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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2014

Apparatus and Methods for Fluid Storage and Delivery

An apparatus and method for storing and delivering fluid to a person comprises, in at least one specific embodiment, a fluid reservoir having an internal volume therein with an opening disposed through a first wall or a second wall of the fluid reservoir and located toward a first end of the fluid reservoir. A first portion of a tube can be exterior to the fluid reservoir and a second portion of the tube can be disposed through the opening and within the internal volume. At least one insulation layer can be disposed about the exterior of the first wall of the fluid reservoir. The second wall of the fluid reservoir can be configured for transferring heat from or to the internal volume or from the person. At least one baffle is disposed within the internal volume and connected to the first wall and the second wall of the fluid reservoir.

Parazynski, Scott E.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Additive Manufacture of Novel Tungsten Wicking and Heat Transfer Structures

Additive manufacturing (AM) is utilized for fabricating complex geometries from refractory metals, such as tungsten and molybdenum. In this study, plates with ultra-fine and fine lattice structures were manufactured from tungsten to demonstrate printability and the component fabrication advantages of AM. Previous work was completed on individual tungsten lattice structures; this work demonstrates the advantages of printing these structures on tubing and first-wall materials. Initial work using stainless steel demonstrated increased heat transfer properties promoted by these lattice structures. Applications for these structures include wicking structures, heat pipes, and first-wall materials in fusion devices. A major advantage of these designs is the capability to produce a monolithic component with tailored heat transfer and wicking properties. This research helps promote the ability to use liquid lithium in fusion devices since these lattice structures manufactured from tungsten could act as a high temperature first-wall or divertor material and as a wicking structure for liquid lithium. Different lattice structures with varying unit cell sizes and strut thicknesses were printed and the effects of these structures on heat transfer properties were measured. Abrasion resistance of these structures was also investigated. This presentation will discuss the results of these experiments and their implications related to heat transfer applications. This work will help inform the development and implementation of complex geometries made from tungsten for future heat pipe and fusion first-wall or divertor component designs.

Carly J. Romnes↗
NASA NTRS1979

Thermal energy transformer

For use in combination with a heat engine, a thermal energy transformer is presented. It is comprised of a flux receiver having a first wall defining therein a radiation absorption cavity for converting solar flux to thermal energy, and a second wall defining an energy transfer wall for the heat engine. There is a heat pipe chamber interposed between the first and second walls having a working fluid disposed within the chamber and a wick lining the chamber for conducting the working fluid from the second wall to the first wall. Thermal energy is transferred from the radiation absorption cavity to the heat engine.

Berdahl, C. M.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Combustor Assembly for a Turbine Engine

A combustor assembly includes a first wall, a second wall, a bulkhead and a plurality of fuel injectors. The bulkhead forms a combustion chamber with the first and the second walls. The fuel injectors are configured with the first wall in a unique and/or a fluctuating pattern.

Dai, Zhongtao↗
NASA NTRS1989

Capabilities of wind tunnels with two-adaptive walls to minimize boundary interference in 3-D model testing

An initial wind tunnel test was made to validate a new wall adaptation method for 3-D models in test sections with two adaptive walls. First part of the adaptation strategy is an on-line assessment of wall interference at the model position. The wall induced blockage was very small at all test conditions. Lift interference occurred at higher angles of attack with the walls set aerodynamically straight. The adaptation of the top and bottom tunnel walls is aimed at achieving a correctable flow condition. The blockage was virtually zero throughout the wing planform after the wall adjustment. The lift curve measured with the walls adapted agreed very well with interference free data for Mach 0.7, regardless of the vertical position of the wing in the test section. The 2-D wall adaptation can significantly improve the correctability of 3-D model data. Nevertheless, residual spanwise variations of wall interference are inevitable.

Rebstock, Rainer↗
NASA NTRS2015

Validation of a Node-Centered Wall Function Model for the Unstructured Flow Code FUN3D

In this paper, the implementation of two wall function models in the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computational uid dynamics (CFD) code FUN3D is described. FUN3D is a node centered method for solving the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured computational grids. The first wall function model, based on the work of Knopp et al., is used in conjunction with the one-equation turbulence model of Spalart-Allmaras. The second wall function model, also based on the work of Knopp, is used in conjunction with the two-equation k-! turbulence model of Menter. The wall function models compute the wall momentum and energy flux, which are used to weakly enforce the wall velocity and pressure flux boundary conditions in the mean flow momentum and energy equations. These wall conditions are implemented in an implicit form where the contribution of the wall function model to the Jacobian are also included. The boundary conditions of the turbulence transport equations are enforced explicitly (strongly) on all solid boundaries. The use of the wall function models is demonstrated on four test cases: a at plate boundary layer, a subsonic di user, a 2D airfoil, and a 3D semi-span wing. Where possible, different near-wall viscous spacing tactics are examined. Iterative residual convergence was obtained in most cases. Solution results are compared with theoretical and experimental data for several variations of grid spacing. In general, very good comparisons with data were achieved.

Carlson, Jan-Renee↗
NASA NTRS1976

Method and apparatus for tensile testing of metal foil

A method for obtaining accurate and reproducible results in the tensile testing of metal foils in tensile testing machines is described. Before the test specimen are placed in the machine, foil side edges are worked until they are parallel and flaw free. The specimen are also aligned between and secured to grip end members. An aligning apparatus employed in the method is comprised of an alignment box with a longitudinal bottom wall and two upright side walls, first and second removable grip end members at each end of the box, and a means for securing the grip end members within the box.

Wade, O. W.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Realizing "2001: A Space Odyssey": Piloted Spherical Torus Nuclear Fusion Propulsion

A conceptual vehicle design enabling fast, piloted outer solar system travel was created predicated on a small aspect ratio spherical torus nuclear fusion reactor. The initial requirements were satisfied by the vehicle concept, which could deliver a 172 mt crew payload from Earth to Jupiter rendezvous in 118 days, with an initial mass in low Earth orbit of 1,690 mt. Engineering conceptual design, analysis, and assessment was performed on all major systems including artificial gravity payload, central truss, nuclear fusion reactor, power conversion, magnetic nozzle, fast wave plasma heating, tankage, fuel pellet injector, startup/re-start fission reactor and battery bank, refrigeration, reaction control, communications, mission design, and space operations. Detailed fusion reactor design included analysis of plasma characteristics, power balance/utilization, first wall, toroidal field coils, heat transfer, and neutron/x-ray radiation. Technical comparisons are made between the vehicle concept and the interplanetary spacecraft depicted in the motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Williams, Craig H.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Implementation Challenges for Ceramic Matrix Composites in High Temperature Applications

Ceramic matrix composites are leading candidate materials for a number of applications in aeronautics, space, energy, electronics, nuclear, and transportation industries. In the aeronautics and space exploration systems, these materials are being considered for applications in hot sections of jet engines such as the combustor liner, nozzle components, nose cones, leading edges of reentry vehicles and space propulsion components. Applications in the energy and environmental industries include radiant heater tubes, heat exchangers, heat recuperators, gas and diesel particulate filters (DPFs), and components for land based turbines for power generation. These materials are also being considered for use in the first wall and blanket components of fusion reactors. There are a number of critical issues and challenges related to successful implementation of composite materials. Fabrication of net and complex shape components with high density and tailorable matrix properties is quite expensive, and even then various desirable properties are not achievable. In this presentation, microstructure and thermomechanical properties of composites fabricated by two techniques (chemical vapor infiltration and melt infiltration), will be presented. In addition, critical need for robust joining and assembly technologies in successful implementation of these systems will be discussed. Other implementation issues will be discussed along with advantages and benefits of using these materials for various components in high temperature applications.

Singh, Mrityunjay↗
NASA NTRS2005

Advanced Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) for High Temperature Applications

Advanced ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are enabling materials for a number of demanding applications in aerospace, energy, and nuclear industries. In the aerospace systems, these materials are being considered for applications in hot sections of jet engines such as the combustor liner, vanes, nozzle components, nose cones, leading edges of reentry vehicles, and space propulsion components. Applications in the energy and environmental industries include radiant heater tubes, heat exchangers, heat recuperators, gas and diesel particulate filters, and components for land based turbines for power generation. These materials are also being considered for use in the first wall and blanket components of fusion reactors. In the last few years, a number of CMC components have been developed and successfully tested for various aerospace and ground based applications. However, a number of challenges still remain slowing the wide scale implementation of these materials. They include robust fabrication and manufacturing, assembly and integration, coatings, property modeling and life prediction, design codes and databases, repair and refurbishment, and cost. Fabrication of net and complex shape components with high density and tailorable matrix properties is quite expensive, and even then various desirable properties are not achievable. In this presentation, a number of examples of successful CMC component development and testing will be provided. In addition, critical need for robust manufacturing, joining and assembly technologies in successful implementation of these systems will be discussed.

Singh, M.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Advanced development receiver thermal vacuum tests with cold wall

The first ever testing of a full size solar dynamic heat receiver using high temperature thermal energy storage was completed. The heat receiver was designed to meet the requirements for operation on the Space Station Freedom. The purpose of the test program was to quantify the receiver thermodynamic performance, its operating temperatures, and thermal response to changes in environmental and power module interface boundary conditions. The heat receiver was tested in a vacuum chamber with liquid nitrogen cold shrouds and an aperture cold plate to partially simulate a low Earth orbit environment. The cavity of the receiver was heated by an infrared quartz lamp heater with 30 independently controllable zones to produce flux distributions typical of candidate concentrators. A closed Brayton cycle engine simulator conditioned a helium xenon gas mixture to specific interface conditions to simulate various operational modes of the solar dynamic power module. Inlet gas temperature, pressure, and flow rate were independently varied. A total of 58 simulated orbital cycles were completed during the test conduct period. The test hardware, execution of testing, test data, and post test inspections are described.

Sedgwick, Leigh M.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Multi-Shock Shield Performance at 15 MJ for Catalogued Debris

While orbital debris of ten centimeters or more are tracked and catalogued, the difficulty of finding and accurately accounting for forces acting on the objects near the ten centimeter threshold results in both uncertainty of their presence and location. These challenges result in difficult decisions for operators balancing potential costly operational approaches with system loss risk. In this paper, the assessment of the feasibility of protecting a spacecraft from this catalogued debris is described using numerical simulations and a test of a multi-shock shield system against a cylindrical projectile impacting normal to the surface with approximately 15 MJ of kinetic energy. The hypervelocity impact test has been conducted at the Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) with a 598 g projectile at 6.905 km/s on a NASA supplied multi-shock shield. The projectile used is a hollow aluminum and nylon cylinder with an outside diameter of 8.6 cm and length of 10.3 cm. Figure 1 illustrates the multi-shock shield test article, which consisted of five separate bumpers, four of which are fiberglass fabric and one of steel mesh, and two rear walls, each consisting of Kevlar fabric. The overall length of the test article was 2.65 m. The test article was a 5X scaled-up version of a smaller multi-shock shield previously tested using a 1.4 cm diameter aluminum projectile for an inflatable module project. The distances represented by S1 and S1/2 in the figure are 61 cm and 30.5 cm, respectively. Prior to the impact test, hydrodynamic simulations indicated that some enhancement to the standard multi-shock system is needed to address the effects of the cylindrical shape of the projectile. Based on the simulations, a steel mesh bumper has been added to the shield configuration to enhance the fragmentation of the projectile. The AEDC test occurred as planned, and the modified NASA multi-shock shield successfully stopped 598 g projectile using 85.6 kg/m(exp 2). The fifth bumper layer remained in tact, although it was torn free from its support structure and thrown into the first rear wall. The outer Kevlar layer of the first rear wall tore likely from the impact of the fifth bumper's support structure, but the back of the rear wall was intact. No damage occurred to the second rear wall, or to the witness plate behind the target.

Miller, J. E.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Investigation of turbulent flow in highly curved ducts with application to turbomachinery components

Numerical predictions were performed using a semi-elliptic calculation procedure for the case of turbulent flow in passage through a 90 deg bend of square cross section. Two versions of the isotropic turbulent viscosity two equation k-epsilon model were used. The first, the wall function model (WFM), employs the logarithmic law-of-the-wall relation and the notion of equilibrium flow to set all the necessary boundary conditions at the first grid point adjacent to a solid wall. The second model, the Van Driest model (VDM), employs Prandtl's original mixing length formulation, in conjunction with Van Driest's semi-empirical relation for the mixing length, to calculate the turbulent viscosity in the near wall regions of the flow. In this case, boundary conditions for k and epsilon, required to calculate these quantities in the core of the flow, are obtained by matching the mixing length and Reynolds number model formulations in an overlapping region of the flow near the walls. In both cases the results obtained show an improvement over earlier calculations using an elliptic numerical procedure. This is attributed to the finer grids possible in the present work. Of the two models, the VDM formulation shows better overall conformity with the mean flow measurements. Neither model reproduces well the details of the stress distribution as a result of the implied isotropic turbulent viscosity.

Humphrey, J. A. C.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Wall-Distance Method for Turbulence Modeling

The distance from a grid point to the closest wall surface, wall distance, is a funda- mental quantity in turbulence modeling. Efficiency of wall-distance calculations has become more critical as the size of computational grids has significantly increased in recent years. This paper reports on an initial implementation of a new search-based wall-distance method that is suitable for general unstructured computational fluid dynamics (CFD) grids and tailored for requirements specific for turbulence modeling. The method represents a two-step approach to calculate the wall distance. In the first step, the wall distance is approximated for each grid point as the minimum distance from this point to a vertex of a triangular face at the wall. The point-to-vertex distance calculation is relatively inexpensive but may lead to a significant error in the wall-distance ap- proximation, especially for grid points near the wall. In the second step, for grid points located within a predefined distance ( threshold ) from the wall, the wall distance is computed as the minimum distance to wall faces. As a result, the wall distance is exact for all grid points within the threshold. This two-step approach reduces the computational cost yet achieves high and controllable accuracy in the evaluation of the wall distance. Algorithmic enhancements are presented to improve efficiency of wall-distance computations. Comprehensive assessment of the new method is reported for large-scale unstructured CFD grids generated for the Fifth AIAA CFD High-Lift Prediction Workshop. The performance of the new wall-distance method compares favorably with performance of two established methods implemented in high-performance CFD codes.

Wall Distance↗
NASA NTRS1998

The Real-Time Wall Interference Correction System of the NASA Ames 12-Foot Pressure Wind Tunnel

An improved version of the Wall Signature Method was developed to compute wall interference effects in three-dimensional subsonic wind tunnel testing of aircraft models in real-time. The method may be applied to a full-span or a semispan model. A simplified singularity representation of the aircraft model is used. Fuselage, support system, propulsion simulator, and separation wake volume blockage effects are represented by point sources and sinks. Lifting effects are represented by semi-infinite line doublets. The singularity representation of the test article is combined with the measurement of wind tunnel test reference conditions, wall pressure, lift force, thrust force, pitching moment, rolling moment, and pre-computed solutions of the subsonic potential equation to determine first order wall interference corrections. Second order wall interference corrections for pitching and rolling moment coefficient are also determined. A new procedure is presented that estimates a rolling moment coefficient correction for wings with non-symmetric lift distribution. Experimental data obtained during the calibration of the Ames Bipod model support system and during tests of two semispan models mounted on an image plane in the NASA Ames 12 ft. Pressure Wind Tunnel are used to demonstrate the application of the wall interference correction method.

Ulbrich, Norbert↗
NASA NTRS1985

Laboratory glassware rack for seismic safety

A rack for laboratory bottles and jars for chemicals and medicines has been designed to provide the maximum strength and security to the glassware in the event of a significant earthquake. The rack preferably is rectangular and may be made of a variety of chemically resistant materials including polypropylene, polycarbonate, and stainless steel. It comprises a first plurality of parallel vertical walls, and a second plurality of parallel vertical walls, perpendicular to the first. These intersecting vertical walls comprise a self-supporting structure without a bottom which sits on four legs. The top surface of the rack is formed by the top edges of all the vertical walls, which are not parallel but are skewed in three dimensions. These top edges form a grid matrix having a number of intersections of the vertical walls which define a number of rectangular compartments having varying widths and lengths and varying heights.

Cohen, M. M.↗
NASA NTRS1986

A kinetics study of the homogeneous and heterogeneous components of the HCl + ClONO2 reaction

The kinetics of the reaction HCl + ClONO2 to Cl2 + HNO3 were investigated at 298 K using a flow reactor with FTIR analysis to assess the importance of this reaction for stratospheric chemistry. The observed reaction was characteristic of a heterogeneous process; an upper limit of 5 x 10 to the -18th cu cm/molecule per s was obtained for the homogeneous gas phase rate constant. From calculations of the first order wall rate constant, estimates were made of the reaction rate on stratospheric aerosols. Because both HCl and ClONO2 need to be adsorbed on the particle surface, the reaction will be of negligible importance under most stratospheric conditions.

Friedl, Randall R.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Time as an Observable in Nonrelativistic Quantum Mechanics

The argument follows from the viewpoint that quantum mechanics is taken not in the usual form involving vectors and linear operators in Hilbert spaces, but as a boundary value problem for a special class of partial differential equations-in the present work, the nonrelativistic Schrodinger equation for motion of a structureless particle in four- dimensional space-time in the presence of a potential energy distribution that can be time-as well as space-dependent. The domain of interest is taken to be one of two semi-infinite boxes, one bounded by two t=constant planes and the other by two t=constant planes. Each gives rise to a characteristic boundary value problem: one in which the initial, input values on one t=constant wall are given, with zero asymptotic wavefunction values in all spatial directions, the output being the values on the second t=constant wall; the second with certain input values given on both z=constant walls, with zero asymptotic values in all directions involving time and the other spatial coordinates, the output being the complementary values on the z=constant walls. The first problem corresponds to ordinary quantum mechanics; the second, to a fully time-dependent version of a problem normally considered only for the steady state (time-independent Schrodinger equation). The second problem is formulated in detail. A conserved indefinite metric is associated with space-like propagation, where the sign of the norm of a unidirectional state corresponds to its spatial direction of travel.

Hahne, G. E.↗