mission-Enabled Secure AI to Fortify Energy Process Safety (Genesis-SAFE)

Argonne National Laboratory is supporting the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT’s) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) with collaborative research on development and application of privacy preserving AI frameworks that leverage unmatched AI expertise and secure computing resources made available through the U.S. Genesis Mission1 . This research advances U.S. energy security goals by supporting a safe offshore energy industry with secure, domain-specific AI tools to analyze confidential industry datasets collected by BTS to rapidly improve identification of hazards, precursors, and systemic safety risks in high-risk operational environments. The staged, security-first approach begins with development and testing of Argonne’s Genesis Mission-enabled Secure AI to Fortify Energy Process Safety (Genesis-SAFE) framework within Argonne’s accredited secure computing enclave (ABLE) leveraging Argonne’s AI scientific assistant substrate (AISAC). Methods to build synthetic datasets were developed together with BTS for use in preparing synthetic datasets that can be used to validate data containment, governance, and security controls in the ABLE environment. Future research directions would focus on applying the Genesis-SAFE framework to CIPSEA-protected datasets entirely within ABLE to support confidentiality-preserving analysis of safety risks, trends, and contributing factors.

Kim, Hyekyung [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), ↗
NASA NTRS1985

Pilots of the future - Human or computer?

In connection with the occurrence of aircraft accidents and the evolution of the air-travel system, questions arise regarding the computer's potential for making fundamental contributions to improving the safety and reliability of air travel. An important result of an analysis of the causes of aircraft accidents is the conclusion that humans - 'pilots and other personnel' - are implicated in well over half of the accidents which occur. Over 70 percent of the incident reports contain evidence of human error. In addition, almost 75 percent show evidence of an 'information-transfer' problem. Thus, the question arises whether improvements in air safety could be achieved by removing humans from control situations. In an attempt to answer this question, it is important to take into account also certain advantages which humans have in comparison to computers. Attention is given to human error and the effects of technology, the motivation to automate, aircraft automation at the crossroads, the evolution of cockpit automation, and pilot factors.

Chambers, A. B.↗