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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,423 records · Page 79

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1989

Development and refinement of test bed simulations

Lewis Research Center of NASA, with support from Rocketdyne, was engaged in non-real time computer simulation effort for the Space Station Freedom Electric Power System (EPS) EASY5, a simulation package, is used as the primary tool for this activity. Early in the design of the EPS, two test beds were set up at Lewis. The Integrated Test Bed (ITB), that combines and upgrades these test beds, is in the planning stage. The test beds are designed to functionally represent many of the components of the EPS and their interconnections. The simulation effort is primarily directed towards these test beds. Model verification is performed using test bed data.

Dravid, Narayan V.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Development and refinement of test bed simulations

Lewis Research Center of NASA, with support from Rocketdyne, has engaged in a nonreal-time computer simulation effort for the Space Station Freedom Electric Power System (EPS). EASYS, a simulation package, is used as the primary tool for this activity. Early in the design of the EPS, two test beds were set up at Lewis. The Integrated Test Bed (ITB) that combines and upgrades these test beds is in the planning stage. The test beds are designed to functionally represent many of the components of the EPS and their interconnections. The simulation effort is primarily directed towards these test beds. Model verification is performed using test bed data.

Dravid, N. V.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Probabilistic simulation of the human factor in structural reliability

A formal approach is described in an attempt to computationally simulate the probable ranges of uncertainties of the human factor in structural probabilistic assessments. A multi-factor interaction equation (MFIE) model has been adopted for this purpose. Human factors such as marital status, professional status, home life, job satisfaction, work load and health, are considered to demonstrate the concept. Parametric studies in conjunction with judgment are used to select reasonable values for the participating factors (primitive variables). Suitability of the MFIE in the subsequently probabilistic sensitivity studies are performed to assess the validity of the whole approach. Results obtained show that the uncertainties for no error range from five to thirty percent for the most optimistic case.

Chamis, C. C.↗

DOE OSTI2016

Robust verification analysis

We introduce a new methodology for inferring the accuracy of computational simulations through the practice of solution verification. We demonstrate this methodology on examples from computational heat transfer, fluid dynamics and radiation transport. Our methodology is suited to both well- and ill-behaved sequences of simulations. Our approach to the analysis of these sequences of simulations incorporates expert judgment into the process directly via a flexible optimization framework, and the application of robust statistics. The expert judgment is systematically applied as constraints to the analysis, and together with the robust statistics guards against over-emphasis on anomalous analysis results. We have named our methodology Robust Verification. Our methodology is based on utilizing multiple constrained optimization problems to solve the verification model in a manner that varies the analysis' underlying assumptions. Constraints applied in the analysis can include expert judgment regarding convergence rates (bounds and expectations) as well as bounding values for physical quantities (e.g., positivity of energy or density). This approach then produces a number of error models, which are then analyzed through robust statistical techniques (median instead of mean statistics). This provides self-contained, data and expert informed error estimation including uncertainties for both the solution itself and order of convergence. Our method produces high quality results for the well-behaved cases relatively consistent with existing practice. The methodology can also produce reliable results for ill-behaved circumstances predicated on appropriate expert judgment. We demonstrate the method and compare the results with standard approaches used for both code and solution verification on well-behaved and ill-behaved simulations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

NASA NTRS1975

Robustly optimal rate one-half binary convolutional codes

Three optimality criteria for convolutional codes are considered in this correspondence: namely, free distance, minimum distance, and distance profile. Here we report the results of computer searches for rate one-half binary convolutional codes that are 'robustly optimal' in the sense of being optimal for one criterion and optimal or near-optimal for the other two criteria. Comparisons with previously known codes are made. The results of a computer simulation are reported to show the importance of the distance profile to computational performance with sequential decoding.

Johannesson, R.↗

NASA NTRS1977

Evaluation of an F100 multivariable control using a real-time engine simulation

A multivariable control design for the F100 turbofan engine was evaluated, as part of the F100 multivariable control synthesis (MVCS) program. The evaluation utilized a real-time, hybrid computer simulation of the engine and a digital computer implementation of the control. Significant results of the evaluation are presented and recommendations concerning future engine testing of the control are made.

Szuch, J. R.↗

NASA NTRS1980

Turbulent structures in wall-bounded shear flows observed via three-dimensional numerical simulators

Three recent simulations of tubulent shear flow bounded by a wall using the Illiac computer are reported. These are: (1) vibrating-ribbon experiments; (2) study of the evolution of a spot-like disturbance in a laminar boundary layer; and (3) investigation of turbulent channel flow. A number of persistent flow structures were observed, including streamwise and vertical vorticity distributions near the wall, low-speed and high-speed streaks, and local regions of intense vertical velocity. The role of these structures in, for example, the growth or maintenance of turbulence is discussed. The problem of representing the large range of turbulent scales in a computer simulation is also discussed.

Leonard, A.↗

NASA NTRS1982

Autonomous satellite navigation methods using the Global Positioning Satellite System

This investigation considers the problem of autonomous satellite navigation using the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS). The major topics covered include the design, implementation, and validation of onboard navigation filter algorithms by means of computer simulations. The primary errors that the navigation filter design must minimize are computational effects and modeling inaccuracies due to limited capability of the onboard computer. The minimization of the effect of these errors is attained by applying the sequential extended Kalman filter using a factored covariance implementation with Q-matrix or dynamical model compensations. Peformance evaluation of the navigation filter design is carried out using both the CDC Cyber 170/750 computer and the PDP-11/60 computer. The results are obtained assuming the Phase I GPS constellation, consisting of six satellites, and a Landsat-D type spacecraft as the model for the user satellite orbit.

Murata, M.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Numerical Investigation of Flow in an Over-Expanded Nozzle with Porous Surfaces

A new porous condition has been implemented in the PAB3D solver for simulating the flow over porous surfaces. The newly-added boundary condition is utilized to compute the flow field of a non-axisymmetric, convergent-divergent nozzle incorporating porous cavities for shock-boundary layer interaction control. The nozzle has an expansion ratio (exit area/throat area) of 1.797 and a design nozzle pressure ratio of 8.78. The flow fields for a baseline nozzle (no porosity) and for a nozzle with porous surfaces (10% porosity ratio) are computed for NPR varying from 2.01 to 9.54. Computational model results indicate that the over-expanded nozzle flow was dominated by shock-induced boundary-layer separation. Porous configurations were capable of controlling off-design separation in the nozzle by encouraging stable separation of the exhaust flow. Computational simulation results, wall centerline pressure, mach contours, and thrust efficiency ratio are presented and discussed. Computed results are in excellent agreement with experimental data.

Elmiligui, Alaa↗

NASA NTRS2006

Numerical Investigation of Flow in an Over-expanded Nozzle with Porous Surfaces

A new porous condition has been implemented in the PAB3D solver for simulating the flow over porous surfaces. The newly-added boundary condition is utilized to compute the flow field of a non-axisymmetric, convergent-divergent nozzle incorporating porous cavities for shock-boundary layer interaction control. The nozzle has an expansion ratio (exit area/throat area) of 1.797 and a design nozzle pressure ratio of 8.78. The flow fields for a baseline nozzle (no porosity) and for a nozzle with porous surfaces (10% porosity ratio) are computed for NPR varying from 2.01 to 9.54. Computational model results indicate that the over-expanded nozzle flow is dominated by shock-induced boundary-layer separation. Porous configurations are capable of controlling off-design separation in the nozzle by encouraging stable separation of the exhaust flow. Computational simulation results, wall centerline pressure, mach contours, and thrust efficiency ratio are presented and discussed. Computed results are in excellent agreement with experimental data.

Abdol-Hamid, Khaled S.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Development of a low-cost virtual reality workstation for training and education

Virtual Reality (VR) is a set of breakthrough technologies that allow a human being to enter and fully experience a 3-dimensional, computer simulated environment. A true virtual reality experience meets three criteria: (1) it involves 3-dimensional computer graphics; (2) it includes real-time feedback and response to user actions; and (3) it must provide a sense of immersion. Good examples of a virtual reality simulator are the flight simulators used by all branches of the military to train pilots for combat in high performance jet fighters. The fidelity of such simulators is extremely high -- but so is the price tag, typically millions of dollars. Virtual reality teaching and training methods are manifestly effective, but the high cost of VR technology has limited its practical application to fields with big budgets, such as military combat simulation, commercial pilot training, and certain projects within the space program. However, in the last year there has been a revolution in the cost of VR technology. The speed of inexpensive personal computers has increased dramatically, especially with the introduction of the Pentium processor and the PCI bus for IBM-compatibles, and the cost of high-quality virtual reality peripherals has plummeted. The result is that many public schools, colleges, and universities can afford a PC-based workstation capable of running immersive virtual reality applications. My goal this summer was to assemble and evaluate such a system.

Phillips, James A.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Forecasting of Storm Surge Floods Using ADCIRC and Optimized DEMs

Increasing the accuracy of storm surge flood forecasts is essential for improving preparedness for hurricanes and other severe storms and, in particular, for optimizing evacuation scenarios. An interactive database, developed by WorldWinds, Inc., contains atlases of storm surge flood levels for the Louisiana/Mississippi gulf coast region. These atlases were developed to improve forecasting of flooding along the coastline and estuaries and in adjacent inland areas. Storm surge heights depend on a complex interaction of several factors, including: storm size, central minimum pressure, forward speed of motion, bottom topography near the point of landfall, astronomical tides, and most importantly, maximum wind speed. The information in the atlases was generated in over 100 computational simulations, partly by use of a parallel-processing version of the ADvanced CIRCulation (ADCIRC) model. ADCIRC is a nonlinear computational model of hydrodynamics, developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the US Navy, as a family of two- and three-dimensional finite element based codes. It affords a capability for simulating tidal circulation and storm surge propagation over very large computational domains, while simultaneously providing high-resolution output in areas of complex shoreline and bathymetry. The ADCIRC finite-element grid for this project covered the Gulf of Mexico and contiguous basins, extending into the deep Atlantic Ocean with progressively higher resolution approaching the study area. The advantage of using ADCIRC over other storm surge models, such as SLOSH, is that input conditions can include all or part of wind stress, tides, wave stress, and river discharge, which serve to make the model output more accurate.

Valenti, Elizabeth↗

NASA NTRS1971

Performance results for a hybrid coding system.

Results of computer simulation studies of the hybrid pull-up bootstrap decoding algorithm, using a constraint length 24, nonsystematic, rate 1/2 convolutional code for the symmetric channel with both binary and eight-level quantized outputs. Computational performance was used to measure the effect of several decoder parameters and determine practical operating constraints. Results reveal that the track length may be reduced to 500 information bits with small degradation in performance. The optimum number of tracks per block was found to be in the range from 7 to 11. An effective technique was devised to efficiently allocate computational effort and identify reliably decoded data sections. Long simulations indicate that a practical bootstrap decoding configuration has a computational performance about 1.0 dB better than sequential decoding and an output bit error rate about .0000025 near the R sub comp point.

Hoffman, L. B.↗

DOE OSTI2016

Investigation of similarity metrics for simulation based scaling analysis

Scaling analysis is a technique for characterizing degree of similarity between processes to occur in a real prototypic system and those to occur in its reduced scale (experimental) analog. In the context of nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics and safety, scaling analysis is instrumental in assessing the applicability of data obtained from a scaled test facility for calibration of models and validation of simulation codes. Quantification of scale-related distortions is the key element in scaling analysis. In this work, we examine an approach for scaling analysis using computer simulation codes. Similarity analysis using information-theoretic approach is performed by comparing performance of experiment and application to variation of system conditions. Three different information theoretic measures namely mutual information, Kullback-Leibler divergence and overlap coefficient are selected for their potential use as metric for similarity analysis. We test the metrics by comparing them against physics-based scaling ratios, which are well known in fundamental thermal-hydraulic processes. In this exploratory analysis, a case of pressure drop of a steady-state flow through a channel is employed to test the proposed approach. It was found that in the absence of model uncertainties, mutual information serve as an effective measure of the scale effects present in the experiment. However, model uncertainty can significantly impact the quality of similarity analysis. Our analysis indicates that model uncertainties can have significant impact on the information theoretic metrics used for scaling analysis. Furthermore, if the model uncertainties exceeds beyond a critical value, the scale effect present in the experiment cannot be adequately evaluated. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Particle Interaction Physics Model Formulation for Plume-Surface Interaction Erosion and Cratering

The Predictive Simulation Capability development team of the STMD Game Changing Development sponsored PSI project is implementing computational simulation capability for the efficient and accurate prediction of Plume-Surface Interaction induced surface erosion and cratering in Martian and Lunar environments. The status of the Focus Area 3 of the PSI project in the generation and efficient application of accurate soil particle composition modeling in the Gas-Granular Flow Solver (GGFS) computational framework is presented. The process of constitutive closure model database generation using DEM particle interaction modeling for capturing the effects of irregular particle shape and poly-disperse mixture distribution effects is outlined. This capability has now been ported to NASA supercomputer assets and NASA engineers successfully demonstrated technology and skillset transfer in model generation for spherical and irregularly shaped, mono-disperse and bi-disperse mixture compositions. Assessment of the computational efficiency and practicality of the academic serially executed DEM tools on NASA supercomputers identified the need to migrate to a DEM framework capable of performing parallel simulations in a simultaneous process orchestrated in an automated setup, execution, database extraction, and dataset delivery ready for application simulations. The LIGGGHTS DEM toolset has been selected as the most suitable tool to migrate the DEM simulations. Once the soil model generation process is implemented, models capturing the shape and poly-dispersity effects will be generated to perform much refined validation simulations against the experiments performed under the PSI project. The application readiness of the soil models currently operational in GGFS was presented for the example of a full scale, 3-D simulation of the plume induced erosion and crater formation of the Apollo LM at an elevation of 5m above ground in a low pressure, near vacuum background.

Peter A Liever↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Particle Interaction Physics Model Formulation for Plume-Surface Interaction Erosion and Cratering

Peter A Liever↗

NASA NTRS1999

Particle Hydrodynamics with Material Strength for Multi-Layer Orbital Debris Shield Design

Three dimensional simulation of oblique hypervelocity impact on orbital debris shielding places extreme demands on computer resources. Research to date has shown that particle models provide the most accurate and efficient means for computer simulation of shield design problems. In order to employ a particle based modeling approach to the wall plate impact portion of the shield design problem, it is essential that particle codes be augmented to represent strength effects. This report describes augmentation of a Lagrangian particle hydrodynamics code developed by the principal investigator, to include strength effects, allowing for the entire shield impact problem to be represented using a single computer code.

Fahrenthold, Eric P.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Feasibility study, software design, layout and simulation of a two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform machine for use in optical array interferometry

The goal of this project was the feasibility study of a particular architecture of a digital signal processing machine operating in real time which could do in a pipeline fashion the computation of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of a time-domain sampled complex digital data stream. The particular architecture makes use of simple identical processors (called inner product processors) in a linear organization called a systolic array. Through computer simulation the new architecture to compute the FFT with systolic arrays was proved to be viable, and computed the FFT correctly and with the predicted particulars of operation. Integrated circuits to compute the operations expected of the vital node of the systolic architecture were proven feasible, and even with a 2 micron VLSI technology can execute the required operations in the required time. Actual construction of the integrated circuits was successful in one variant (fixed point) and unsuccessful in the other (floating point).

Boriakoff, Valentin↗