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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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A document discusses room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) used as electrolytes in carbon-nanotube-based, electrochemical, double-layer capacitors. Unlike the previous electrolyte (EtNB4 in acetonitrile), the RTIL used here does not produce cyanide upon thermal decomposition and does not have a moisture sensitivity.
This viewgraph presentation reviews NASA's Columbia supercomputer and the mesh technology used to test the adequacy of the fluid and cooling of a computer room. A technical description of the Columbia supercomputer is also presented along with its performance capability.
A room temperature, directly diode pumped Ho:LuAG laser oscillated for the first time. Direct pumping of the Ho upper laser manifold maximizes efficiency, minimizes heating, and eliminates Ho:Tm energy sharing. Design and performance are presented.
Room temperature flatwise compression tests were conducted on two varieties of ceramic honeycomb core specimens that have potential for high-temperature structural applications. One set of specimens was fabricated using strips of a commercially-available thin-gage "ceramic paper" sheet molded into a hexagonal core configuration. The other set was fabricated by machining honeycomb core directly from a commercially available rigid insulation tile material. This paper summarizes the results from these tests.
This project involves creating software for support equipment used on the Space l aunch System (SLS). The goal is to create applications and displays that will be used to remotely operate equipment from the firing room and will continue to support the SLS launch vehicle to the extent of its program. These displays include design practices that help to convey information effectively, such as minimizing distractions at normal operating state and displaying intentional distractions during a warning or alarm state. The general practice for creating an operator display is to reduce the detail of unimportant aspects of the display and promote focus on data and dynamic information. These practices include using minimalist design, using muted tones for background colors, using a standard font at a readable text size, displaying alarms visible for Immediate attention, grouping data logically, and displaying data appropriately varying on the type of data. Users of these displays are more likely to stay focused on operating for longer periods by using design practices that reduce eye strain and fatigue. Effective operator displays will improve safety by reducing human errors during operation, which will help prevent catastrophic accidents. This report entails the details of my work on developing remote displays for the Hypergolics ground system. Before developing a prototype display, the design and requirements of the system are outlined and compiled into a document. Then each subsystem has schematic representations drawn tha.t meet the specifications detailed in the document. The schematics are then used as the outline to create display representations of each subsystem. Each display is first tested individually. Then the displays are integrated with a prototype of the master system, and they are tested in a simulated environment then retested in the real environment. Extensive testing is important to ensure the displays function reliably as intended.
The Engineering and Technology Directorate (NE) at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is designing a new command and control system for the checkout and launch of Space Launch System (SLS) and future rockets. The purposes of the semester long internship as a remote application software developer include the design, development, integration, and verification of the software and hardware in the firing rooms, in particular with the Mobile Launcher (ML) Launch Accessories subsystem. In addition, a Conversion Fusion project was created to show specific approved checkout and launch engineering data for public-friendly display purposes.
The Engineering and Technology Directorate (NE) at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is designing a new command and control system for the checkout and launch of Space Launch System (SLS) and future rockets. The purposes of the semester long internship as a remote application software developer include the design, development, integration, and verification of the software and hardware in the firing rooms, in particular with the Mobile Launcher (ML) Launch Accessories (LACC) subsystem. In addition, a software test verification procedure document was created to verify and checkout LACC software for Launch Equipment Test Facility (LETF) testing.
A brief history of conductive motor winding materials is presented, comparing various metal motor winding materials and their properties in terms of conductivity, density and cost. The proposed use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and composites incorporating CNTs is explored as a potential way to improve motor winding conductivity, density, and reduce motor size which are important to electric aircraft technology. The conductivity of pure Cu, a CNT yarn, and a dilute Cu-CNT composite was measured at room temperature and at several temperatures up to 340 C. The conductivity of the Cu-CNT composite was about 3 percent lower than pure copper's at all temperatures measured. The conductivity of the CNT yarn was about 200 times lower than copper's, however, the yarn's conductivity dropped less with increasing temperature compared to Cu. It is believed that the low conductivity of the yarn is due primarily to high interfacial resistances and the presence of CNTs with low, semiconductor like electrical properties (s-CNT). It is believed the conductivity of the CNT-Cu composite could be improved by not using s-CNT, and instead using only CNTs with high, metallic like electrical properties (m-CNT); and by increasing the vol% m-CNTs.
The absorption coefficient for material specimens are needed to quantify the expected acoustic performance of that material in its actual usage and environment. The ASTM C423-09a standard, "Standard Test Method for Sound Absorption and Sound Absorption Coefficients by the Reverberant Room Method" is often used to measure the absorption coefficient of material test specimens. This method has its basics in the Sabine formula. Although widely used, the interpretation of these measurements are a topic of interest. For example, in certain cases the measured Sabine absorption coefficients are greater than 1.0 for highly absorptive materials. This is often attributed to the diffraction edge effect phenomenon. An investigative test program to measure the absorption properties of highly absorbent melamine foam has been performed at the Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories. This paper will present and discuss the test results relating to the effect of the test materials' surface area, thickness and edge sealing conditions. A follow-on paper is envisioned that will present and discuss the results relating to the spacing between multiple piece specimens, and the mounting condition of the test specimen.
The Virtual Control Room (VCR) Proof of Concept (PoC) project is the result of an award given by the Fourth Annual NASA T&I Labs Challenge Project Call. This paper will outline the work done over the award period to build and enhance the capabilities of the Augmented/Virtual Reality (AVR) Lab at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to create the VCR.
Sulfonated single-walled carbon nanotubes have been used in an integrated electrode structure forthe detection of carbon monoxide. The sensor responds to 0.5 ppm of CO in air at room temperature. All eightsensors with this material in a 32-sensor array showed good repeatability and reproducibility, with response andrecovery times of about 10 s. Pristine nanotubes generally do not respond to carbon monoxide and the resultshere confirm sulfonated nanotubes to be a potential candidate for the construction of an electronic nose thatrequires at least a few materials for the selective detection of CO.
Total ionizing dose (TID) and single-event effect (SEE) room-temperature radiation test results are presented for developmental prototype 4H-SiC junction field effect transistor (JFET) semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) that have demonstrated prolonged operation in extremely high-temperature (500 °C) environments. The devices tested demonstrated over 7 Mrad(Si) TID tolerance and no destructive SEE susceptibility.
Room Temperature Vulcanizing silicone (RTV) is a high-temperature adhesive that has successfully been used as a gap-filler between Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles for heatshields on numerous missions. It is also used to bond instrumentation plugs such as temperature and pressure sensors into the heatshields. While RTV has been traditionally assumed to be a non-porous and non-ablating material, numerous experiments have shown that RTV pyrolyzes and becomes highly porous as it is heated. Heating RTV has also shown swelling, or intumescence, which can pose unique problems that lead to roughness induced boundary-layer transition, surface oxide formation and contamination of heat shield sensors. Therefore, it is crucial to understand and model the intumescence phenomenon of RTV. As data for RTV material properties is limited, the first step in modeling RTV is to collect material properties such as pyrolysis mass-loss, microstructure change, virgin and char porosity, etc. which was performed in our initial study. Additionally, thermomechanical properties such as Young’s modulus and Poisson ratio are required for modeling the intumescence of RTV, which were taken from literature and the coefficient of thermal expansion was collected using in-situ heating and Micro Computed Tomography (µ-CT) in previous studies. Finally, numerous other properties such as pyrolysis gas properties, virgin and char thermal conductivity and specific heat were compiled from previous experiments and literature into a material database that can be used for simulations. In Porous Material Analysis Toolbox based on OpenFOAM (PATO) [4], structural mechanics coupled with material response was used for simulating the intumescence of RTV as it is heated. However, since the permeability of the material is very low, the pyrolysis gas creates an internal pressure build-up as the material is being heated, significantly contributing to the deformation of the material. To correctly characterize this phenomenon, additional physics models were implemented into PATO's stress analysis solver, and results were compared with RTV dilatometry test data as a preliminary verification case. Future work will include experiments of RTV at the Plasmatron X facility and the in-situ heating cell with µ-CT, and improvement of simulation tools to more accurately model RTV intumescence.
Room Temperature Vulcanizing silicone (RTV) is a high-temperature adhesive that has successfully been used as a gap-filler between Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles for heatshields on numerous missions. It is also used to bond instrumentation plugs such as temperature and pressure sensors into the heatshields. While RTV has been traditionally assumed to be a non-porous and non-ablating material, numerous experiments have shown that RTV pyrolyzes and becomes highly porous as it is heated. Heating RTV has also shown swelling, or intumescence, which can pose unique problems that lead to roughness induced boundary-layer transition, surface oxide formation and contamination of heat shield sensors. Therefore, it is crucial to understand and model the intumescence phenomenon of RTV. As data for RTV material properties is limited, the first step in modeling RTV is to collect material properties such as pyrolysis mass-loss, microstructure change, virgin and char porosity, etc. which was performed in our initial study. Additionally, thermomechanical properties such as Young’s modulus and Poisson ratio are required for modeling the intumescence of RTV, which were taken from literature and the coefficient of thermal expansion was collected using in-situ heating and Micro Computed Tomography (µ-CT) in previous studies. Finally, numerous other properties such as pyrolysis gas properties, virgin and char thermal conductivity and specific heat were compiled from previous experiments and literature into a material database that can be used for simulations. In Porous Material Analysis Toolbox based on OpenFOAM (PATO) [4], structural mechanics coupled with material response was used for simulating the intumescence of RTV as it is heated. However, since the permeability of the material is very low, the pyrolysis gas creates an internal pressure build-up as the material is being heated, significantly contributing to the deformation of the material. To correctly characterize this phenomenon, additional physics models were implemented into PATO's stress analysis solver, and results were compared with RTV dilatometry test data as a preliminary verification case. Future work will include experiments of RTV at the Plasmatron X facility and the in-situ heating cell with µ-CT, and improvement of simulation tools to more accurately model RTV intumescence.
The scintillation properties of cerium-doped oxyhalides following the general formula REOX (RE=Y, La, Gd, and Lu; X=F, Cl, Br, and I) are reported. These materials were synthesized under dry conditions as microcrystalline powders from conventional solid state reactions. The room temperature X-ray excited emission and scintillation decay curves were measured and analyzed for each material. Additionally, the hygroscopic nature of the oxychlorides and oxybromides was compared to that of their corresponding rare earth halides. The yttrium, lanthanum, and gadolinium oxychlorides, and all of the oxybromides and oxyiodides are found to be activated by Ce{sup 3+}. GdOBr doped with 0.5% Ce{sup 3+} has the highest light output with a relative luminosity of about one-half that of LaBr{sub 3}: Ce{sup 3+}. It displays a single exponential decay of 30 ns.
We recently reported on investigations of RF absorber materials at cryogenic temperatures conducted at Jefferson Laboratory (JLab). The work was initiated to find a replacement material for the 2 Kelvin low power waveguide Higher Order Mode (HOM) absorbers employed within the original cavity cryomodules of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). This effort eventually led to suitable candidates as reported in this paper. Furthermore, though constrained by small funds for labor and resources, we have analyzed a variety of lossy ceramic materials, several of which could be usable as HOM absorbers for both normal conducting and superconducting RF structures, e.g. as loads in cavity waveguides and beam tubes either at room or cryogenic temperatures and, depending on cooling measures, low to high operational power levels.
We have studied the effect of oxygen pressure on the self-limiting oxidation of an Al(111) surface at room temperature for oxygen pressures from 1 x 10{sup -8} to 5 Torr. Using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, we monitor the oxidation kinetics and the oxide film thickness for different oxidation times and pressures. After a rapid initial growth stage, the oxide film reaches a saturated thickness, which depends on the oxygen pressure. The kinetic potential, oxide growth rate, oxide film limiting thickness, and the density of oxygen anions on the oxide surface are determined by the measured oxidation kinetics. These quantities show a Langmuir isotherm dependence on the oxygen gas pressure.
At Fermilab there is a plan to construct the Project X Injector Experiment (PXIE) facility - a prototype of the front end of the Project X, a multi-MW proton source based on superconducting linac. The construction and successful operations of this facility will validate the concept for the Project X front end, thereby minimizing the primary technical risk element within the Project. The room temperature front end of the linac contains an ion source, an RFQ accelerator and a Medium Energy Beam Transport (MEBT) section comprising a high bandwidth bunch selective chopper. The MEBT length is about 10 m, so three re-bunching CW cavities are used to support the beam longitudinal dynamics. The paper reports a RF design of the re-bunchers along with preliminary beam dynamic and thermal analysis of the cavities.