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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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An investigation was made of the static longitudinal stability, and control and stall characteristics of XBTK-1 dive bomber. Results indicate that the longitudinal stability will probably be satisfactory for all contemplated flight conditions at the rear-most CG location with elevator both fixed and free. Power effects were small. Sufficient elevator control will be available to trim in any flight condition above the ground. Increasing the slotted flap deflection above 30 degrees only slightly increased the max. lift coefficient.
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The main research activities at the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT) are described. The research objective of CMOTT is to improve and/or develop turbulence and transition models for propulsion systems. The flows of interest in propulsion systems can be both compressible and incompressible, three dimensional, bounded by complex wall geometries, chemically reacting, and involve 'bypass' transition. The most relevant turbulence and transition models for the above flows are one- and two-equation eddy viscosity models, Reynolds stress algebraic- and transport-equation models, pdf models, and multiple-scale models. All these models are classified as one-point closure schemes since only one-point (in time and space) turbulent correlations, such as second moments (Reynolds stresses and turbulent heat fluxes) and third moments, are involved. In computational fluid dynamics, all turbulent quantities are one-point correlations. Therefore, the study of one-point turbulent closure schemes is the focus of our turbulence research. However, other research, such as the renormalization group theory, the direct interaction approximation method, and numerical simulations are also pursued to support the development of turbulence modeling.
Research will be undertaken in this contract in the area of Modeling Resource and Facilities Enhancement to include computer, technical and educational support to NASA investigators to facilitate model implementation, execution and analysis of output; to provide facilities linking USRA and the NASA/EADS Computer System as well as resident work stations in ESAD; and to provide a centralized location for documentation, archival and dissemination of modeling information pertaining to NASA's program. Additional research will be undertaken in the area of Numerical Model Scale Interaction/Convective Parameterization Studies to include implementation of the comparison of cloud and rain systems and convective-scale processes between the model simulations and what was observed; and to incorporate the findings of these and related research findings in at least two refereed journal articles.
This research brief contains the progress reports of the research staff of the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT) from June 1992 to July 1993. It is also an annual report to the Institute for Computational Mechanics in Propulsion located at Ohio Aerospace Institute and NASA Lewis Research Center. The main objectives of the research activities at CMOTT are to develop, validate, and implement turbulence and transition models for flows of interest in propulsion systems. Currently, our research covers eddy viscosity one- and two-equation models, Reynolds-stress algebraic equation models, Reynolds-stress transport equation models, nonequilibrium multiple-scale models, bypass transition models, joint scalar probability density function models, and Renormalization Group Theory and Direct Interaction Approximation methods. Some numerical simulations (LES and DNS) have also been carried out to support the development of turbulence modeling. Last year was CMOTT's third year in operation. During this period, in addition to the above mentioned research, CMOTT has also hosted the following programs: an eighteen-hour short course on 'Turbulence--Fundamentals and Computational Modeling (Part I)' given by CMOTT at the NASA Lewis Research Center; a productive summer visitor research program that has generated many encouraging results; collaborative programs with industry customers to help improve their turbulent flow calculations for propulsion system designs; a biweekly CMOTT seminar series with speakers from within and without the NASA Lewis Research Center including foreign speakers. In addition, CMOTT members have been actively involved in the national and international turbulence research activities. The current CMOTT roster and organization are listed in Appendix A. Listed in Appendix B are the abstracts of the biweekly CMOTT seminar. Appendix C lists the papers contributed by CMOTT members.
The object of this work, started in March of 1995, is to approach the problem of determining the transport conditions (and effects of residual acceleration) during the plane-front directional solidification of a tin-bismuth alloy under low gravity conditions. The work involves using a combination of 2- and 3-D numerical models, scaling analyses, 1-D models and the results of ground-based and low-gravity experiments. The experiments conducted in the MEPHISTO furnace facility during the USMP-3 spaceflight which took place earlier this year (22 Feb. - 6 Mar. 1996). This experiment represents an unprecedented opportunity to make a quantitative correlation between residual accelerations and the response of an actual experimental solidification system
A coupled Boundary Element/Finite Volume Method temperature-forward/flux-hack algorithm is developed for conjugate heat transfer (CHT) applications. A loosely coupled strategy is adopted with each field solution providing boundary conditions for the other in an iteration seeking continuity of temperature and heat flux at the fluid-solid interface. The NASA Glenn Navier-Stokes code Glenn-HT is coupled to a 3-D BEM steady state heat conduction code developed at the University of Central Florida. Results from CHT simulation of a 3-D film-cooled blade section are presented and compared with those computed by a two-temperature approach. Also presented are current developments of an iterative domain decomposition strategy accommodating large numbers of unknowns in the BEM. The blade is artificially sub-sectioned in the span-wise direction, 3-D BEM solutions are obtained in the subdomains, and interface temperatures are averaged symmetrically when the flux is updated while the fluxes are averaged anti-symmetrically to maintain continuity of heat flux when the temperatures are updated. An initial guess for interface temperatures uses a physically-based 1-D conduction argument to provide an effective starting point and significantly reduce iteration. 2-D and 3-D results show the process converges efficiently and offers substantial computational and storage savings. Future developments include a parallel multi-grid implementation of the approach under MPI for computation on PC clusters.
The Land Information System (LIS; http://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov; Kumar et al., 2006; Peters- Lidard et al.,2007) is a flexible land surface modeling framework that has been developed with the goal of integrating satellite- and ground-based observational data products and advanced land surface modeling techniques to produce optimal fields of land surface states and fluxes. As such, LIS represents a step towards the next generation land component of an integrated Earth system model. In recognition of LIS object-oriented software design, use and impact in the land surface and hydrometeorological modeling community, the LIS software was selected ase co-winner of NASA's 2005 Software of the Year award. LIS facilitates the integration of observations from Earth-observing systems and predictions and forecasts from Earth System and Earth science models into the decision-making processes of partnering agency and national organizations. Due to its flexible software design, LIS can serve both as a Problem Solving Environment (PSE) for hydrologic research to enable accurate global water and energy cycle predictions, and as a Decision Support System (DSS) to generate useful information for application areas including disaster management, water resources management, agricultural management, numerical weather prediction, air quality and military mobility assessment. LIS has evolved from two earlier efforts North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS; Mitchell et al. 2004) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS; Rodell al. 2004) that focused primarily on improving numerical weather prediction skills by improving the characterization of the land surface conditions. Both of GLDAS and NLDAS now use specific configurations of the LIS software in their current implementations. In addition, LIS was recently transitioned into operations at the US Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) to ultimately replace their Agricultural Meteorology (AGRMET) system, and is also used routinely by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) for their land data assimilation systems to support weather and climate modeling. LIS not only consolidates the capabilities of these two systems, but also enables a much larger variety of configurations with respect to horizontal spatial resolution, input datasets and choice of land surface model through "plugins,". As described in Kumar et al., 2007, and demonstrated in Case et al., 2008, and Santanello et al., 2009, LIS has been coupled to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to support studies of land-atmosphere coupling the enabling ensembles of land surface states to be tested against multiple representations of the atmospheric boundary layer. LIS has also been demonstrated for parameter estimation as described in Peters-Lidard et al. (2008) and Santanello et al. (2007), who showed that the use of sequential remotely sensed soil moisture products can be used to derive soil hydraulic and texture properties given a sufficient dynamic range in the soil moisture retrievals and accurate precipitation inputs. LIS has also recently been demonstrated for multi-model data assimilation (Kumar et al., 2008) using an Ensemble Kalman Filter for sequential assimilation of soil moisture, snow, and temperature. Ongoing work has demonstrated the value of bias correction as part of the filter, and also that of joint calibration and assimilation. Examples and case studies demonstrating the capabilities and impacts of LIS for hydrometeoroogical modeling, assimilation and parameter estimation will be presented as advancements towards the next generation of integrated observation and modeling systems.
The Land Information System (LIS; http://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov) is a flexible land surface modeling framework that has been developed with the goal of integrating satellite-and ground-based observational data products and advanced land surface modeling techniques to produce optimal fields of land surface states and fluxes. As such, LIS represents a step towards the next generation land component of an integrated Earth system model. In recognition of LIS object-oriented software design, use and impact in the land surface and hydrometeorological modeling community, the LIS software was selected as a co-winner of NASA?s 2005 Software of the Year award.LIS facilitates the integration of observations from Earth-observing systems and predictions and forecasts from Earth System and Earth science models into the decision-making processes of partnering agency and national organizations. Due to its flexible software design, LIS can serve both as a Problem Solving Environment (PSE) for hydrologic research to enable accurate global water and energy cycle predictions, and as a Decision Support System (DSS) to generate useful information for application areas including disaster management, water resources management, agricultural management, numerical weather prediction, air quality and military mobility assessment. LIS has e volved from two earlier efforts -- North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) that focused primarily on improving numerical weather prediction skills by improving the characterization of the land surface conditions. Both of GLDAS and NLDAS now use specific configurations of the LIS software in their current implementations.In addition, LIS was recently transitioned into operations at the US Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) to ultimately replace their Agricultural Meteorology (AGRMET) system, and is also used routinely by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) for their land data assimilation systems to support weather and climate modeling. LIS not only consolidates the capabilities of these two systems, but also enables a much larger variety of configurations with respect to horizontal spatial resolution, input datasets and choice of land surface model through "plugins". LIS has been coupled to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to support studies of land-atmosphere coupling be enabling ensembles of land surface states to be tested against multiple representations of the atmospheric boundary layer. LIS has also been demonstrated for parameter estimation, who showed that the use of sequential remotely sensed soil moisture products can be used to derive soil hydraulic and texture properties given a sufficient dynamic range in the soil moisture retrievals and accurate precipitation inputs.LIS has also recently been demonstrated for multi-model data assimilation using an Ensemble Kalman Filter for sequential assimilation of soil moisture, snow, and temperature.Ongoing work has demonstrated the value of bias correction as part of the filter, and also that of joint calibration and assimilation.Examples and case studies demonstrating the capabilities and impacts of LIS for hydrometeorological modeling, assimilation and parameter estimation will be presented as advancements towards the next generation of integrated observation and modeling systems
The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is being designed for water landings. In order to benchmark the ability of engineering tools to predict water landing loads, test programs are underway for scale model and full-scale water impacts. These test programs are predicated on the reliable measurement of impact pressure histories. Tests have been performed with a variety of pressure transducers from various manufacturers. Both piezoelectric and piezoresistive devices have been tested. Effects such as thermal shock, pinching of the transducer head, and flushness of the transducer mounting have been studied. Data acquisition issues such as sampling rate and anti-aliasing filtering also have been studied. The response of pressure transducers have been compared side-by-side on an impulse test rig and on a 20-inch diameter hemisphere dropped into a pool of water. The results have identified a range of viable configurations for pressure measurement dependent on the objectives of the test program.
This paper presents data analysis of a flexible wing wind tunnel model with a variable camber continuous trailing edge flap (VCCTEF) design for drag minimization tested at the University of Washington Aeronautical Laboratory (UWAL). The wind tunnel test was designed to explore the relative merit of the VCCTEF concept for improved cruise efficiency through the use of low-cost aeroelastic model test techniques. The flexible wing model is a 10%-scale model of a typical transport wing and is constructed of woven fabric composites and foam core. The wing structural stiffness in bending is tailored to be half of the stiffness of a Boeing 757-era transport wing while the torsional stiffness is about the same. This stiffness reduction results in a wing tip deflection of about 10% of the wing semi-span. The VCCTEF is a multi-segment flap design having three chordwise camber segments and five spanwise flap sections for a total of 15 individual flap elements. The three chordwise camber segments can be positioned appropriately to create a desired trailing edge camber. Elastomeric material is used to cover the gaps in between the spanwise flap sections, thereby creating a continuous trailing edge. Wind tunnel data analysis conducted previously shows that the VCCTEF can achieve a drag reduction of up to 6.31% and an improvement in the lift-to-drag ratio (L=D) of up to 4.85%. A method for estimating the bending and torsional stiffnesses of the flexible wingUWAL wind tunnel model from static load test data is presented. The resulting estimation indicates that the stiffness of the flexible wing is significantly stiffer in torsion than in bending by as much as 9 to 1. The lift prediction for the flexible wing is computed by a coupled aerodynamic-structural model. The coupled model is developed by coupling a conceptual aerodynamic tool Vorlax with a finite-element model of the flexible wing via an automated geometry deformation tool. Based on the comparison of the lift curve slope, the lift prediction for the rigid wing is in good agreement with the estimated lift coefficients derived from the wind tunnel test data. Due to the movement of the VCCTEF during the wind tunnel test, uncertainty in the lift prediction due to the indicated variations of the VCCTEF deflection is studied. The results show a significant spread in the lift prediction which contradicts the consistency in the aerodynamic measurements, thus suggesting that the indicated variations as measured by the VICON system may not be reliable. The lift prediction of the flexible wing agrees very well with the measured lift curve for the baseline configuration. The computed bending deflection and wash-out twist of the flexible wing also match reasonably well with the aeroelastic deflection measurements. The results demonstrate the validity of the aerodynamic-structural tool for use to analyze aerodynamic performance of flexible wings.
An aircraft system noise assessment was performed for the hybrid wing body aircraft concept, known as the N2A-EXTE. This assessment is a result of an effort by NASA to explore a realistic HWB design that has the potential to substantially reduce noise and fuel burn. Under contract to NASA, Boeing designed the aircraft using practical aircraft design princip0les with incorporation of noise technologies projected to be available in the 2020 timeframe. NASA tested 5.8% scale-mode of the design in the NASA Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel to provide source noise directivity and installation effects for aircraft engine and airframe configurations. Analysis permitted direct scaling of the model-scale jet, airframe, and engine shielding effect measurements to full-scale. Use of these in combination with ANOPP predictions enabled computations of the cumulative (CUM) noise margins relative to FAA Stage 4 limits. The CUM margins were computed for a baseline N2A-EXTE configuration and for configurations with added noise reduction strategies. The strategies include reduced approach speed, over-the-rotor line and soft-vane fan technologies, vertical tail placement and orientation, and modified landing gear designs with fairings. Combining the inherent HWB engine shielding by the airframe with added noise technologies, the cumulative noise was assessed at 38.7 dB below FAA Stage 4 certification level, just 3.3 dB short of the NASA N+2 goal of 42 dB. This new result shows that the NASA N+2 goal is approachable and that significant reduction in overall aircraft noise is possible through configurations with noise reduction technologies and operational changes.
This presentation will help to promote air-launch technologies that are being developed at NASA AFRC and enhance the public and aeromodeling communities awareness of current progress.
This paper presents experimental results of a flexible wing wind tunnel model with a variable camber continuous trailing edge flap (VCCTEF) design for drag minimization, tested at the University of Washington Aeronautical Labo- ratory (UWAL). The wind tunnel test was designed to explore the relative merit of the VCCTEF concept for improved cruise efficiency through the use of low-cost aeroelastic model test techniques. The flexible wing model is a 10-scaled model of a typical transport wing and is constructed of woven fabric composites and foam core. The wing structural stiffness in bending is tailored to be half of the stiffness of a Boeing 757-era transport wing, while the torsional stiffness is about the same. This stiffness reduction results in a wing tip deflection of about 10 of the wing semi-span. The VCCTEF is a multi-segment flap design having three chordwise camber segments and five spanwise flap sections for a total of 15 individual flap elements. The three chordwise camber segments can be positioned appropriately to create a desired trailing edge camber. Elastomeric material is used to cover the gaps in between the spanwise flap sections, thereby creating a continuous trailing edge. Wind tunnel data indicate a high degree of data correlation and repeata- bility. The VCCTEF can achieve a drag reduction of up to 6.31 and an improvement in the lift-to-drag ratio (LD) of up to 4.85. The paper also presents two methods for estimating the lift coefficient of a rigid wing using a dynamic pressure correction and an aeroelastic deflection correction. Both methods provide good estimates of the rigid-wing lift coefficient.