SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Computer program /MCAP/ calculates the temperature distribution in a heat generating solid complicated by nonuniform power and flow distributions between multiple channels. It determines the channel diameters coefficients, the effects of tolerences, the pressure drop at a given flowrate, or the flowrate for a specific pressure drop.
In the near future, Air Force mission payloads will require significant increases in power. Sophisticated sensing systems such as infrared focal plane detector arrays and radar will be employed by the Air Force to fulfill its strategic objectives. These payloads will demand that the power subsystem provide up to 50 kW at the end of mission life, more than an order of magnitude greater than is currently required. Some of these payloads must be flown in low-Earth polar orbits to satisfy mission objectives, and it is likely that large (500 to 600 sq m) solar photovoltaic arrays will operate in the low-Earth polar environment. The standard 28 volt power subsystem is not weight efficient for the array power levels being considered. The impact of the solar array operating voltage on the total weight of the array and the subsystem power conditioning and distribution components is illustrated. In the interest of reducing power subsystem weight, higher array operating voltages are considered. The problems which the higher array voltage present to the array designer are discussed. In order to provide a maximum return on the tremendous investment of resources required to develop and place these assets in orbit, they must be designed to operate effectively for extended periods of time. To achieve this, the system must be able to function in the threat-induced and natural space environment.
Spectra of 103 low- and intermediate-redshift QSOs with a resolution of 4-6 A were obtained in order to investigate the statistics of the M II 2796, 2803 absorption systems over the redshift range of 0.2-2.2. New emission-line redshifts, based mostly on Mg II 2800 and semiforbidden 1909, were determined for the QSOs. The mean number density of Mg II absorbers per unit redshift range decreased from 0.97 +/-0.10 for a rest equivalent width threshold of 0.3 A to 0.27 +/-0.05 for a threshold of 1.0 A. The results are in agreement with comparable previous work. The observed equivalent width distribution could be fitted with either exponential or power-law analytic distributions, with parameters in line with those found in earlier studies. Statistical tests show that the Mg II absorbers are uniformly distributed in both comoving coordinates and velocity relative to the QSO.
Recently, there have been several proposals submitted to funding agencies for long-lived high altitude (about 70,000 feet) airships for communications, surveillance, etc. In order for these airships to remain at altitude, high power, high efficiency, lightweight solar arrays must be used, and high efficiency power management and distribution systems must be employed. The needs for high power and high efficiency imply high voltage systems. However, the air pressure at these extreme altitudes is such that electrical power systems will be near the Paschen discharge minimum over a wide range of electrode separations. In this paper, preliminary calculations are made for acceptable high voltage design practices under ambient, hydrogen and helium gas atmospheres.
Rural, isolated power systems in the mainland U.S. and in states like Alaska and Hawaii are powered by assets like diesel generators. These rural, isolated power systems also cannot operate at the higher band of medium voltage (like 69kV). They are primarily in the 12 to 14 kV range to keep the cost of the distribution investments lower. Because of this mid-band medium voltage range, the line losses and distribution transformers losses consume significant diesel consumption (almost 10 percent of the peak load). This work considers one such power system powering an isolated system and presents key findings online losses, and transformer losses. Understanding and documenting the impacts is critical for these communities operating their power systems and take actions to reduce expensive diesel consumption. In this paper, we will present one such typical grid and model it in electromagnetic transients (EMT) domain. We used the tower structure, under ground cabling installation to develop high fidelity models of lines. We also used high fidelity models of distribution transformers to present the no-load losses and full load loses. We will also present technical solutions available commercially off-the-shelf to reduce these losses and reduce diesel consumption. This work will be a primer for communities to understand the technical challenges and to understand the possible solution available to solve such challenges for rural, isolated power system operators.
We propose novel line outage distribution factors under AC power flow (AC-LODF) for providing very efficient approximate post-outage power flow solution. The AC-LODF is derived by using holomorphic embedding (HE) approach, and the approximate post-outage power flow solution is obtained with Pad approximation (PA). In this work, tests on IEEE 14-bus system, and Polish 2383-bus system verify that the proposed AC-LODF is effective on most outages, and can significantly speed up outage analysis.
Severe weather conditions are low-probability, high-impact events that affect grid operations. The majority of power outages are caused by severe weather conditions. Grid resiliency to weather events can be enhanced by decreasing the reliance on its affected sections. One way to do this is to reduce the power flow through lines vulnerable to severe weather. If a line is disconnected, its initial power flow is distributed through the neighbor lines, which may cause congestion in the grid. FACTS devices can be used to control the power flow of lines that have a higher chance of power outages. Most previous works do not consider weather events in power flow control. In this work, a linearized optimal power flow (OPF)–based algorithm is developed to minimize the real power flow of vulnerable lines considering the thermal limits of lines to prevent infeasible solutions; the simulation is fast, making it suitable for large-scale systems. The proposed optimization problem is presented as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP), making it capable of using short-term load forecasting due to its high solution speed. The proposed optimization problem considers multiple lines with different outage probabilities and the uncertainties of the weather forecast. Moreover, it estimates the power reduction in vulnerable lines due to changes in the series FACTS devices. The performance of the proposed optimization problem is tested on IEEE 14-, 30-, and 118-bus systems for several scenarios. The results are validated with the AC power flow results from MATPOWER.
The concept of microwave-driven smart material actuators is envisioned as the best option to alleviate the complexity associated with hard-wired control circuitry. Networked rectenna patch array receives and converts microwave power into a DC power for an array of smart actuators. To use microwave power effectively, the concept of a power allocation and distribution (PAD) circuit is adopted for networking a rectenna/actuator patch array. The PAD circuit is imbedded into a single embodiment of rectenna and actuator array. The thin-film microcircuit embodiment of PAD circuit adds insignificant amount of rigidity to membrane flexibility. Preliminary design and fabrication of PAD circuitry that consists of a few nodal elements were made for laboratory testing. The networked actuators were tested to correlate the network coupling effect, power allocation and distribution, and response time. The features of preliminary design are 16-channel computer control of actuators by a PCI board and the compensator for a power failure or leakage of one or more rectennas.
Gamma-ray burst observed by BATSE are found to have approximately the same characteristic energy, denoted as E_p. We examine whether instrumental effects can give rise to this observation. We simulate the derivation of E-p and determine that the values in the BATSE sample are accurate and complete above a minimum fluence. We simulate the triggering of BATSE on gamma-ray bursts, deriving the efficiency of detecting bursts as a function of characteristic energy. From this simulation, we model the observed E_p distribution function expected when the intrinsic distribution function is a power-law. We find that this distribution produces poor fits to the observations. We find that a log-normal intrinsic distribution with a power-law tail gives a good fit to the data. From these fits, we conclude that instrumental effects cannot produce the observed E_p distribution, and that the observed distribution is a consequence of a narrow intrinsic distribution of E_p in gamma-ray bursts.
The Mie theory of light scattering by spheres was used to calculate the scattered intensity functions resulting from single scattering in a polydispersed collection of spheres. The distribution used behaves according to the inverse fourth power law; graphs and tables for the angular dependence of the intensity and polarization for this law are given. The effects of the particle size range and the integration increment are investigated.
Here in this article, we propose a framework for running optimal control-estimation synthesis in distribution networks. Our approach combines a primal-dual gradient-based optimal power flow solver with a state estimation feedback loop based on a limited set of sensors for system monitoring, instead of assuming exact knowledge of all states. The estimation algorithm reduces uncertainty on unmeasured grid states based on certain online state measurements and noisy "pseudomeasurements." We analyze the convergence of the proposed algorithm and quantify the statistical estimation errors based on a weighted least-squares estimator. The numerical results on a 4521-node network demonstrate that this approach can scale to extremely large networks and provide robustness to both large pseudomeasurement variability and inherent sensor measurement noise.
Equipment was designed to receive power from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator source, condition, distribute, and control this power for the spacecraft loads. The TOPS mission, aimed at a representative tour of the outer planets, would operate for an estimated 12 year period. Unique design characteristics required for the power conditioning equipment results from the long mission time and the need for autonomous on-board operations due to large communications distances and the associated time delays of ground initiated actions. The salient features of the selected power subsystem configuration are: (1) The PCE regulates the power from the radioisotope thermoelectric generator power source at 30 vdc by means of a quad-redundant shunt regulator; (2) 30 vdc power is used by certain loads, but is more generally inverted and distributed as square-wave ac power; (3) a protected bus is used to assure that power is always available to the control computer subsystem to permit corrective action to be initiated in response to fault conditions; and (4) various levels of redundancy are employed to provide high subsystem reliability.
A multi-modular power plant may include a plurality of on-site nuclear power modules configured to generate a power plant output, wherein one or more of the nuclear power modules may be designated as service module units which are configured to generate a first portion of the power plant output. A remainder of the nuclear power modules may be configured to generate a second portion of the power plant output. A number of power plant systems may be configured to operate using electricity associated with a house load of the power plant, wherein the first portion of the power plant output is equal to or greater than the house load. Additionally, a switchyard may be configured to electrically connect the power plant to a distributed electrical grid. The distributed electrical grid may be configured to service a plurality of geographically distributed consumers, and the switchyard may be configured to apply the second portion of the power plant output to the distributed electrical grid. The switchyard may further be configured to apply at least part of the first portion of the power plant output to the power plant systems during a loss of power from the distributed electrical grid.
In this paper, we address the problem of the optimal power dispatch of Distributed Generators (DGs) in Alternating Current (AC) networks, better known as the Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem. We used, as the objective function, the minimization of power losses (P loss ) associated with energy transport, which are subject to the set of constraints that compose AC networks in an environment of distributed generation. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in solving the OPF problem in any network topology, we employed one 10-node mesh test system and three radial text systems: 10, 33, and 69 nodes. In each test system, DGs were allowed to inject 20%, 40%, and 60% of the power supplied by the slack generator in the base case. To solve the OPF problem, we used a master–slave methodology that integrates the optimization method Salps Swarm Algorithm (SSA) and the load flow technique based on the Successive Approximation (SA) method. Moreover, for comparison purposes, we employed some of the algorithms reported in the specialized literature to solve the OPF problem (the continuous genetic algorithm, the particle swarm optimization algorithm, the black hole algorithm, the antlion optimization algorithm, and the Multi-Verse Optimizer algorithm), which were selected because of their excellent results in solving such problems. The results obtained by the proposed solution methodology demonstrate its superiority and convergence capacity in terms of minimization of P loss in both radial and mesh systems. It provided the best reduction in minimum P loss in short processing times and showed excellent repeatability in each test system and scenario under analysis.
The control of grid-forming inverters has become an important problem to achieve high efficiency, reliability, and resilience of the future power grid. The distributed control that utilizes a sparse communication network has been proposed for AC microgrids, in which each DG only has access to the information of a small number of its neighboring DGs, reducing the computational complexity and improving the resiliency to faults and unknown parameters. However, these approaches have not provided a clear analysis of the coupling between active/reactive power injections and the voltage magnitude/frequency or a distributed updating law with a solid theoretical foundation. Additionally, in the existing approaches, tracking the references from the secondary control may violate operational constraints.
Nuclear reactors that rely upon the fission reaction have two modes of thermal energy deposition in the reactor system: neutron absorption and gamma absorption. The gamma rays are typically generated by neutron capture reactions or during the fission process which means the primary driver of energy production is of course the neutron interaction. In conventional reactor physics methods, the gamma heating component is ignored such that the gamma absorption is forced to occur at the gamma emission site. For experimental reactor systems like EBR-II and FFTF, the placement of structural pins and assemblies internal to the core leads to problems with power heating predictions because there is no fission power source internal to the assembly to dictate a spatial distribution of the power.
The objectives of the Space Station Advanced Development Program are related to the development of a set of design options and/or new capabilities to support Space Station development and operation, taking into account also a quantification of the performance and risk of key state-of-the-art technologies, and a reduction of the cost and schedule risk in Space Station development. Attention is given to the photovoltaic power system, a solar dynamic system, and aspects of power management and distribution. A major issue will be the selection of the power generation system. In view of the advantages of the solar dynamic system, it is attempted to resolve issues associated with this system.
Unlike a terrestrial electric utility which can purchase power from a neighboring utility, the Space Station Freedom (SSF) has strictly limited energy resources; as a result, source control, system monitoring, system protection, and load management are essential to the safe and efficient operation of the SSF Electric Power System (EPS). These functions are being evaluated in the DC Power Management and Distribution (PMAD) Testbed which NASA LeRC has developed at the Power System Facility (PSF) located in Cleveland, Ohio. The testbed is an ideal platform to develop, integrate, and verify power system monitoring and control algorithms. State Estimation (SE) is a monitoring tool used extensively in terrestrial electric utilities to ensure safe power system operation. It uses redundant system information to calculate the actual state of the EPS, to isolate faulty sensors, to determine source operating points, to verify faults detected by subsidiary controllers, and to identify high impedance faults. Source control and monitoring safeguard the power generation and storage subsystems and ensure that the power system operates within safe limits while satisfying user demands with minimal interruptions. System monitoring functions, in coordination with hardware implemented schemes, provide for a complete fault protection system. The objective of this paper is to overview the development and integration of the state estimator and the source control algorithms.