Results for “construction technology” — Page 77

NASA NTRS2019

Lunar Development Lab (LDL) Concept Leading to the First Human Lunar Outpost

The Lunar Development Lab (LDL) is a new concept to bring together academia, industry, non-profit organizations and NASA in an accelerator environment to generate new design solutions, technologies and architectures that will lead to the first human lunar outpost. By leveraging key partnerships in lunar science, mining, construction, chemical engineering and other key fields as well as making available rapid design, economic analysis, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools, significant progress can be made in a short amount of time. Therefore, the goal of LDL is to accelerate development and focus on economic solutions that can lead to sustainable and economical human lunar outpost.

Zuniga, Allison↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Review of Extra-Terrestrial Regolith Excavation Concepts and Prototypes

Regolith is present on many extra-terrestrial bodies, and the crushed rock material it is made of contains many of the resources that are enabling for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). When extracted, these resources can be used to provide consumables such as rocket propellant, human life support, working fluids and gases for industrial processes and feedstocks for manufacturing. In addition, the regolith can also be very beneficial for construction purposes as an aggregate which can be used for construction materials and shielding for radiation protection and micrometeorite impact. Binders for regolith concrete may also be made from geopolymers that may be in the regolith. The regolith can be melted and drawn out into glass fibers and used as reinforcements in a metal, polymer, or concrete matrix. In addition, there is tremendous scientific and geological knowledge that can only be obtained by studying samples of the regolith. However, none of these valuable activities can proceed without first acquiring the regolith granular material with some type of excavation device and method. Excavation is in the critical path of many workflows that will make up the capabilities required to establish a human and robotic presence in our solar system. While scientific in-situ sampling of regolith in small quantities has been achieved since the dawn of the space age in the 1960’s, large scale excavation for mining and construction on extra-terrestrial bodies has only been contemplated, for many decades, but serious development and prototyping of excavation technologies for use in reduced gravity space environments was only started in the late 1990’s. This paper will review and document the evolution of extra-terrestrial excavation concepts and prototypes based on the available literature and the personal experience of the author who has been working on regolith excavation technology development since 1998.

Regolith↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Review of Extra-Terrestrial Regolith Excavation Concepts and Prototype

Regolith is present on many extra-terrestrial bodies, and the crushed rock material it is made of contains many of the resources that are enabling for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). When extracted, these resources can be used to provide consumables such as rocket propellant, human life support, working fluids and gases for industrial processes and feedstocks for manufacturing. In addition, the regolith can also be very beneficial for construction purposes as an aggregate which can be used for construction materials and shielding for radiation protection and micrometeorite impact. Binders for regolith concrete may also be made from geopolymers that may be in the regolith. The regolith can be melted and drawn out into glass fibers and used as reinforcements in a metal, polymer, or concrete matrix. In addition, there is tremendous scientific and geological knowledge that can only be obtained by studying samples of the regolith. However, none of these valuable activities can proceed without first acquiring the regolith granular material with some type of excavation device and method. Excavation is in the critical path of many workflows that will make up the capabilities required to establish a human and robotic presence in our solar system. While scientific in-situ sampling of regolith in small quantities has been achieved since the dawn of the space age in the 1960’s, large scale excavation for mining and construction on extra-terrestrial bodies has only been contemplated, for many decades, but serious development and prototyping of excavation technologies for use in reduced gravity space environments was only started in the late 1990’s. This paper will review and document the evolution of extra-terrestrial excavation concepts and prototypes based on the available literature and the personal experience of the author who has been working on regolith excavation technology development since 1998.

Regolith↗

NASA NTRS2023

An In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) Concept of Operations for Vertiport Design and Operations

The National Airspace System is foreseen to undergo revolutionary change with Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and its use of vertiports to transport passengers and cargo. To assure safety with UAM and more broadly with Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), the National Academies recommended an In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) that is extensible to the design and operation of vertiports. Vertiport designs will scale in several dimensions including physical size and infrastructure depending upon location and in the Services, Functions, and Capabilities required for assuring safety with increasingly complex vertiport designs and operations. These operations will be enabled by evolving technologies including electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for passenger-and cargo-carrying commercial transportation. Within this construct, safety hazards and risk mitigations involving predictive data analytics and modeling will be used. Use cases and future challenges are examined to guide maturation of the IASMS ConOps for vertiports.

K Ellis↗

DOE OSTI2020

Advanced Power Electronics Designs - Reliability and Prognostics (Keystone Project 1)

The primary deliverable for this project will be to construct a power electronics package utilizing an organic electrically insulating substrate material with a direct chip-to-chip interconnect technology and demonstrate superior thermal performance and greater reliability under thermal cycling, thermal aging, vibration, power cycling, and electrical high-potential evaluation over traditional packages.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2022

Advanced Power Electronics Designs - Reliability and Prognostics (Keystone Project 1)

The primary deliverable for this project will be to construct a power electronics package utilizing an organic electrically insulating substrate material with a direct chip-to-chip interconnect technology and demonstrate superior thermal performance and greater reliability under thermal cycling, thermal aging, vibration, power cycling, and electrical high-potential evaluation over traditional packages.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Advanced Power Electronics Designs - Reliability and Prognostics (Keystone Project 1)

The primary deliverable for this project will be to construct a power electronics package utilizing an organic electrically insulating substrate material with a direct chip-to-chip interconnect technology and demonstrate superior thermal performance and greater reliability under thermal cycling, thermal aging, vibration, power cycling, and electrical high-potential evaluation over traditional packages.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,ENGINEERING↗

NASA NTRS2004

Construction and Analysis of Electronic circuits

The Aviation Environmental Technical Branch produces many various types of aeronautical research that benefits the NASA mission for space exploration and in turn, produces new technology for our nation. One of the present goals of the Aviation Environmental Technical Branch is to create better engines for airplanes by testing supersonic jet propulsion and safe fuel combustion. During the summer of 2004, I was hired by Vincent Sattenvhite Chief executive of the Aviation Environmental Technical Branch to Assist Yves Lamothe with a fuel igniter circuit. Yves Lamothe is an electrical engineer who is currently working on safe fuel combustion testing. This testing is planned to determine the minimum ignition energy for fuel and air vapors of current and alternative fuels under simulated flight conditions. An air temperature bath will provide simulated flight profile temperatures and the heat fluxes to the test chamber. I was assigned with Yves to help complete the igniter circuit which consists of a 36k voltage supply an oscilloscope, and a high voltage transistor switch. During my tenure in the L.E.C.I.R.P. program I studied the basics of electricity and circuitry along with two other projects that I completed. In the beginning of my internship, I devote all of my time to research the aspects of circuitry so that I would be prepared for the projects that I was assigned to do. I read about lessons on; the basic physical concepts of electronics, Electrical units, Basic dc circuits, direct current circuit analysis, resistance and cell batteries, various types of magnetism , Alternating current basics, inductance, and power supplies. I received work sheets and math equations from my Mentor so that I could be able to apply these concepts into my work. After I complete my studies, I went on to construct a LED chaser circuit which displays a series of light patterns using a 555 timer. I incorporated a switch and motion detector into the circuit to create basic alarm system. This project challenged my ability to interpret a schematic and expand it. While I was still completing the LED chaser circuit I Also was given A Basic Stamp Toddler Robot to build and program. The Toddler robot can walk in 36 various styles using advanced robotics. I used many different programs to create movement and direction of the robot. Also the Toddler can use infrared vision to sense objects. This enables the robot to maneuver indefinitely without running into objects. During my tenure at the NASA Glen Research Center I definite utilized the NASA mission to educate. I learned valuable information to help in my up coming year as a freshman in college.

Thomas, Ashley N.↗

DOE OSTI2024

NETL LCA Update US DOE Special Session, ACLCA 2024

This work was presented at the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment 2024 Conference in Snowbird, UT on September 24, 2024. The evaluation of the environmental advantages and disadvantages of energy technology and policy options requires the comparison of those options on a common basis, and as such, it needs to include not only obvious impacts like converting fuel to useful energy via combustion, but of infrastructure construction, extraction, processing and transportation of fuels, and transport of the final energy product to an end user. Further, it requires comparison across multiple categories of impacts, as single metric perspectives can miss important cross-media tradeoffs. At the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, life cycle analysis is used as a tool and framework for undertaking a broad range of these types of evaluations. This overview will describe the NETL LCA work over the past year.

Jamieson, Matthew↗

DOE OSTI2022

U.S. DOE Special Session: National Energy Technology Laboratory LCA Update

This work was presented at the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment 2022 Virtual Conference on November 8, 2022. The evaluation of the environmental advantages and disadvantages of energy technology and policy options requires the comparison of those options on a common basis, and as such, it needs to include not only obvious impacts like converting fuel to useful energy via combustion, but of infrastructure construction, extraction, processing and transportation of fuels, and transport of the final energy product to an end user. Further, it requires comparison across multiple categories of impacts, as single metric perspectives can miss important cross-media tradeoffs. At the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, life cycle analysis is used as a tool and framework for undertaking a broad range of these types of evaluations. This overview will describe the NETL LCA work over the past year.

Jamieson, Matthew↗

DOE OSTI2023

U.S. DOE Special Session: National Energy Technology Laboratory LCA Update

This work was presented at the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment 2023 Conference in Burlington, VT on September 28, 2023. The evaluation of the environmental advantages and disadvantages of energy technology and policy options requires the comparison of those options on a common basis, and as such, it needs to include not only obvious impacts like converting fuel to useful energy via combustion, but of infrastructure construction, extraction, processing and transportation of fuels, and transport of the final energy product to an end user. Further, it requires comparison across multiple categories of impacts, as single metric perspectives can miss important cross-media tradeoffs. At the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, life cycle analysis is used as a tool and framework for undertaking a broad range of these types of evaluations. This overview will describe the NETL LCA work over the past year.

Jamieson, Matthew↗

NASA NTRS2007

Discovering the Ancient Maya From Space

The Peten region of northern Guatemala contains some of the most significant Mayan archeological sites in Latin America. It was in this region that the Maya civilization began, flourished, and abruptly disappeared. Remote sensing technology is helping to locate and map ancient Maya sites that are threatened today by accelerating deforestation and looting. Thematic Mapper, IKONOS, and QuickBird satellite, and airborne STAR-3i and AIRSAR radar data, combined with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, are successfully detecting ancient Maya features such as sites, roadways, canals, and water reservoirs. Satellite imagery is also being used to map the bajos, which are seasonally flooded swamps that cover over 40% of the land surface. Through the use of various airborne and satellite sensor systems we have been able to detect and map ancient causeways, temples, reservoirs, and land forms, and locate these features on the ground through GPS technology. Recently, we have discovered that there is a strong relationship between a tropical forest vegetation signature in satellite imagery and the location of archeological sites. We believe that the use o f limestone and lime plasters in ancient Maya construction affects the moisture, nutrition, and plant species of the surface vegetation. We have mapped these vegetation signatures in the imagery and verified through field survey that they are indicative of archeological sites. Through the use of remote sensing and GIS technology it is possible to identify unrecorded archeological features in a dense tropical forest environment and monitor these cultural features for their protection.

Sever, T. L.↗

DOE OSTI2022

Neutrino Hunting: Looking through a UV Lens Scintillation Photon Detection in a Large-Volume Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber, Exposed to a Multi-GeV Charged Particle Beam

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will be a world-class neutrino observatory and nucleon decay detector designed to answer fundamental questions about elementary particles and their role in the universe. The DUNE experiment will consist of a a Near Detector, located at Fermilab, and a Far Detector, approximately 1.5~km underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, located $\sim$1300~km away. The accelerator complex at Fermilab will host an intense beam of neutrinos directed toward the two detectors. My dissertation centers on the implementation of technologies used to detect scintillation photon signals in liquid argon in the context of the DUNE's Far Detector Single-Phase (SP) module design, and features direct contributions to the Photon Detection System (PDS) deployed in the ProtoDUNE-SP Large-Volume Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) prototype. The PDS is needed for non-beam event timing, such as atmospheric neutrinos, proton d ecay, and supernova detection. The PDS provides a prompt signal ($t_{0}$ information) for micro-second event time determination, which improves the TPC's spatial localization along drift direction, enables accurate ionization-signal-attenuation determination, and even provides calorimetry. My dissertation will discuss an overview of the DUNE and ProtoDUNE-SP experiment and how we detect neutrinos in LAr, via charge and scintillation light. It will discuss my core experimental and analysis work, in regards to the Photon Detection System; including my contributions in establishing procedures for the commissioning and integration for the Photon Detector System that will be valuable during the construction, installation, commissioning, and operations of the DUNE Far Detector. In addition, it will comprehensively discuss the capability of three different photon detection technologies, and their characteristics and responses to muon and electron beam particles over a range of beam momenta , from 0.3~GeV/$c$ - 7~GeV/$c$. Further, the overall progress detailed in this thesis will help pave the way toward understanding the physical properties of these detectors, which will contribute to the success of the sensitivity measurements required for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy and $\delta_{CP}$.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

NASA NTRS1994

Review of advanced radiator technologies for spacecraft power systems and space thermal control

A two-part overview of progress in space radiator technologies is presented. The first part reviews and compares the innovative heat-rejection system concepts proposed during the past decade, some of which have been developed to the breadboard demonstration stage. Included are space-constructable radiators with heat pipes, variable-surface-area radiators, rotating solid radiators, moving-belt radiators, rotating film radiators, liquid droplet radiators, Curie point radiators, and rotating bubble-membrane radiators. The second part summarizes a multielement project including focused hardware development under the Civil Space Technology Initiative (CSTI) High Capacity Power program carried out by the NASA Lewis Research Center and its contractors to develop lightweight space radiators in support of Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) power systems technology.

Juhasz, Albert J.↗

DOE OSTI2022

WBS 1.2.3.405 - Life Cycle Assessment of Storage Technologies

Recent commitments by the Biden administration have established targets to achieve a net-zero energy system by 2050. Meeting these targets will spur a rapid transition to clean energy technologies and a commensurate need to develop and deploy energy storage technologies at scale. Pumped Storage Hydro (PSH) is expected to be part of this solution because its ability to provide grid flexibility and stability and enable the dispatching of disparate variable renewable energy technologies. Despite PSH being a mature technology with a history of deployment dating back several decades, there is very little information on the greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of PSH as compared to other storage technologies. The objective of this project is to perform a full lifecycle assessment (LCA) of new PSH projects in the U.S. This LCA includes all project phases (resource extraction, construction, operation, maintenance, end-of-life). The functional unit for this study is 1 kWh electricity delivered by system to grid substation connection point and the estimated lifetime for our base case is 80 years. Data used in this study are based on over 30 potential PSH projects that are in preliminary planning phases and are represent a wide range of potential closed-loop PSH systems in terms of location, technology, and capacity. The project approach, data sources, and modeling assumptions have been informed by a technical review committee of stakeholders that include experts from academia, national and international government, industry, and utilities. The GHGs and energy return on investment (EROI) from PSH will be compared to other storage technologies (e.g., stationary battery storage). Results from this project will improve the PSH community's understanding of the environmental impacts and sustainability of new PSH projects and how PSH compares to other storage technologies. The approach used in this project relies on open-source programming. The analysis framework (source code and data) and will be made publicly available at the end of the project. In addition to reporting results for the base case, we will perform rigorous sensitivity analysis to identify the major drivers, understand impacts of different configurations, and future energy markets. Results from this project will be published in a suitable journal.

ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY,HYDRO ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS1990

Historical development of the windmill

Throughout history, windmill technology represented the highest levels of development in those technical fields now referred to as mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and aerodynamics. Key stages are described in the technical development of windmills as prime movers; from antiquity to construction of the well known Smith-Putnam wind turbine generator of the 1940's, which laid the foundation for modern wind turbines. Subjects covered are windmills in ancient times; the vertical axis Persian windmill; the horizontal axis European windmill (including both post mills and tower mills); technology improvements in sails, controls, and analysis; the American farm windmill; the transition from windmills to wind turbines for generating electricity at the end of the 19th century; and wind turbine development in the first half of the 20th century.

Shepherd, Dennis G.↗

NASA NTRS2012

The Use of Handheld X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Technology in Unraveling the Eruptive History of the San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona

While traditional geologic mapping includes the examination of structural relationships between rock units in the field, more advanced technology now enables us to simultaneously collect and combine analytical datasets with field observations. Information about tectonomagmatic processes can be gleaned from these combined data products. Historically, construction of multi-layered field maps that include sample data has been accomplished serially (first map and collect samples, analyze samples, combine data, and finally, readjust maps and conclusions about geologic history based on combined data sets). New instruments that can be used in the field, such as a handheld xray fluorescence (XRF) unit, are now available. Targeted use of such instruments enables geologists to collect preliminary geochemical data while in the field so that they can optimize scientific data return from each field traverse. Our study tests the application of this technology and projects the benefits gained by real-time geochemical data in the field. The integrated data set produces a richer geologic map and facilitates a stronger contextual picture for field geologists when collecting field observations and samples for future laboratory work. Real-time geochemical data on samples also provide valuable insight regarding sampling decisions by the field geologist

Young, Kelsey E.↗

DOE OSTI2020

The AdS 5 × S 5 superstring

The duality between the type IIB superstring theory in an AdS 5 × S 5 background with N units of five-form flux and N = 4 super Yang–Mills theory with a U ( N ) gauge group has been studied extensively. My version of the construction of the superstring world-sheet action is reviewed here.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗