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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 1,603 records · Page 89
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1981

Cloud motions on Venus - Global structure and organization

Results on cloud motions on Venus obtained over a period of 3.5 days from Mariner 10 television images are presented. The implied atmosphere flow is almost zonal everywhere on the visible disk, and is in the same retrograde sense as the solid planet. Objective analysis of motions suggests the presence of jet cores (-130 m/s) and organized atmospheric waves. The longitudinal mean meridional profile of the zonal component of motion of the ultraviolet features shows presence of a midlatitude jet stream (-110 m/s). The mean zonal component is -97 m/s at the equator. The mean meridional motion at most latitudes is directed toward the pole in either hemisphere and is at least an order of magnitude smaller so that the flow is nearly zonal. A tentative conclusion from the limited coverage available from Mariner 10 is that at the level of ultraviolet features mean meridional circulation is the dominant mode of poleward angular momentum transfer as opposed to the eddy circulation.

Limaye, S. S.↗
NASA NTRS1976

Parametric analyses of planned flowing uranium hexafluoride critical experiments

Analytical investigations were conducted to determine preliminary design and operating characteristics of flowing uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gaseous nuclear reactor experiments in which a hybrid core configuration comprised of UF6 gas and a region of solid fuel will be employed. The investigations are part of a planned program to perform a series of experiments of increasing performance, culminating in an approximately 5 MW fissioning uranium plasma experiment. A preliminary design is described for an argon buffer gas confined, UF6 flow loop system for future use in flowing critical experiments. Initial calculations to estimate the operating characteristics of the gaseous fissioning UF6 in a confined flow test at a pressure of 4 atm, indicate temperature increases of approximately 100 and 1000 K in the UF6 may be obtained for total test power levels of 100 kW and 1 MW for test times of 320 and 32 sec, respectively.

Rodgers, R. J.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Combustion, Complex Fluids, and Fluid Physics Experiments on the ISS

From the very first days of human spaceflight, NASA has been conducting experiments in space to understand the effect of weightlessness on physical and chemically reacting systems. NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio has been at the forefront of this research looking at both fundamental studies in microgravity as well as experiments targeted at reducing the risks to long duration human missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. In the current International Space Station (ISS) era, we now have an orbiting laboratory that provides the highly desired condition of long-duration microgravity. This allows continuous and interactive research similar to Earth-based laboratories. Because of these capabilities, the ISS is an indispensible laboratory for low gravity research. NASA GRC has been actively involved in developing and operating facilities and experiments on the ISS since the beginning of a permanent human presence on November 2, 2000. As the lead Center both Combustion, Fluid Physics, and Acceleration Measurement GRC has led the successful implementation of an Acceleration Measurement systems, the Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR), the Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) as well as the continued use of other facilities on the ISS. These facilities have supported combustion experiments in fundamental droplet combustion fire detection fire extinguishment soot phenomena flame liftoff and stability and material flammability. The fluids experiments have studied capillary flow magneto-rheological fluids colloidal systems extensional rheology pool and nucleate boiling phenomena. In this paper, we provide an overview of the experiments conducted on the ISS over the past 12 years. We also provide a look to the future development. Experiments presented in combustion include areas such as droplet combustion, gaseous diffusion flames, solid fuels, premixed flame studies, fire safety, and super critical oxidation processes. In fluid physics, experiments are discussed in multiphase flows, capillary phenomena, and heat pipes. Finally in complex fluids, experiments in rheology and soft condensed materials will be presented.

Motil, Brian↗
DOE OSTI2023

Final Scientific Report on: Magnetized Shock Physics and Convergent Flows

The objective of this project was to study magnetized shocks in plasmas using the Omega Laser Facility to drive a solid foil into a magnetized gas, which would be preionized by the x-rays from the laser-solid interaction. The MIFEDS (magneto-inertial fusion electrical discharge system) provided the magnetic field. Magnetized shocks are of interest in magneto-inertial fusion, such as MagLIF and magnetized spherical implosions with both direct and indirect drive, space physics, heliophysics, and astrophysics. In magneto-inertial fusion the shocks of interest are collisional and perpendicular to the magnetic field lines, since the magnetic field needs to be compressed. In space, the shocks of interest are typically collisionless, due to the low plasma density, and both perpendicular and parallel to the magnetic field. The marginally collisionless regime between these is also of interest in both laboratory, fusion, and space plasmas, but has barely been investigated.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Carbon pools and flows during lab-scale degradation of old landfilled waste under different oxygen and water regimes

Graphical abstract: Display Omitted - Highlights: • 40 year old waste from an old MSW landfill was incubated in LSR experiments. • Carbon balances for anaerobic and aerobic waste degradation were established. • The transformation of carbon pools during waste degradation was investigated. • Waste aeration resulted in the formation of a new, stable organic carbon pool. • Water addition did not have a significant effect on aerobic waste degradation. - Abstract: Landfill aeration has been proven to accelerate the degradation of organic matter in landfills in comparison to anaerobic decomposition. The present study aims to evaluate pools of organic matter decomposing under aerobic and anaerobic conditions using landfill simulation reactors (LSR) filled with 40 year old waste from a former MSW landfill. The LSR were operated for 27 months, whereby the waste in one pair was kept under anaerobic conditions and the four other LSRs were aerated. Two of the aerated LSR were run with leachate recirculation and water addition and two without. The organic carbon in the solid waste was characterized at the beginning and at the end of the experiments and major carbon flows (e.g. TOC in leachate, gaseous CO{sub 2} and CH{sub 4}) were monitored during operation. After the termination of the experiments, the waste from the anaerobic LSRs exhibited a long-term gas production potential of more than 20 NL kg{sup −1} dry waste, which corresponded to the mineralization of around 12% of the initial TOC (67 g kg{sup −1} dry waste). Compared to that, aeration led to threefold decrease in TOC (32–36% of the initial TOC were mineralized), without apparent differences in carbon discharge between the aerobic set ups with and without water addition. Based on the investigation of the carbon pools it could be demonstrated that a bit more than 10% of the initially present organic carbon was transformed into more recalcitrant forms, presumably due to the formation of humic substances. The source of anaerobic degradation could be identified mainly as cellulose which played a minor role during aerobic degradation in the experiment.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Comparison between Computational and Experimental Wall-Shear Stress and Pressure Measurements in a Supersonic Wind Tunnel

We study the performance of two selected RANS models (SST-$k$-$\omega$ and Baldwin-Lomax) to simulate the mean wall-shear and pressure data obtained from a distributed-roughness-related experimental campaign conducted at Ahmic Aerospace, LLC, located in Ohio, US. A structured compressible Navier-Stokes in-house solver, DPLR, is used to conduct the RANS simulations. As the final objective is to perform the studies under high-enthalpy flow conditions, such as inside the AHF facility at NASA-Ames Research Center (ARC), the current investigation focuses on the low-enthalpy cases using Ahmic's high-Reynolds-number supersonic wind tunnel as the initial step to simplify the flow physics. Furthermore, the wind tunnel simulations are conducted with perfectly-smooth walls to further simplify the problem and perform the initial testing of different solver-based RANS models. The Baldwin-Lomax model is observed to be more accurate than the SST model. However, when these RANS models and their roughness augmentation models are utilized to study their accuracy with respect to the experimental datasets, where the roughness effects are activated, both models perform well for a low roughness height case. However, as the roughness height increases, the SST model more accurately predicts the wall data (shear and pressure) than the Baldwin-Lomax model. Therefore, this present work has built a solid foundation for selecting the best RANS model to study the wall data under high-enthalpy flow conditions at the AHF facility soon.

Prakash Shrestha↗
NASA NTRS2014

Coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis of Solid Rocket Motor with Flexible Inhibitors

Flexible inhibitors are generally used in solid rocket motors (SRMs) as a means to control the burning of propellant. Vortices generated by the flow of propellant around the flexible inhibitors have been identified as a driving source of instabilities that can lead to thrust oscillations in launch vehicles. Potential coupling between the SRM thrust oscillations and structural vibration modes is an important risk factor in launch vehicle design. As a means to predict and better understand these phenomena, a multidisciplinary simulation capability that couples the NASA production CFD code, Loci/CHEM, with CFDRC's structural finite element code, CoBi, has been developed. This capability is crucial to the development of NASA's new space launch system (SLS). This paper summarizes the efforts in applying the coupled software to demonstrate and investigate fluid-structure interaction (FSI) phenomena between pressure waves and flexible inhibitors inside reusable solid rocket motors (RSRMs). The features of the fluid and structural solvers are described in detail, and the coupling methodology and interfacial continuity requirements are then presented in a general Eulerian-Lagrangian framework. The simulations presented herein utilize production level CFD with hybrid RANS/LES turbulence modeling and grid resolution in excess of 80 million cells. The fluid domain in the SRM is discretized using a general mixed polyhedral unstructured mesh, while full 3D shell elements are utilized in the structural domain for the flexible inhibitors. Verifications against analytical solutions for a structural model under a steady uniform pressure condition and under dynamic modal analysis show excellent agreement in terms of displacement distribution and eigenmode frequencies. The preliminary coupled results indicate that due to acoustic coupling, the dynamics of one of the more flexible inhibitors shift from its first modal frequency to the first acoustic frequency of the solid rocket motor. This insight could have profound implications for SRM and flexible inhibitor designs for current and future launch vehicles including SLS.

Yang, H. Q.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Design and experimental results for a turbine with jet flap stator and jet flap

The overall performance and detailed stator performance of a negative hub reaction turbine design featuring a moderately low solidity jet flap stator and a jet flap rotor were determined. Testing was conducted over a range of turbine expansion ratios at design speed. At each expansion ratio, the stator jet flow and rotor jet flow ranged up to about 7 and 8 percent, respectively, of the turbine inlet flow. The performance of the jet flap stator/jet flap rotor turbine was compared with that of a turbine which used the same jet flap rotor and a conventional, high solidity plan stator. The effect on performance of increased axial spacing between the jet stator and rotor was also investigated.

Bettner, J. L.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Biocatalytic Yarn for Peroxide Decomposition with Controlled Liquid Transport

In this study, a robust biocatalytic yarn with controllable liquid transport properties is created by coating thin layers of chitosan containing catalase onto a cellulosic yarn. The resulting material integrates enzyme catalytic functionality with protective coating properties of chitosan and structural functionality of the textile. Mild immobilization conditions and good affinity between the two polysaccharides minimize enzyme inactivation during the preparation steps and prevent enzyme from leaching during peroxide decomposition testing and washing, providing a novel and versatile enzyme immobilization strategy. The catalytic efficiency of enzymes in a reaction containing solid, liquid, and gas phases is facilitated when dissolved enzyme substrate is transported by liquid flowing through the coated textile structure. The flow-through configuration decomposes at least two times more peroxide in a twenty-times smaller reaction zone volume compared to a stirred tank configuration. Liquid transport through the yarn and liquid spatial distribution within the yarn are investigated by in situ neutron radiography and neutron computed tomography, revealing a constrained wicking mechanism that benefits biocatalytic yarn performance. This new class of sustainable and flexible biocatalytic textile matrices has beneficial multifunctional properties, not previously described, that are applicable for numerous small- and large-scale applications including controlled flow reactors and reactive filtration.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Surfactant-assisted stabilization of Au colloids on solids for heterogeneous catalysis

Here, the stabilization of surfactant-assisted synthesized colloidal noble metal nanoparticles (NPs, e.g., Au NPs) on solids is a promising strategy for preparing supported nanocatalysts for heterogeneous catalysis because of their uniform particle sizes, controllable shapes, and tunable compositions. However, the removal of surfactants to obtain clean surfaces for catalysis through traditional approaches (e.g., solvent extraction and thermal decomposition) can easily induce the sintering of NPs, greatly hampering their use in synthesis of novel catalysts. Herein, we demonstrate that such unwanted surfactants can be utilized to stabilize NPs on solids via a simple yet efficient thermal annealing strategy. After being annealed in N 2 flow, the surface-bound surfactants are in situ carbonized as sacrificial architectures that form a conformal coating on NPs and assist in creating an enhanced metal-support interaction between NPs and substrate, thus slowing down the Ostwald ripening process during post-oxidative calcination to remove surface covers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling and Optimization of a Rotating Packed Bed Contactor with a Tetraamine-Appended Metal−Organic Framework for CO 2 Capture

A potential contactor technology for sorbent-based CO 2 capture is the rotating packed bed that contains separate sections for continuous adsorption and desorption. A heat exchanger can be embedded to remove heat in the adsorption section and add heat in the desorption section. In this work, we develop a two-dimensional (2D) model of a rotating packed bed for use in CO 2 capture applications. Mass and energy balances for the model are developed based on a Ljungström-type air preheater, which accounts for the counter-current axial flow of gas phases in separate sections of the bed and the rotation of a solid sorbent, which cycles between adsorption and desorption sections. The sorbent used for this analysis is the tetraamine-appended metal−organic framework Mg 2 (dobpdc)(3−4− 3), chosen for its stability and affinity for CO 2 at low partial pressures, such as those from a natural gas power plant source. An optimization problem is solved that considers the trade-off between maximizing the productivity of the bed and minimizing energy consumption. Maximum productivity and minimum energy are found to be 8.53 kg/h/m 3 and 3.84 MJ/kg, respectively, when these objectives are optimized independently. It is observed that the flue gas pressure and bed rotational speed are the desired operating variables to vary for model-based design of experiments to reduce uncertainty in parameter estimation, as these two variables yielded the most information content based on the Fisher information matrix.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Molecular Origin of Wettability Alteration of Subsurface Porous Media upon Gas Pressure Variations

Upon extraction/injection of a large quantity of gas from/into a subsurface system in shale gas production or carbon sequestration, the gas pressure varies remarkably, which may significantly change the wettability of porous media involved. Mechanistic understanding of such changes is critical for designing and optimizing a related subsurface engineering process. Using molecular dynamics simulations, in this work we have calculated the contact angle of a water droplet on various solid surfaces (kerogen, pyrophyllite, calcite, gibbsite, and montmorillonite) as a function of CO 2 or CH 4 gas pressure up to 200 atm at a temperature of 300 K. The calculation reveals a complex behavior of surface wettability alteration by gas pressure variation depending on surface chemistry and structure, and molecular interactions of fluid molecules with surfaces. As the CO 2 gas pressure increases, a partially hydrophilic kerogen surface becomes highly hydrophobic, while a calcite surface becomes more hydrophilic. Considering kerogen and calcite being the major components of a shale formation, we postulate that the wettability alteration of a solid surface induced by a gas pressure change may play an important role in fluid flows in shale gas production and geological carbon sequestration.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2018

Letter: Modeling reactive shock waves in heterogeneous solids at the continuum level with stochastic differential equations

In this paper, a new paradigm is introduced for modeling reactive shock waves in heterogeneous solids at the continuum level. Inspired by the probability density function methods from turbulent reactive flows, it is hypothesized that the unreacted material microstructures lead to a distribution of heat release rates from chemical reaction. Fluctuations in heat release, rather than velocity, are coupled to the reactive Euler equations which are then solved via the Riemann problem. Finally, a numerically efficient, one-dimensional hydrocode is used to demonstrate this new approach, and simulation results of a representative impact calculation (inert flyer into explosive target) are discussed.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Conjugate heat and mass transfer in the lattice Boltzmann equation method

An interface treatment for conjugate heat and mass transfer in the lattice Boltzmann equation method is proposed based on our previously proposed second-order accurate Dirichlet and Neumann boundary schemes. The continuity of temperature (concentration) and its flux at the interface for heat (mass) transfer is intrinsically satisfied without iterative computations, and the interfacial temperature (concentration) and their fluxes are conveniently obtained from the microscopic distribution functions without finite-difference calculations. The present treatment takes into account the local geometry of the interface so that it can be directly applied to curved interface problems such as conjugate heat and mass transfer in porous media. For straight interfaces or curved interfaces with no tangential gradient, the coupling between the interfacial fluxes along the discrete lattice velocity directions is eliminated and thus the proposed interface schemes can be greatly simplified. Several numerical tests are conducted to verify the applicability and accuracy of the proposed conjugate interface treatment, including (i) steady convection-diffusion in a channel containing two different fluids, (ii) unsteady convection-diffusion in the channel, (iii) steady heat conduction inside a circular domain with two different solid materials, and (iv) unsteady mass transfer from a spherical droplet in an extensional creeping flow. The accuracy and order of convergence of the simulated interior temperature (concentration) field, the interfacial temperature (concentration), and heat (mass) flux are examined in detail and compared with those obtained from the "half-lattice division" treatment in the literature. The present analysis and numerical results show that the half-lattice division scheme is second-order accurate only when the interface is fixed at the center of the lattice links, while the present treatment preserves second-order accuracy for arbitrary link fractions. For curved interfaces, the present treatment yields second-order accurate interior and interfacial temperatures (concentrations) and first-order accurate interfacial heat (mass) flux. An increase of order of convergence by one degree is obtained for each of these three quantities compared with the half-lattice division scheme. The surface-averaged Sherwood numbers computed in test (iv) agree well with published results.

Li, LK↗
DOE OSTI2015

Disruption Mitigation System Developments and Design for ITER

A disruption mitigation system (DMS) is under design for ITER to inject sufficient material deeply into the plasma for rapid plasma thermal shutdown and collisional suppression of any resulting runaway electrons. Progress on the development and design of both a shattered pellet injector (SPI) that produces large solid cryogenic pellets to provide reliable deep penetration of material and a fast opening high flow rate gas valve for massive gas injection (MGI) is presented. Cryogenic pellets of deuterium and neon up to 25 mm in size have been formed and accelerated with a prototype injector and a full scale prototype MGI valve is now in testing. Implications of the design with respect to response time and reliability at the proposed injector locations on ITER are discussed.

Baylor, Larry↗
NASA NTRS1972

Analytical investigation of two-phase heat transfer in a porous matrix.

One-dimensional two-phase flow transpiration cooling through porous metals is studied analytically. The differential energy equations for the solid and for the liquid with temperature dependent properties are solved simultaneously with a semi-empirical pressure drop correlation. Formulation of the problem both assuming thermal equilibrium (assumes Clausius-Claperyon equation pertains) and nonequilibrium (defines a parameter representing fraction of energy transferred to mixture which contributes to evaporation) is given. Representative solutions showing the influences and significance of the controlling dimensionless parameters are presented.

Frost, W.↗