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At least 19 records

Superplastic formability of Al-Cu-Li alloy Weldalite (TM) 049

Extensive research during the past decade shows that several aluminum lithium alloys can be processed to attain a microstructure that enables superplasticity. The high tensile stress of Al-Cu-Li alloy Weldalite (TM) 049 in the T4 and T6 tempers offers tremendous potential for attaining exceptional post-SPF (superplastic formability) properties. The used SPF material is Weldalite, which was shown to induce SPF behavior in other Al-Cu-Li alloys. The superplastic behavior and resulting post-SPF mechanical properties of this alloy, which was designed to be the next major structural alloy for space applications, were evaluated. The results indicate that Weldalite alloy does indeed exhibit excellent superplasticity over a wide range of temperatures and strain rates and excellent post-SPF tensile strength at various potential service temperatures.

Ma, Bao-Tong↗

Initial Measurement of the Vapor Pressures of Simple Refractory Materials: Cu and Fe

It has become increasingly clear over the past decade that high temperature processes played important roles in the Primitive Solar Nebula. Unfortunately, basic data, such as the vapor pressures of iron or SiO have not been measured over the appropriate temperature range (near T approximately equal to 2000K), but must be extrapolated from lower temperature measurements often made more than 50 years ago. The extrapolation of the available data to higher temperatures can be quite complex and can depend on other factors such as the oxygen fugacity or the presence of hydrogen gas. Moreover, modern technology has made possible more accurate measurements of such quantities over a wider temperature range. We recently acquired a commercial Thermo-Cahn Thermogravimetric system capable of vacuum operation to 1700 C and measurement of mass change with microgram accuracy in a 100g sample or smaller. In this paper, we will report our progress in learning to make vapor pressure measurements using this system.

Nuth, Joseph A., III↗

Quasar number density evolution

A simple model of quasar number density evolution is presented based on the occurrence of quasar-like radio galaxies (i.e., strong optical emission lines and type 2 radio morphology) exclusively in regions of low galaxy and intergalactic medium (IGM) density. This suggests a limit for the IGM density of 10 to the -4th (+ or - 1) per cu cm below which quasars are allowed to form and above which they are not allowed. In the recent past (z not greater than 1), the inferred quasar environments are the outskirts of clusters and near the centers of groups of galaxies. However, models of rich cluster evolution consistent with current X-ray observations predict gas densities of less than 10 to the -4th per cu cm in cluster cores in the more distant past (z between 1 and 5). This suggests that quasars were allowed to form in the cores of rich clusters at those epochs, which explains both the rich absorption spectra of high-redshift quasars and the absence of clusters surrounding quasars at lower redshift.

Stocke, J. T.↗

The many uses of the dirigible.

Prospects for a revival of large airships are based on a number of unique services which can be provided by the dirigibles. It is shown that airships are not unduly weather-sensitive. Modern technological advances will give the airship of the future operational features which will be greatly superior to those of the Zeppelins of the past. Projections set the payload of a 22-million-cu ft conventionally propelled airship of conservative design at 615,000 lb for a range of 2950 mi. The corresponding figure for the C-5A aircraft is only 265,000 lb. Dirigibles could, therefore, become merchant ships of the air, carrying low-density and large-dimension cargoes that jet freighters find economically unattractive or practically impossible to handle. The absence of landing-facility requirements would make the airship a logical candidate for introducing trade into otherwise inaccessible regions of the world.

Hunt, J. R.↗

Steady-state magma discharge at Etna 1971-81

Throughout the past decade Mount Etna has been in almost continuous activity and even during periods of repose incandescent lava has often been visible in at least one of the summit vents. Using observations by Italian, British and French volcanological teams, the volumes of lava produced by each eruption from 1971 to July 1981 have been estimated. The computed output of magma for this period approximates to a rate of 0.7 cu m/s. This is compared with the output rate estimates for Etna's historic past. The steady-state nature of the output during the past decade has implications for the interpretation of the volcano's internal plumbing and the petrology of its lavas, and the assumption that this state will be maintained allows a discussion of the timing and magnitude of future eruptions.

Wadge, G.↗

Glaciological and marine biological studies at perimeter of Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica

The author has identified the following significant results. A nearly complete map of the Dronning Land coastline from 10 deg W to 29 deg E was produced. Based on this, it was determined that for the past 20 years, the minimum calving rate from this part of the coastline was 60 cu km/year. The drift speeds were measured for ice floes and bergs between 9 and 20 km/day, and it was found that the number of ice floes of a given size decrease exponentially with size, so that each size class covers approximately the same area. A large melt phenomena at blue ice fields around 70 deg 45' S and 26-29 deg E was discovered.

Orheim, O.↗

Neutral and ion exosphere models for lunar hydrogen and helium

A general neutral exosphere model, which includes density and temperature variations at the exobase, is applied to the moon to obtain surface and radial density distributions for H, H2, and He. It is assumed that the source for these constituents derives from accretion of solar wind ions. The surface distributions are determined by requiring that the sum of the neutral and solar wind ion fluxes for a given constituent vanish at all points on the surface. On this basis, maximum dayside surface densities for H, H2, and He and maximum nightside surface densities for H, H2, and He are obtained that are consistent with either measured values or upper limits. In addition, model ion density distributions for H2(+) and He(+) are constructed. This ion exosphere is produced by ionization of the neutral exosphere in the solar wind, which efficiently sweeps the ions past or onto the lunar surface. Saturated H2(+) and He(+) densities ranging from about .001 to .015 per cu cm and .00003 to .0004 per cu cm over 1.5 to 3 selenocentric radii on the dayside, respectively.

Hartle, R. E.↗

Theoretical Investigations of Clouds and Aerosols in the Stratosphere and Upper Troposphere

support of the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling and Data Analysis Program. We investigated a wide variety of issues involving ambient stratospheric aerosols, polar stratospheric clouds or heterogeneous chemistry, analysis of laboratory data, and particles in the upper troposphere. The papers resulting from these studies are listed below. In addition, I participated in the 1999-2000 SOLVE mission as one of the project scientists and in the 2002 CRYSTAL field mission as one of the project scientists. Several CU graduate students and research associates also participated in these mission, under support from the ACMAP program, and worked to interpret data. During the past few years my group has completed a number of projects under the

Toon, Owen B.↗

Part 1: Aspects of lithospheric evolution on Venus. Part 2: Thermal and collisional histories of chondrite parent bodies

The geological evolution of distinctly different kinds of solar system objects is addressed. Venus has been observed over the past decade by orbital radars on both American and Soviet spacecraft. These surface measurements provide clues to the structure and evolution of the lithosphere. The parent bodies of chondritic meteorites, thought to resemble asteroids, represent the other end of the size spectrum of terrestrial objects. Their early thermal and collisional histories may be constrained by the chemical and textural record preserved in meteorite samples. Impact craters on Venus have been observed by the Soviet Venera 15/16 spacecraft. A formalism is presented by which the size-frequency distribution of impact craters may be used to estimate upper bounds on the mean global rates of volcanic resurfacing and lithospheric recycling on that planet over the past several hundred million years. The impact crater density reported from Venera observations, if valid for the entire Venus surface, indicates a mean volcanic flux no greater than 2 cu km/y, corresponding to a maximum average rate of resurfacing of about 4 km/b.y. For the lowest estimated mean crater retention age of the surface of Venus imaged by Venera 15/16, the rate of lithospheric recycling on Venus does not exceed 1.5 sq km/y. Ordinary chondrite meteorites show textural and chemical patterns indicative of varying intensities of thermal metamorphism. The conventional onion-shell model, which envisions highly metamorphosed material in the core and less intensely heated rocks near the surface, predicts an inverse relation between peak temperature and cooking rate, but none has been observed. A metamorphosed-planetesimal model is devised to explain this discrepancy, whereby heating occurs in planetesimals a few kilometers in radius which then accrete to form 100-km-radius parent bodies. Cooling rates are then randomly controlled by burial depth. Thermal and collisional constraints are examined, and the model is found to be applicable only to highly insulating Al-26-rich planetesimals that remain closely aggregated upon accretion. An alternative model is presented, in which onion-shell parent bodies are collisionally fragmented during metamorphism and then gravitationally reassembled. If reassembly times are short, then cooling rates would be determined by burial depth in the reaccreted parent body. This model, unlike previous ones, can explain both coherent and incoherent cooling of Breccia clasts by collisions during or after metamorphism, respectively.

Grimm, Robert E.↗

Consequences of a past encounter of the earth with an interstellar cloud

In its motion through the Galaxy the sun may have suffered a number of encounters with dense interstellar clouds for which the number density of molecular hydrogen is in excess of 1000 per cu cm. Several authors have shown that this is sufficient density to stop the solar wind inside earth's orbit. Earth's atmosphere would be subjected to an interstellar H2 flux of more than 7 billion per sq cm/sec for periods of the order of 100,000 years. Simple scaling arguments are used to examine several consequences for earth's atmosphere: (1) the ionospheric F region would largely disappear; (2) the water-vapor content of the middle atmosphere would be greatly enhanced, reducing the mesospheric ozone concentrations and thereby lowering the average temperature and altitude of the mesopause; (3) as a result of (2), widespread mesospheric ice clouds would occur, increasing the planetary albedo; and (4) the resultant radiative cooling at the surface may have been sufficient to 'trigger' an ice age.

Mckay, C. P.↗

Sea-level response to ice sheet evolution: An ocean perspective

The ocean's influence upon and response to Antarctic ice sheet changes is considered in relation to sea level rise over recent and future decades. Assuming present day ice fronts are in approximate equilibrium, a preliminary budget for the ice sheet is estimated from accumulation vs. iceberg calving and the basal melting that occurs beneath floating ice shelves. Iceberg calving is derived from the volume of large bergs identified and tracked by the Navy/NOAA Joint Ice Center and from shipboard observations. Basal melting exceeds 600 cu km/yr and is concentrated near the ice fronts and ice shelf grounding lines. An apparent negative mass balance for the Antarctic ice sheet may result from an anomalous calving rate during the past decade, but there are large uncertainties associated with all components of the ice budget. The results from general circulation models are noted in the context of projected precipitation increases and ocean temperature changes on and near the continent. An ocean research program that could help refine budget estimates is consistent with goals of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative.

Jacobs, Stanley S.↗

The effect of zinc additions on the environmental stability of Alloy 8090 (Al-Li-Cu-Mg-Zr)

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) remains a problem in both Al-Li and conventional Al heat treatable alloys. It has recently been found that relatively small additions (less than or approximately 1 wt-percent) of Zn can dramatically improve the SCC performance of alloy 8090 (Al-Li-Cu-Mg-Zr). Constant load time to failure experiments using cylindrical tensile samples loaded between 30 and 85 percent of TYS indicate improvements of orders of magnitude over the baseline 8090 for the Zn-containing alloys under certain aging conditions. However, the toughnesses of the alloys were noticeably degraded due to the formation of second phase particles which primarily reside on grain and subgrain boundaries. EDS revealed that these intermetallic particles were Cu and Zn rich. The particles were present in the T3 condition and were not found to be the result of quench rate, though their size and distribution were. At 5 hours at 160 C, the alloys displayed the greatest susceptibility to SCC but by 20 hours at 160 C the alloys demonstrated markedly improved TTF lifetimes. Aging past this time did not provide separable TTF results, however, the alloy toughnesses continued to worsen. Initial examination of the alloys microstructures at 5 and 20 hours indicated some changes most notably the S' and delta' distributions. A possible model by which this may occur will be explored. Polarization experiments indicated a change in the trend of E(sub BR) and passive current density at peak aging as compared to the baseline 8090. Initial pitting experiments indicated that the primary pitting mechanism in chloride environments is one occurring at constituent (Al-Fe-Cu) particles and that the Cu and Zn rich boundary precipitates posses a breakaway potential similar to that of the matrix acting neither anodic or cathodic in the first set of aerated 3.5 w/o NaCl experiments. Future work will focus on the identification of the second phase particles, evaluation of K(sub 1SCC) and plateau da/dt via both DCB and slow strain rate techniques. A lower Zn content variant will be examined in the near future in hopes of optimizing toughness, density and SCC performance.

Kilmer, Raymond J.↗

Evaluating and Constraining Models’ Stratocumulus and Cumulus Cloud Feedbacks in the Tropics using Satellite Observations to Reduce Uncertainties in Future Climate Projections

Low-cloud feedbacks are thought to be the greatest source of uncertainty in climate projections on the centennial scale. Past research has mainly focused on the global low-cloud feedback as a whole whereas only a few studies have examined separated contributions from the two main low cloud categories: stratocumulus (Sc) and shallow cumulus (Cu). Here we aim to evaluate and constrain Sc and Cu cloud feedbacks in models using satellite observations to ultimately reduce their contribution to the spread in equilibrium climate sensitivity. We utilize the Cumulus and Stratocumulus CloudSat-CALIPSO Dataset (CASCCAD) recently developed by Cesana et al. (2019), which discriminates Sc from Cu clouds. This algorithm – based on cloud morphological characteristics at the orbital level – outperforms previous cloud-type classifications stemming from passive-sensor measurements. We investigate the observed relationship between the Sc and Cu cloud cover in tropical subsidence oceanic regions and their link to the primary low-cloud controlling factors (sea surface temperature, estimated inversion strength). To gain further insight into the Sc-Cu cloud partitioning, we explore the Sc-Cu relationship during the four meteorological seasons (DJF, MAM, JJA, SON) as well as on monthly timescale. We find a substantial negative correlation between the Sc and Cu cloud cover on annual, seasonal and monthly timescales. We finally evaluate how well climate models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) and phase 6 (CMIP6) agree with the observations. These results establish a framework to advance model parameterizations of the underlying physical processes driving the stratocumulus and shallow cumulus clouds (turbulence and convection).

Cloud feedbacks↗

Low Pressure Plasma Sprayed Overlay Coatings for GRCop-84 Combustion Chamber Liners for Reusable Launch Vehicles

An advanced Cu-8(at.%)Cr-4%Nb alloy developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center, and designated as GRCop-84, is currently being considered for use as combustor chamber liners and nozzle ramps in NASA s future generations of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs). However, past experience has shown that unprotected copper alloys undergo an environmental attack called "blanching" in rocket engines using liquid hydrogen as fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. Potential for sulfidation attack of the liners in hydrocarbon-fueled engines is also of concern. Protective overlay coatings alloys are being developed for GRCop-84. The development of this coatings technology has involved a combination of modeling, coatings development and characterization, and process optimization. Coatings have been low pressure plasma sprayed on GRCop-84 substrates of various geometries and shapes. Microstructural, mechanical property data and thermophysical results on the coated substrates are presented and discussed.

Raj, S. V.↗

Environmental Durability of Coated GRCop-84 Copper Alloys

An advanced Cu-8(at.%)Cr-4%Nb alloy developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center, and designated as GRCop-84, is currently being considered for use as liners in combustor chambers and nozzle ramps in NASA s future generations of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs). However, past experience has shown that unprotected copper alloys undergo an environmental attack called "blanching" in rocket engines using liquid hydrogen as fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. Potential for sulfidation attack of the liners in hydrocarbon-fueled engines is also of concern. As a result, protective overlay coatings alloys are being developed for GRCop-84. The oxidation behavior of several new coating alloys has been evaluated. GRCop-84 specimens were coated with several copper and nickel-based coatings, where the coatings were deposited by either vacuum plasma spraying or cold spraying techniques. Coated and uncoated specimens were thermally cycled in a furnace at different temperatures in order to evaluate the performance of the coatings. Additional studies were conducted in a high pressure burner rig using a hydrocarbon fuel and subjected to a high heat flux hydrogen-oxygen combustion flame in NASA s Quick Access Rocket Exhaust (QARE) rig. The performance of these coatings are discussed.

Raj, Sai V.↗

The growth of continents and some consequences since 1.5 Ga

The budget of Earth's oceanic sediment masses was discussed in terms of crustal growth and recycling. Based on estimates of the volume of oceanic sediments and the average age of oceanic crust, a continental denudation rate of 1.65 cu km/yr was computed. This crudely balances estimated crustal production rates of about 1 cu km/yr, but the efficiency of sediment loss via subduction, for example, must be considered. It was argued, on the basis of earthquake focal solutions, imagery of subduction zones, and plate kinematic reconstructions that little, if any, sediment was lost in this way. This yields a present day crustal growth rate of about 1 cu km/yr. The volume of continents to 1.5 Ga ago was discussed, assuming constant continental thickness and freeboard, and a constant hydrosphere volume. It was concluded that ocean ridge length was a factor of about 1.75 greater 1.5 Ga ago, but a major uncertainty is the average spreading rate in the past.

Howell, David G.↗

A refined gravity model from Lageos /GEM-L2/

Lageos satellite laser ranging (SLR) data taken over a 2.5 yr period were employed to develop the Goddard Earth Model GEM-L2, a refined gravity field model. Additional data was gathered with 30 other satellites, resulting in spherical harmonics through degree and order 20, based on over 600,000 measurements. The Lageos data was accurate down to 10 cm, after which the GEM 9 data were used to make adjustments past order 7. The resolution of long wavelength activity, through degree and order 4, was made possible by the Lageos data. The GEM-L2 model features a 20 x 20 geopotential, tracking station coordinates (20), 5-day polar motion and A1-UT1 values, and a GM value of 398,600.607 cu km/sq sec. The accuracy of station positioning has been raised to within 6 cm total position globally and within 1.8 cm in baselines. It is concluded that SLR is useful for measuring tectonic plate motions and inter-plate deformations.

Lerch, F. J.↗

Spectra and Fabry-Perot interferometry of AG Carinae and the nebula

Observations of the variable P Cygni-type supergiant and the unique ring nebula around it were made in 1974. Line identifications are tabulated, and an estimated electron density of 1700 per cu cm is combined with a radio flux density to derive a nebular mass of 0.18 (plus or minus 0.04) solar mass on the basis of a distance of 2 kpc. From the data, some ideas of the age and kinematics of the nebula are offered, tracing the evolution of P Cygni supergiants from the youthful prototype past the nebular stage of AG Carinae into more typical, relative old age without recognizable nebular envelopes.

Johnson, H. M.↗