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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 1,549 records · Page 86

Centralized Interactive Phenomics Resource: an integrated online phenomics knowledgebase for health data users

Development of clinical phenotypes from electronic health records (EHRs) can be resource intensive. Several phenotype libraries have been created to facilitate reuse of definitions. However, these platforms vary in target audience and utility. Here, we describe the development of the Centralized Interactive Phenomics Resource (CIPHER) knowledgebase, a comprehensive public-facing phenotype library, which aims to facilitate clinical and health services research. The platform was designed to collect and catalog EHR-based computable phenotype algorithms from any healthcare system, scale metadata management, facilitate phenotype discovery, and allow for integration of tools and user workflows. Phenomics experts were engaged in the development and testing of the site. The knowledgebase stores phenotype metadata using the CIPHER standard, and definitions are accessible through complex searching. Phenotypes are contributed to the knowledgebase via webform, allowing metadata validation. Data visualization tools linking to the knowledgebase enhance user interaction with content and accelerate phenotype development. The CIPHER knowledgebase was developed in the largest healthcare system in the United States and piloted with external partners. The design of the CIPHER website supports a variety of front-end tools and features to facilitate phenotype development and reuse. Health data users are encouraged to contribute their algorithms to the knowledgebase for wider dissemination to the research community, and to use the platform as a springboard for phenotyping. CIPHER is a public resource for all health data users available at https://phenomics.va.ornl.gov/ which facilitates phenotype reuse, development, and dissemination of phenotyping knowledge.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Building Supply Chain Visibility for Risk Management: Illuminating the COVID-19 Pandemic Impact Upon NASA Suppliers

NASA mission projects rely upon global supply chains subject to an array of risks that threaten to disrupt or deny the timely, affordable provision of products and services as required for mission success. Visibility into these supply chains is key to the management of risks, such as those stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and its associated effects upon suppliers. Accordingly, the Supplier Research and Analysis (SRA) Program within Goddard Space Flight Center’s Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Directorate produced the COVID-19 pandemic/NASA suppliers dashboard as part of the NASA Meta Information System. The dashboard provides visibility and situational awareness to aid risk assessment, planning and decision-making over the course of the pandemic recovery phase. The approach of integrating data and information into visual dashboard displays has also been employed by the SRA Program to focus on specific risks pertaining to foreign-based suppliers. This webinar is presented by the NASA Office of SMA and its Supply Chain Risk Management Program, in collaboration with the NASA Safety Center and Goddard’s SMA Directorate.

supplier research and analysis, supply chain risk ↗

A contextual sensor system for non-intrusive machine status and energy monitoring

Event-driven contexts in manufacturing occur pervasively as a result of interactions among involved entities such as machines, workers, materials, and environment. One of the primary tasks in smart manufacturing is to derive a context-aware system conveniently incorporating worker knowledge for generating timely actionable intelligence for workers on factory floor and supervisors to respond. In this paper, we propose to design a human-and-machine interaction recognition framework by using a causality concept to collect contextual data for classifications of normal and abnormal machine operations. The causes and effects are between workers and machines for this initial research. To apply the causality to recognize worker interactions, initially a reliable way to identify the states of machines is necessary. The proposed contextual sensor system, consisting of a power meter for measuring machine operation conditions, a visual camera for capturing worker and machine interactions via a finite state machine model, and an algorithm for determining power signatures of individual components via energy disaggregation is implemented on semiconductor fabrication machines (manual or PLC controlled) each with multiple components. The experiment results demonstrate its context extraction capability such as components states and their corresponding energy usage in real time as well as its ability to identify anomalous operation conditions.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Multiphysics modeling of accelerators through code integration

This work aims to improve the ability of particle accelerator researchers to develop high-performance accelerator cavity designs by creating an overall multiphysics framework that integrates and couples existing application codes. This framework will allow accelerator researchers to build multiphysics models that will optimize cavity design, improve understanding of whole-device performance, and reduce the development and fabrication costs of accelerator research. We utilize the open-source VizSchema data standard as an intermediate data structure interface layer to standardize interfaces between individual application codes. VizScema is extensively documented online, and plugins for VizSchema are available for popular visualization packages, including VisIt and ParaView. Currently, the work focuses on coupling the EM field solver COMSOL and the electron gun code MICHELLE to allow COMSOL field-solve results to be seamlessly used by MICHELLE for particle-solve. Later work will extend this integration to include other fields, particles, and thermodynamics simulation codes.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

helios: An R package to process heating and cooling degrees for GCAM

helios is an open-source R package that estimates population-weighted heating and cooling degree-hours (HDH and CDH) and degree-days (HDD and CDD) at various temporal (e.g., energy dispatch segments, monthly, yearly) and spatial scales (e.g., U.S. states, global political regions, countries). The degree hour and degree day outputs from helios are used to inform electricity demand load in the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) as well as in GCAM-USA (which is the version of GCAM with U.S. state-level details). helios uses a workflow with four steps: processing raw data; calculating heating and cooling degrees; visualizing performance diagnostics; and outputing results in various formats. There are two sources of widely-used climate data compatible with helios: (1) hourly climate data with 12-km resolution that are dynamically downscaled with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and projected using a thermal global warming (TGW) approach; and (2) daily climate data with 0.5-degree resolution from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) that is bias-adjusted and statistical downscaled by the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP). In summary, helios is a model that standardizes methodology of heating and cooling degrees-hours and degree-days using publicly available data and advance the understanding of the impact of spatial and temporal temperature variability on building energy services.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Impact of Specificity on Human Interpretations of State Uncertainty

The goal of this project was test how different representations of state uncertainty impact human decision making. Across a series of experiments, we sought to answer fundamental questions about human cognitive biases and how they are impacted by visual and numerical information. The results of these experiments identify problems and pitfalls to avoid when for presenting algorithmic outputs that include state uncertainty to human decision makers. Our findings also point to important areas for future research that will enable system designers to minimize biases in human interpretation for the outputs of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced analytic systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

ACDC (Automated Campbell Diagram Code) [SWR-26-042]

This application provides a web-based graphical user interface to generating Campbell Diagrams and visualizing mode shapes for OpenFAST turbine models. Determining the aeroelastic stability and dynamic characteristics of wind turbines is a critical step in turbine design and analysis. Historically, extracting natural frequencies and mode shapes from OpenFAST—the industry-standard whole-turbine simulation code—has been a fragmented and tedious process. It required manual model configuration, command-line linearization execution, and complex post-processing via proprietary scripts to handle rotating-frame dynamics. To address these workflow bottlenecks, we present the Automated Campbell Diagram Code (ACDC), an open-source graphical software tool developed by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) under the DOE-funded Distributed Wind Aeroelastic Modeling (dWAM) project. ACDC streamlines the end-to-end linearization and stability analysis workflow into a single, intuitive cross-platform application. The software guides users through OpenFAST model configuration, definition of operating points, and the automated execution of steady-state trim and linearization simulations. Under the hood, ACDC automates the complex mathematical post-processing steps required for rotating systems, including Multi-Blade Coordinate (MBC) transformations, eigenanalysis, and advanced modal tracking utilizing the Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC) and spectral clustering. Finally, ACDC processes these results to automatically generate Campbell diagrams and features a robust 3D visualization engine to animate full-system mode shapes. By eliminating the reliance on external post-processing environments and manual data manipulation, ACDC significantly accelerates dynamic analysis and lowers the barrier to entry for wind energy researchers and engineers.

Summerville, Brent [National Laboratory of the Roc↗

Rail accelerator technology and applications

Rail accelerators offer a viable means of launching ton-size payloads from the Earth's surface to space. The results of two mission studies which indicate that an Earth-to-Space Rail Launcher (ESRL) system is not only technically feasible but also economically beneficial, particularly when large amounts of bulk cago are to be delivered to space are given. An in-house experimental program at the Lewis Research Center (LeRC) was conducted in parallel with the mission studies with the objective of examining technical feasibility issues. A 1 m long - 12.5 by 12.5 mm bore rail accelerator as designed with clear polycarbonate sidewalls to visually observe the plasma armature acceleration. The general character of plasma/projectile dynamics is described for a typical test firing.

Zana, L. M.↗

The effects of stimulus modality and task integrality: Predicting dual-task performance and workload from single-task levels

The influence of stimulus modality and task difficulty on workload and performance was investigated. The goal was to quantify the cost (in terms of response time and experienced workload) incurred when essentially serial task components shared common elements (e.g., the response to one initiated the other) which could be accomplished in parallel. The experimental tasks were based on the Fittsberg paradigm; the solution to a SternBERG-type memory task determines which of two identical FITTS targets are acquired. Previous research suggested that such functionally integrated dual tasks are performed with substantially less workload and faster response times than would be predicted by suming single-task components when both are presented in the same stimulus modality (visual). The physical integration of task elements was varied (although their functional relationship remained the same) to determine whether dual-task facilitation would persist if task components were presented in different sensory modalities. Again, it was found that the cost of performing the two-stage task was considerably less than the sum of component single-task levels when both were presented visually. Less facilitation was found when task elements were presented in different sensory modalities. These results suggest the importance of distinguishing between concurrent tasks that complete for limited resources from those that beneficially share common resources when selecting the stimulus modalities for information displays.

Hart, S. G.↗

Infrared flow visualization of V/STOL aircraft

During low altitude operations of vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOVL) aircraft complex aeropropulsive flowfields are produced by the strong interactions between the engine exhaust jet or propeller wash and the runway and aircraft surfaces. Measurement of these unsteady 3 dimensional flowfields has not proven practical with conventional measurement techniques. It has been demonstrated that modern infrared imaging systems provide a practical means of obtaining flow visualization images of these complex aeropropulsive flowfields. Infrared images obtained with a dual wavelength scanning system are presented which provide detailed information on the flowfields about the NASA Ames XV-15 tiltrotor aircraft, the E-7 STOVL research model and the NASA Ames YAV-8B Harrier aircraft. It was found that the use of a dual wavelength infrared system provides valuable information about both the engine exhaust flowfield and the resulting heating of aircraft and runway surfaces.

Birckelbaw, Larry D.↗

Design and evaluation of single and dual flow thrust vector nozzles with post exit vanes

This Thrust Vectored Research project required that a 1/24 scale model of the F/A-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle, (HARV), propulsion system be constructed on the university campus. This propulsion system was designed for cold flow testing on a multicomponent test rig. Forces and moments were measured to study nozzle performance parameters. The flow visualization technique of color Schlieren photography was performed to investigate the flow phenomena at the nozzle exit. The flow interactions that were identified consisted of vane nozzleing between the outer and lower vanes and vane tip interference. The thrust vectoring system consisted of three asymmetrically spaced vanes installed circumferentially on a maximum afterburner nozzle. The performance of the nozzle was investigated with the outer and lower vanes equally deflected, (-10 deg is less than delta(sub v) is less than 25 deg), and with the upper vane fully retracted, (delta(sub v) equals -10 deg). The nozzle pressure ratio ranged from 4 to 6. The results indicated that a vane nozzleing effect developed at nozzle pressure ratios of 4 and 6 when the outer and lower vanes were deflected far enough into the flow field such that the increase in vane area accelerated the flow past the vanes causing distorted shock waves. This accelerated flow was a result of a pressure differential existing between the inside surface of the vane and the ambient pressure. The stagnation pressure that developed along the inside surface of the vane accelerated the flow past the vanes causing it to equalize with ambient pressure, thus providing distorted shock waves. A tip interference was present at the trailing edge of the upper vane as a result of low nozzle pressure, NPR 4, with high vane deflection, delta(sub v) equals 25 degrees, and also with a high nozzle pressure, NPR 6, and low vane deflections, delta(sub v) equals 15 degrees.

Carpenter, Thomas W.↗

Microcomputer spacecraft thermal analysis routines (MSTAR) Phase I: The user interface

The Microcomputer Spacecraft Thermal Analysis Routines (MSTAR) software package is being developed for NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center by Swales and Associates, Inc. (S&AI). In December 1992, S&AI was awarded a phase I Small Business Inovative Research contract fronm NASA to develop a microcomputer based thermal analysis program to replace the current SSPTA and TRASYS programs. Phase I consists of a six month effort which will focus on developing geometric model generation and visualization capabilities using a graphical user interface (GUI). The information contained in this paper encompasses the work performed during the Phase I development cycle; with emphasis on the development of the graphical user interface (GUI). This includes both the theory behind and specific examples of how the MSTAR GUI was implemented. Furthermore, this report discusses new applications and enhancements which will improve the capabilities and commercialization of the MSTAR program.

Teti, Nicholas M.↗

Scene-Linked Symbology to Improve Situation Awareness

This paper reviews recent research conducted in the Flight Management and Human Factors Division of NASA Ames Research Center on superimposed symbology (as found on HUDs and HMDs). We first identify various performance problems which suggest that superimposed symbology impairs pilots' ability to maintain simultaneous awareness of instrument information and information in the forward visual scene. Results of experiments supporting an attentional account of the impairment are reported. A design solution involving the concept of 'scene-linked' symbology is developed, and experiments testing the design solution are reported. An application of the scene-linking concept, in the form of a candidate HUD to support ground taxi operations for civil transport, is described.

McCann, Robert S.↗

Self-motion perception: assessment by computer-generated animations

The goal of this research is more precise description of adaptation to sensory rearrangements, including microgravity, by development of improved procedures for assessing spatial orientation perception. Thirty-six subjects reported perceived self-motion following exposure to complex inertial-visual motion. Twelve subjects were assigned to each of 3 perceptual reporting procedures: (a) animation movie selection, (b) written report selection and (c) verbal report generation. The question addressed was: do reports produced by these procedures differ with respect to complexity and reliability? Following repeated (within-day and across-day) exposures to 4 different "motion profiles," subjects either (a) selected movies presented on a laptop computer, or (b) selected written descriptions from a booklet, or (c) generated self-motion verbal descriptions that corresponded most closely with their motion experience. One "complexity" and 2 reliability "scores" were calculated. Contrary to expectations, reliability and complexity scores were essentially equivalent for the animation movie selection and written report selection procedures. Verbal report generation subjects exhibited less complexity than did subjects in the other conditions and their reports were often ambiguous. The results suggest that, when selecting from carefully written descriptions and following appropriate training, people may be better able to describe their self-motion experience with words than is usually believed.

Non-NASA Center↗

Analyzing and Detecting Problems in Systems of Systems

Many software systems are evolving complex system of systems (SoS) for which inter-system communication is mission-critical. Evidence indicates that transmission failures and performance issues are not uncommon occurrences. In a NASA-supported Software Assurance Research Program (SARP) project, we are researching a new approach addressing such problems. In this paper, we are presenting an approach for analyzing inter-system communications with the goal to uncover both transmission errors and performance problems. Our approach consists of a visualization and an evaluation component. While the visualization of the observed communication aims to facilitate understanding, the evaluation component automatically checks the conformance of an observed communication (actual) to a desired one (planned). The actual and the planned are represented as sequence diagrams. The evaluation algorithm checks the conformance of the actual to the planned diagram. We have applied our approach to the communication of aerospace systems and were successful in detecting and resolving even subtle and long existing transmission problems.

Lindvall, Mikael↗

Development of an Airspace Simulation and Modeling Tool for Enhanced Spectrum Management

The emergence of new aerial vehicles into the National Airspace System creates an increased demand for aeronautical communications to support aviation operations. However, the issue of spectrum scarcity remains an ever-present concern, and the growing demand cannot be supported using existing spectrum allocation strategies. As a result, a new spectrum management approach is required, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is investigating advanced concepts to modernize the management and use of aviation spectrum by leveraging the latest advancements in wireless communications, big data and machine learning. This research proposes an autonomous spectrum allocation concept, which allocates communications resources, such as spectrum and power, based on the predicted communications and air traffic demands throughout the airspace, as opposed to the use of fixed allocations as is done today. This approach will result in improved spectrum utilization efficiency and enhanced airspace capacity. The autonomous spectrum allocation concept decomposes into three research areas: demand prediction, resource allocation, and use case evaluation. As part of the use case evaluation effort, a modeling and simulation capability is currently under development. This simulation capability includes the implementation of various features, including visualization of both live or virtually-generated airspace traffic, simulation scenario development, simulation management with data collection, and flight plan creation with corresponding trajectory generation. This modeling and simulation capability will continue to evolve as new and advanced airspace applications are introduced into existing and emerging operational environments.

Eric J. Knoblock↗

Auna: A Geospatial System for Assessing Equity in Multimodal Mobility

Traditionally, new modes of transportation in the United States have benefited upper social classes at the expense of underrepresented and lower socioeconomic classes. Several recent studies in transportation have explored this disparity, and research has highlighted factors that contribute to transportation equity. In this effort, we will examine this previous work as it applies to the broader, current transportation system. Based on findings, we propose Auna, a tool to better visualize spatial data, including social injustice, ground and air mobility data.

GIS↗

SIR Glass Test Vehicle Designed to Characterize Process Materials

The exposure to harsh environments can result in reliability issues on highly dense electronic packages and circuit assemblies. One area of concern is electrochemical failure mechanisms caused by electrolytic corrosion, electrochemical migration (dendrites), and leakage currents under humid conditions. These no-fault and no-trouble found failure points are challenging to detect and to perform process control during the assembly process. The focus of this research centers on metallizing glass surface insulation resistance test vehicles to characterize materials on electronic packages and components that exhibit the highest risk of failure due to material interactions and process residues. Glass test vehicles provide a visual representation of materials when they are exposed to moisture content in the air. Harsh environments can cause material interactions resulting in morphology changes, opening, and release of active components. A transparent test vehicle is highly functional for environmental stress testing under temperature, humidity, and bias. The designed experiment will evaluate the effects of material and process residues that can undergo changes in behavior during application, which leads to local failures.

Capen, Bill↗