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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 1,747 records · Page 97
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1981

Natural sunlight accelerated weathering of photovoltaic modules

Photovoltaic modules are exposed to the equivalent of ten years of sunlight aging in an accelerated exposure testing and evaluation program, the objective being to determine the long-term durability characteristics of flat plate modules in comparatively short periods of time. The modules are illuminated with concentrated sunlight in a large, sun-tracking, Fresnel-reflecting solar concentrator. The effects of the accelerated exposure are assessed by performing periodic visual inspections and electrical measurements. It is found that field-experienced failure modes are duplicated, that acceleration factors of 6x to 8x are readily attainable, and that the test method is feasible as a predictive tool for photovoltaic module lifetime durability.

Zerlaut, G. A.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Nickel-hydrogen LEO cycling at 20 percent - 50 percent DOD

The test setup consists of four major elements: the programmable power supplies and load banks, the data acquisition and control system control computer, and the NiH2 specimen test cells. A simplified block diagram of the test setup is shown. The test setup provides complete battery isolation should a fault occur, and fusing as necessary to protect the battery cells and other equipment. Front panel switches provide for power supply configuration and battery isolation. Front panel meters provide continuous real-time visual monitoring of the voltage and current for each pack of cells. A strip chart recorder provides a hard copy of the voltage and current profiles for each of the packs. The test operates continuously with minimal human interface, except during special tests. The two power supplies are controlled by resistance programming. A bank of resistors and relays was built which can be switched by the control computer to provide control over the charge current to the batteries. The load banks are controlled by the 3497A. The 3497A is equipped with a 0.5 volt programmable power supply which is used to voltage program the load banks. A Hewlett-Packard Vectra 9000 running an HP Basic program is used as the control computer to remotely instruct the 3497A (data acquisition and control) to scan the data channels and retrieve test data. The program then reads, calculates, and stores the data. If an anomaly occurs, the program will disconnect the cells and shut down the test to avoid damage to the cells or equipment.

Lowery, John E.↗
NASA NTRS1998

CAPRI (Computational Analysis PRogramming Interface): A Solid Modeling Based Infra-Structure for Engineering Analysis and Design Simulations

CAPRI is a CAD-vendor neutral application programming interface designed for the construction of analysis and design systems. By allowing access to the geometry from within all modules (grid generators, solvers and post-processors) such tasks as meshing on the actual surfaces, node enrichment by solvers and defining which mesh faces are boundaries (for the solver and visualization system) become simpler. The overall reliance on file 'standards' is minimized. This 'Geometry Centric' approach makes multi-physics (multi-disciplinary) analysis codes much easier to build. By using the shared (coupled) surface as the foundation, CAPRI provides a single call to interpolate grid-node based data from the surface discretization in one volume to another. Finally, design systems are possible where the results can be brought back into the CAD system (and therefore manufactured) because all geometry construction and modification are performed using the CAD system's geometry kernel.

Haimes, Robert↗
NASA NTRS1995

Dynamic properties of the human vestibulo-ocular reflex during head rotations in roll

We investigated the dynamic properties of the human vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) during roll head rotations in three human subjects using the magnetic search coil technique. In the first of two experiments, we quantify the behavior of the ocular motor plant in the torsional plane. The subject's eye was mechanically displaced into intorsion, extorsion or abduction, and the dynamic course of return of the eye to its resting position was measured. The mean predominant time constants of return were 210 msec from intorsion, 83 msec from extorsion, and 217 msec from abduction, although there was considerable variability of results from different trials and subjects. In the second experiment, we quantify the efficacy of velocity-to-position integration of the vestibular signal. Position-step stimuli were used to test the torsional or horizontal VOR, being applied with subjects heads erect or supine. After a torsional position-step, the eye drifted back to its resting position, but after a horizontal position-step the eye held its new horizontal position. To interpret these responses we used a simple model of the VOR with parameters of the ocular motor plant set to values determined during Exp 1. The time constant of the velocity-to-position neural integrator was smaller (typically 2 sec) in the torsional plane than in the horizontal plane (> 20 sec). No disconjugacy of torsional eye movements was observed. Thus, the dynamic properties of the VOR in roll differ significantly from those of the VOR in yaw, reflecting different visual demands placed on this reflex in these two planes.

NASA Discipline Neuroscience↗
NASA NTRS2010

Stereo Imaging Tactical Helper

The Stereo Imaging Tactical Helper (SITH) program displays left and right images in stereo using the display technology made available by the JADIS framework. An overlay of the surface described by the disparity map (generated from the left and right images) allows the map to be compared to the actual images. In addition, an interactive cursor, whose visual depth is controlled by the disparity map, is used to ensure the correlated surface matches the real surface. This enhances the ability of operations personnel to provide quality control for correlation results, as well as to greatly assist developers working on correlation improvements. While its primary purpose is as a quality control tool for inspecting correlation results, SITH is also straightforward for use as a basic stereo image viewer

Toole, Nicholas T.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Thermographic Methods of Detecting Insulation Voids in Large Cryogenic Tanks

Four very large (900Kgal) cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen storage tanks at Kennedy Space Center's LC-39 launch pads were constructed in 1965 to support the Apollo/Saturn V Program and continue to support the Space Shuttle Program. These double-walled spherical tanks with powdered insulation in the annular region, have received minimal refurbishment or even inspection over the years. As the Shuttle Program comes to an end we now have the time to perform limited refurbishment. Thermography has been used to monitor the state of insulation as one of the four tanks was drained of cryogen and warmed to ambient temperatures. An anomalous region of insulation detected previously with thermography was confirmed by visual inspections during this period. Thermal models and a comparison of images from the cold and warm tanks suggests that the anomalous region can be detected even without cryogen in the tank. The ability to detect and correct probable insulation voids prior to filling with cryogenic fluid can provide significant cost savings by reducing commodity boil-off over many years of use.

Arens, Ellen↗
NASA NTRS2013

Trade Space Specification Tool (TSST) for Rapid Mission Architecture (Version 1.2)

Trade Space Specification Tool (TSST) is designed to capture quickly ideas in the early spacecraft and mission architecture design and categorize them into trade space dimensions and options for later analysis. It is implemented as an Eclipse RCP Application, which can be run as a standalone program. Users rapidly create concept items with single clicks on a graphical canvas, and can organize and create linkages between the ideas using drag-and-drop actions within the same graphical view. Various views such as a trade view, rules view, and architecture view are provided to help users to visualize the trade space. This software can identify, explore, and assess aspects of the mission trade space, as well as capture and organize linkages/dependencies between trade space components. The tool supports a user-in-the-loop preliminary logical examination and filtering of trade space options to help identify which paths in the trade space are feasible (and preferred) and what analyses need to be done later with executable models. This tool provides multiple user views of the trade space to guide the analyst/team to facilitate interpretation and communication of the trade space components and linkages, identify gaps in combining and selecting trade space options, and guide user decision-making for which combinations of architectural options should be pursued for further evaluation. This software provides an environment to capture mission trade space elements rapidly and assist users for their architecture analysis. This is primarily focused on mission and spacecraft architecture design, rather than general-purpose design application. In addition, it provides more flexibility to create concepts and organize the ideas. The software is developed as an Eclipse plug-in and potentially can be integrated with other Eclipse-based tools.

Wang, Yeou-Fang↗
NASA NTRS2022

The Visual Survey Group: A Decade of Hunting Exoplanets and Unusual Stellar Events with Space-based Telescopes

This article presents the history of the Visual Survey Group (VSG)—a Professional-Amateur (Pro-Am) collaboration within the field of astronomy working on data from several space missions (Kepler, K2 and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). This paper covers the formation of the VSG, its survey-methods including the most common tools used and its discoveries made over the past decade. So far, the group has visually surveyed nearly 10 million light curves and authored 69 peer-reviewed papers which mainly focus on exoplanets and discoveries involving multistellar systems. The preferred manual search-method carried out by the VSG has revealed its strength by detecting numerous objects which were overlooked or discarded by automated search programs, uncovering some of the most rare stars in our galaxy, and leading to several serendipitous discoveries of unprecedented astrophysical phenomena. The main purpose of the VSG is to assist in the exploration of our local universe, and we therefore advocate continued crowd-sourced examination of time-domain data sets, and invite other research teams to reach out in order to establish collaborating projects.

Martti H Kristiansen↗
NASA NTRS2023

Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Overview & Current and Recent Projects

"NASA's Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program identifies, develops, and supports adoption of software and information systems, as well as novel computer science technologies expected to be needed by the Earth Science Division in the 5-10-year timeframe. Overall, the AIST Program is focusing on advanced technologies and innovative concepts with three main objectives: O1. Enable new observation measurements and new observing systems design and operations through intelligent, timely, dynamic, and coordinated distributed sensing; O2. Enable agile science analyses that fully utilize the large amount of diverse observations using advanced analytic tools, visualizations, and computing environments, and that interact seamlessly with relevant observing systems; O3. Enable the development of integrated Earth Science frameworks that mirror the Earth with state-of-the-art models (Earth system models and others), timely and relevant observations, and analytic tools. This thrust will provide technology for enabling near- and long-term science and policy decisions (""""science decisions"""" including planning for the acquisition of new measurements; the development of new models or science analysis; the integration of Earth observations in novel ways; applications to inform choices, support decisions, and guide actions for societal benefit; etc.). AIST objectives aim at optimizing Earth Science mission return – NOS from an observation point of view and ACF/ESDT from an information analysis and utilization point of view. The assets and data accessed and utilized in these systems may come from NASA and non-NASA sources. "

Earth Science Remote Sensing; Information Systems↗
DOE OSTI2016

Advanced Capability of Monte Carlo Transport and Depletion Calculation Program SuperMC for Fusion and Fission Applications

Since the advantages of high simulation accuracy and flexible geometry representation, the Monte Carlo methods have been broadly adopted in nuclear design and analysis of nuclear energy systems. However, great challenges exist for the current Monte Carlo methods including the calculation modeling of complex geometries, slow convergence of complex calculation, etc. Super Monte Carlo Simulation Program for Nuclear and Radiation Process (SuperMC), developed by FDS team, is a general purpose, intelligent and multi-functional program for the design and safety evaluation of nuclear systems, which is designed to perform the comprehensive neutronics calculation. The latest version of SuperMC can accomplish the transport calculation of n,{gamma} for criticality and shielding problems, depletion calculation of isotopes, and has been integrated with the functions of automatic modeling, visualization and cloud computing. The latest progress will be introduced in this paper. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
NASA NTRS1981

Program for establishing long-time flight service performance of composite materials in the center wing structure of C-130 aircraft. Phase 5: Flight service and inspection

Inspections of the C-130 composite-reinforced center wings were conducted over the flight service monitoring period of more than six years. Twelve inspections were conducted on each of the two C-130H airplanes having composite reinforced center wing boxes. Each inspection consisted of visual and ultrasonic inspection of the selective boron-epoxy reinforced center wings which included the inspection of the boron-epoxy laminates and the boron-epoxy reinforcement/aluminum structure adhesive bondlines. During the flight service monitoring period, the two C-130H aircraft accumulated more than 10,000 flight hours and no defects were detected in the inspections over this period. The successful performance of the C-130H aircraft with composite-reinforced center wings allowed the transfer of the responsibilities of inspecting and maintaining these two aircraft to the U. S. Air Force.

Kizer, J. A.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Automatic inspection of program state in an uncooperative environment

Abstract The program state is formed by the values that the program manipulates. These values are stored in the stack, in the heap, or in static memory. The ability to inspect the program state is useful as a debugging or as a verification aid. Yet, there exists no general technique to insert inspection points in type‐unsafe languages such as C or C++. The difficulty comes from the need to traverse the memory graph in a so‐called uncooperative environment. In this article, we propose an automatic technique to deal with this problem. We introduce a static code transformation approach that inserts in a program the instrumentation necessary to report its internal state. Our technique has been implemented in LLVM. It is possible to adjust the granularity of inspection points trading precision for performance. In this article, we demonstrate how to use inspection points to debug compiler optimizations; to augment benchmarks with verification code; and to visualize data structures.

Magalhães, José Wesley de Souza↗
DOE OSTI2018

Experimental Testing and Numerical Modeling of Ballistic Impact on S-2 Glass/SC 15 Composites

Here, the work presented in this paper details both an experimental program and an associated numerical modeling effort to characterize and predict the ballistic response of S-2 glass/SC15 epoxy composite panels. The experimental program consisted of ¼ inch diameter soft carbon steel spheres impacting ¼ and ½ inch thick flat composite panels at velocities ranging from 220 to 1570 m/s. High speed cameras were used to capture the impact event and resulting residual velocity of the spheres for each test configuration. After testing, each panel was inspected both visually and with ultrasonic C-scan techniques to determine the extent and depth of damage imparted on the panel by the impactor. The numerical modeling efforts utilized the anisotropic multi-constituent composite model (MCM) within the CTH shock physics hydrocode. The MCM model allows for evaluation of damage at the constituent level through continuum averaged stress and strain fields. The model also accounts for the inherent coupling of the equation of state and strength response that occurs in anisotropic composite materials. Finally, the simulation results are compared against the experimentally measured residual velocity as a quantitative metric and against the measured damage extent and patterns as a qualitative metric. The comparisons show good agreement in residual velocity and damage extent.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2012

Designing Scalable PGAS Communication Subsystems on Cray Gemini Interconnect

The Cray Gemini Interconnect has been recently introduced as a next generation network architecture for building multi-petaflop supercomputers. Cray XE6 systems including LANL Cielo, NERSC Hopper, ORNL Titan and proposed NCSA BlueWaters leverage the Gemini Interconnect as their primary Interconnection network. At the same time, programming models such as the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) models such as Unified Parallel C (UPC) and Co-Array Fortran (CAF) have become available on these systems. Global Arrays is a popular PGAS model used in a variety of application domains including hydrodynamics, chemistry and visualization. Global Arrays uses Aggregate Re- mote Memory Copy Interface (ARMCI) as the communication runtime system for Remote Memory Access communication. This paper presents a design, implementation and performance evaluation of scalable and high performance communication subsystems on Cray Gemini Interconnect using ARMCI. The design space is explored and time-space complexities of commu- nication protocols for one-sided communication primitives such as contiguous and uniformly non-contiguous datatypes, atomic memory operations (AMOs) and memory synchronization is presented. An implementation of the proposed design (referred as ARMCI-Gemini) demonstrates the efficacy on communication primitives, application kernels such as LU decomposition and full applications such as Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) application.

ARMCI↗
DOE OSTI2018

FY2017 annual report: Roll-to-Roll Advanced Materials Manufacturing DOE Laboratory Consortium Project

The following report provides a description of the program structure and technical accomplishments made during FY 2017 to overcome challenges for expanding use of R2R technologies and processing for clean energy applications. Technologies are under development that enable enhanced manufacturing of battery electrodes, fuel cells and water separation membranes that take advantage of advancements in new functional materials. Data mining, visualization, modeling and simulation for the materials, technologies and processes being developed allow for improvements in R2R manufacturing applications. This report documents the research conducted by four DOE national laboratories as a consortium in collaboration with industry partnerships. The research is directly applicable to AMM strategies that apply the National Science and Technology Council’s Materials Genome Initiative (NSTC 2011) approach to enhance the performance of battery, fuel cell and water membrane materials. This effort supports building the foundation of technologies, processes and a U.S. manufacturing base that will enable an order of magnitude in shorter process development cycles with the pathway for initial commercialization within months instead of years.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1987

Strake-generated vortex interactions for a fighter-like configuration

A combination of the Euler, and thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations were solved for the flowfield around a wing-strake-fuselage configuration similar to the F-16A aircraft. The flowfield was divided into multiple blocks using a zoning program, and the TNSWF solution program, based on an implicit solution algorithm, updates each subregion of the flowfield sequentially. The total grid contained approximately 300,000 grid points, and clustering was effected normal to all aircraft surfaces. The computed solutions agreed well quantitatively with wind-tunnel pressure distribution data, and they agreed well qualitatively with flow visualization from wind- and water-tunnel tests.

Reznick, Steven G.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Worldwide Spacecraft Crew Hatch History

The JSC Flight Safety Office has developed this compilation of historical information on spacecraft crew hatches to assist the Safety Tech Authority in the evaluation and analysis of worldwide spacecraft crew hatch design and performance. The document is prepared by SAIC s Gary Johnson, former NASA JSC S&MA Associate Director for Technical. Mr. Johnson s previous experience brings expert knowledge to assess the relevancy of data presented. He has experience with six (6) of the NASA spacecraft programs that are covered in this document: Apollo; Skylab; Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), Space Shuttle, ISS and the Shuttle/Mir Program. Mr. Johnson is also intimately familiar with the JSC Design and Procedures Standard, JPR 8080.5, having been one of its original developers. The observations and findings are presented first by country and organized within each country section by program in chronological order of emergence. A host of reference sources used to augment the personal observations and comments of the author are named within the text and/or listed in the reference section of this document. Careful attention to the selection and inclusion of photos, drawings and diagrams is used to give visual association and clarity to the topic areas examined.

Johnson, Gary↗
NASA NTRS2011

Online Time Series Analysis of Land Products over Asia Monsoon Region via Giovanni

Time series analysis is critical to the study of land cover/land use changes and climate. Time series studies at local-to-regional scales require higher spatial resolution, such as 1km or less, data. MODIS land products of 250m to 1km resolution enable such studies. However, such MODIS land data files are distributed in 10ox10o tiles, due to large data volumes. Conducting a time series study requires downloading all tiles that include the study area for the time period of interest, and mosaicking the tiles spatially. This can be an extremely time-consuming process. In support of the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study (MAIRS) program, NASA GES DISC (Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center) has processed MODIS land products at 1 km resolution over the Asia monsoon region (0o-60oN, 60o-150oE) with a common data structure and format. The processed data have been integrated into the Giovanni system (Goddard Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure) that enables users to explore, analyze, and download data over an area and time period of interest easily. Currently, the following regional MODIS land products are available in Giovanni: 8-day 1km land surface temperature and active fire, monthly 1km vegetation index, and yearly 0.05o, 500m land cover types. More data will be added in the near future. By combining atmospheric and oceanic data products in the Giovanni system, it is possible to do further analyses of environmental and climate changes associated with the land, ocean, and atmosphere. This presentation demonstrates exploring land products in the Giovanni system with sample case scenarios.

Shen, Suhung↗