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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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Built-in safety mechanism for tractor-trailer "fifth-wheel" coupling keeps rig together in case kingpin failure. Modified coupling utilizes all standard components, such as two wear plates, kingpin, and kingpin latch. It is modified by adding semicircular lip to top wear plate, matching semicircular slot to bottom wear plate, and two latching stop mechanisms.
Crack-opening displacement transducer consists of 30 deg cone, coil spring, and linear-displacement transducer. Conical probe is used to measure crack opening. Cone is pressed firmly into crack by spring. As applied load causes crack to open up, cone is pushed further into it. Movement of cone, and thus crack growth, is monitored by linear-displacement transducer. Method gives more accurate measurement of crack-opening displacement of very narrow slots.
Guard makes lighter contact on materials being sawed. Cuts are better controlled, and damages to fragile foam-type materials are reduced. Overhead support makes it possible to perform slot and step cuts, and thick materials are pushed under guard with less force. Guard is transparent plastic enclosure held by side-attached overhead support arm.
Tool removes stubborn panheaded screws or studs where conventional tools would be either too weak or inconvenient to use. Screws with damaged heads or slots can also be removed this way. Tool can be worked with one hand and easily fits limited-access and blind areas. It can be made in various sizes to fit different screwheads.
Inexpensive apparatus checks accuracy of bent tubes. Assortment of slotted angles and clamps is bolted down to flat aluminum plate outlining shape of standard tube bent to desired configuration. Newly bent tubes are then checked against this outline. Because parts are bolted down, tubes can be checked very rapidly without disturbing outline. One verifier per tube-bending machine can really speed up production in tube-bending shop.
Various research projects on synthetic aperture radar are reported, including SAR calibration techniques. Slot arrays, sidelobe suppression, and wide swaths on satellite-borne radar were examined. The SAR applied to remote sensing was also considered.
New gel tray and lid assemblies designed for use in conjunction with slotted electrophoretic membranes were developed to take advantage of recently improved microelectrophoretic accessories which include a multisample applicator capable of applying up to 10 samples consecutively or simultaneously, and a temperature control plate for dissipating the heat produced by electrophoresis in a gel. The trays and membranes can be marketed ready for use as electrophoretic media or impregnated with various specific substrates and dyes
A program was undertaken to increase the detectivity of LiTaO3 pyroelectric detectors to meet a performance requirement of D star (500 K, 15 Hz)=4x10 to the 9th power cm Hz1/2W-1. Emphasis was placed on reduction of the thermal conductance of the detector element to its surroundings, thinning the detector wafer to a thickness less than 3 micrometers, and increasing the absorptivity of the standard metallic film coatings. During the program, thermal conductance was reduced 41 percent through the use of reticulated (slotted) structures. Self-supported detector wafers less than 2 micrometers thick were fabricated. Multiple layer coatings, including an AR coating, with 16 percent more absorptance, were designed and fabricated. Later refinements in the multilayer design program have absorptivities of 75-80 percent, but detectors with these coatings had to be more than 2 micrometers thick because of a mismatch in the thermal expansion coefficients with LiTaO3.
Experiments were performed on conical diffusers of various configurations with the same, but rather unusually large, 16:1 area ratio. Because available performance data on diffusers fall short of very large area ratio configurations, an unconventional design, consisting of two diffusers following each other in tandem, was proposed. Both diffusers had the same area ratio of 4:1, but had different taper angles. While for the first diffuser (called leading) the angle remained constant, for the second (called follower), the taper angle was stepped up to higher values. Boundary layer control, by way of suction, was applied between the diffusers, and a single slot suction ring was inserted between them. The leading diffuser had an enclosed nominal divergence angle 2 theta = 5 degrees, while the follower diffusers had either 10, 20, 30, or 40 degrees, respectively, giving 4 combinations. The experiments were performed at four different Reynolds numbers with various suction rates. The rates indicate a general improvement in the performance of all diffusers with boundary layer suction. It appears that the improvement of the pressure recovery depends on both the Reynolds number and the suction rate, and the largest increase, 0.075, was found at the lowest R sub e when the follower divergence was 2 theta = 40 degrees.
The technical and economic feasibility of producing solar cell quality sheet silicon was investigated. It was hoped this could be done by coating one surface of carbonized ceramic substrates with a thin layer of large-grain polycrystalline silicon from the melt. Work was directed towards the solution of unique cell processing/design problems encountered with the silicon-ceramic (SOC) material due to its intimate contact with the ceramic substrate. Significant progress was demonstrated in the following areas; (1) the continuous coater succeeded in producing small-area coatings exhibiting unidirectional solidification and substatial grain size; (2) dip coater succeeded in producing thick (more than 500 micron) dendritic layers at coating speeds of 0.2-0.3 cm/sec; and (3) a standard for producing total area SOC solar cells using slotted ceramic substrates was developed.
Exploratory calculations of transonic flows over the airfoil with a quarter-chord oscillating flap were made using a program which obtains approximate solutions to the Euler equations with an explicit, shock-capturing, finite-difference scheme. The calculations, essentially inviscid and for the airfoil at zero angle-of-attack in a free-stream, are at Mach numbers and reduced frequencies which were tested in experiments by Tijdeman. The oscillatory lifts from analogus calculations by various investigators generally agree with one another better than they agree with Tijdeman's data. Inclusion in the calculations of an approximate modelling of boundary conditions expected at slotted wind tunnel walls tends to shift some of the results closer to the experimental values.
A computational inverse procedure for transonic airfoils in which shapes are determined supporting prescribed pressure distributions is presented. The method uses the small disturbance equation and a consistent analysis-design differencing procedure at the airfoil surface. This avoids the intermediate analysis-design-analysis iterations. The effect of any openness at the trailing edge is taken onto account by adding an effective source term in the far field. The final results from a systematic expansion procedure which models the far field for solid, ideal slotted, and free jet tunnel walls are presented along with some design results for the associated boundary conditions and those for a free flight.
A numerical procedure for determining the position (horizontal location, vertical location, and deflection) of a leading edge slat that maximizes the lift of multielement airfoils is presented. The structure of the flow field is calculated by iteratively coupling potential flow and boundary layer analysis. This aerodynamic calculation is combined with a constrained function minimization analysis to determine the position of a leading edge slat so that the suction peak on the nose of the main airfoil is minized. The slat position is constrained by the numerical procedure to ensure an attached boundary layer on the upper surface of the slat and to ensure negligible interaction between the slat wake and the boundary layer on the upper surface of the main airfoil. The highest angle attack at which this optimized slat position can maintain attached flow on the main airfoil defines the optimum slat position for maximum lift. The design method is demonstrated for an airfoil equipped with a leading-edge slat and a trailing edge, single-slotted flap. The theoretical results are compared with experimental data, obtained in the Ames 40 by 80 Foot Wind Tunnel, to verify experimentally the predicted slat position for maximum lift. The experimentally optimized slat position is in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, indicating that the theoretical procedure is a feasible design method.
A dichroic plate for microwave energy includes an array of interlaced crossed slots or dipole elements. Each of the elements includes first and second crossed arms that are at approximately right angles to each other and aligned with X and Y axes. The elements are arranged so that the centers thereof are aligned parallel to the X and Y axes to form columns and rows, and the interlacing is such that a line between the centers of all adjacent elements has nonzero, differing components relative to the X and Y axes. In one embodiment, the spacing between adjacent arms of different, adjacent elements is the same along the X and Y axes, while in a second embodiment, the spacing between similarly directed arms of adjacent elements differs from the spacing between oppositely directed arms of adjacent elements.
The effects of the load/temperature environment of the shuttle on the fatigue life of the body-flap were investigated by conducting real time and accelerated flight-by-flight tests up to 500 flights on coupons containing holes. On the fracture side, much is known about the sensitivity of the tensile strengths of composites to holes and other flaws, predominantly at room temperature. The effects of notches were assessed for graphite/polyimides at the expected temperature extremes of the body-flap: 117K (-250 F) to 589K (600 F). Results indicate that the shuttle temperature extremes may affect fatigue properties HTS/PMR-15. There is no significant effect of temperature on notch-strength. Tensile strengths for specimens with holes and slots are equal.
The drag reduction potential of leading edge devices on delta wings at high lift is presented. Fences, pylon type vortex generators, chordwise slots, and sharp plate extensions were tested on wing models with 60 and 74 degree swept blunt leading edges at angles of attack to 32 degrees. Six component balance and leading edge surface pressure measurements were taken with various geometry and spanwise arrangements of the devices. Tables listing the data, without analysis, are presented.
An exploratory study was conducted to investigate the sensitivity of laminar flow controlled (LFC) boundary layers to external acoustical disturbances using an 8-ft span, 20-ft chord, and 30-deg swept wing section with laminar flow control through spanwise slots. The objectives were to identify Tollmien-Schlichting and other amplification frequencies, critical disturbance levels in the boundary layer, the influence of suction rate on these disturbances, and the transfer function between an external sound field and the corresponding disturbance induced in the boundary layer.
A computer program has been developed which numerically solves the full (elliptic) two-dimensional Navier-Stokes and specie equations near a slotted perpendicular hydrogen fuel injector in a scramjet engine. The program currently predicts the turbulent mixing of injected hydrogen fuel and air without reaction, and allows the study of separated regions of flow immediately preceding and following the injector as well as the complex shock-expansion structure produced by the injector in this region of the engine. Results are presented that describe the size of the separated regions near the injector as well as locations where ignition is likely to occur.