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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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NASA's compressed television transmission technology is described, and its potential market is considered; a market that encompasses teleconferencing, remote medical diagnosis, patient monitoring, transit station surveillance, as well as traffic management and control. In addition, current and potential television transmission systems and their costs and potential manufacturers are considered.
The goal of this research is developing and integrating qualitative and quantitative methods for life cycle design. The definition of the problem includes formal computer-based methods limited to final detailing stages of design; CAD data bases do not capture design intent or design history; and life cycle issues were ignored during early stages of design. Viewgraphs outline research in conceptual design; the SYMON (SYmbolic MONotonicity analyzer) algorithm; multistart vector quantization optimization algorithm; intelligent manufacturing: IDES - Influence Diagram Architecture; and 1st PRINCE (FIRST PRINciple Computational Evaluator).
A theoretical framework for integrating qualitative and numerical computational methods for optimally-directed design is described. The theory is presented as a computational model and features of implementations are summarized where appropriate. To demonstrate the versatility of the methodology we focus on four seemingly disparate aspects of the design process and their interaction: (1) conceptual design, (2) qualitative optimal design, (3) design innovation, and (4) numerical global optimization.
Non-routine designs are characterized by the creation of new variables and thus an expansion of the design space. These differ from routine designs in that the latter are restricted to a fixed set of variables and thus a pre-defined design space. In previous papers, the 1stPRINCE non-routine design methodology that expands the design space in such a way that optimal trends dictate the direction and form of this expansion is described. How inductive techniques can determine these optimal trends are examined. The induction techniques in 1stPRINCE utilize constraint information from monotonicity analysis to determine how to mutate the design space. The process observes the constraint information of mutated designs and induces trends from those constraints. Application of 1stPRINCE to a beam under flexural load leads to an optimally directed tapered beam. An interesting application of 1stPRINCE to determine the optimally directed shape of a spinning square block such that resistance to spinning is minimized leads to the discovery of a circular wheel.