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Results for “fixed and floating structures”

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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12 records

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NASA NTRS1991

On the nature of control algorithms for free-floating space manipulators

It is suggested that nearly any control algorithm that can be used for fixed-based manipulators also can be employed in the control of free-floating space manipulator systems, with the additional conditions of estimating or measuring a spacecraft's orientation and of avoiding dynamic singularities. This result is based on the structural similarities between the kinematic and dynamic equations for the same manipulator but with a fixed base. Barycenters are used to formulate the kinematic and dynamic equations of free-floating space manipulators. A control algorithm for a space manipulator system is designed to demonstrate the value of the analysis.

Papadopoulos, Evangelos↗

NASA NTRS1971

Flight investigation of airframe installation effects on an auxiliary inlet ejector nozzle on an underwing engine nacelle

The local flow field approaching an installed nozzle may vary from isolated test conditions, thereby affecting exhausting nozzle performance. An installation of general interest is a podded engine mounted near the aft lower surface of the wing. The effect of this installation on the performance of an auxiliary inlet ejector nozzle was investigated over a Mach number range of 0.7 to 1.3 by using a modified F-106B aircraft. Both floating and fixed-open door configurations were examined. The ejector nozzle trailing-edge flaps were simulated in the closed position with rigid structure which provided a boattail angle of 15 deg. Primary nozzle area was varied as exhaust gas temperature was varied between 982.2 and 2003.3 K.

Burley, R. R.↗

NASA NTRS1989

On the dynamic singularities in the control of free-floating space manipulators

It is shown that free-floating space manipulator systems have configurations which are dynamically singular. At a dynamically singular position, the manipulator is unable to move its end effector in some direction. This problem appears in any free-floating space manipulator system that permits the vehicle to move in response to manipulator motion without correction from the vehicle's attitude control system. Dynamic singularities are functions of the dynamic properties of the system; their existence and locations cannot be predicted solely from the kinematic structure of the manipulator, unlike the singularities for fixed base manipulators. It is also shown that the location of these dynamic singularities in the workplace is dependent upon the path taken by the manipulator in reaching them. Dynamic singularities must be considered in the control, planning and design of free-floating space manipulator systems. A method for calculating these dynamic singularities is presented, and it is shown that the system parameters can be selected to reduce the effect of dynamic singularities on a system's performance.

Papadopoulos, E.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Planar oscillatory stirring apparatus

The present invention is directed to an apparatus for stirring materials using planar orthogonal axes oscillations. The apparatus has a movable slide plate sandwiched between two fixed parallel support plates. Pressurized air is supplied to the movable slide plate which employs a tri-arm air bearing vent structure which allows the slide plate to float and to translate between the parallel support plates. The container having a material to be stirred is secured to the upper surface of the slide plate through an aperture in the upper support plate. A motor driven eccentric shaft loosely extends into a center hole bearing of the slide plate to cause the horizontal oscillations. Novelty lies in the combination of elements which exploits the discovery that low frequency, orthogonal oscillations applied horizontally to a Bridgman crucible provides a very rigorous stirring action, comparable with and more effective by an order of magnitude than the accelerated crucible rotation technique.

Wolf, M. F.↗

NASA NTRS1952

Hydrodynamic Impact of a System with a Single Elastic Mode II : Comparison of Experimental Force and Response with Theory

Hydrodynamic impact tests were made on an elastic model approximating a two-mass spring system to determine experimentally the effects of structural flexibility on the hydrodynamic loads encountered during seaplane landing impacts and to correlate the results with theory. A flexible seaplane was represented by a two-mass spring system consisting of a rigid prismatic float connected to a rigid upper mass by an elastic structure. The model had a ratio of sprung mass to hull mass of 0.6 and a natural frequency of 3.0 cycles per second. The tests were conducted in smooth water at fixed trims and included both high and low flight-path angles and a range of velocity. Theoretical and experimental comparisons indicated that the theoretical results agreed well with the experimental results.

Miller, Robert W↗

NASA NTRS1991

Simulation of cooperating robot manipulators on a mobile platform

The dynamic equations of motion are presented for two or more cooperating manipulators on a freely moving mobile platform. The system of cooperating robot manipulators forms a closed kinematic chain where the force of interaction must be included in the formulation of robot and platform dynamics. The formulation includes the full dynamic interactions from arms to platform and arm tip to arm tip, and the possible translation and rotation of the platform. The equations of motion are shown to be identical in structure to the fixed-platform cooperative manipulator dynamics. The number of DOFs of the system is sufficiently large to make recursive dynamic calculation methods potentially more efficient than closed-form solutions. A complete simulation with two 6-DOF manipulators of a free-floating platform is presented along a with a multiple-arm controller to position the common load.

Murphy, Stephen H.↗

NASA NTRS1984

Rain Volume Estimation over Areas Using Satellite and Radar Data

The application of satellite data to a recently developed radar technique used to estimate convective rain volumes over areas on a dry environment (the northern Great Plains) is discussed. The area time integral technique (ATI) provides a means of estimating total rain volumes over fixed and floating target areas of the order of 1,000 to 100,000 km(2) for clusters lasting 40 min. The basis of the method is the existence of a strong correlation between the area coverage integrated over the lifetime of the storm (ATI) and the rain volume. One key element in this technique is that it does not require the consideration of the structure of the radar intensities inside the area coverage to generate rain volumes, but only considers the rain event per se. This fact might reduce or eliminate some sources of error in applying the technique to satellite data. The second key element is that the ATI once determined can be converted to total rain volume by using a constant factor (average rain rate) for a given locale.

Doneaud, A. A.↗

NASA NTRS1983

Numerical simulations of plasma double layers

The results of analytical studies of quasi-static electric fields along geomagnetic field lines are discussed. The calculations were targeted at the structure, generation mechanisms and stability parameters. The field consists of two oppositely charged layers, either weakly or strongly charged, with an electric field between. Existence conditions are defined for the double layer field and balancing requirements are explored. Details of the simulation techniques, i.e., particle in cell and Vlasov simulations, for studying the double layer are outlined, noting that both periodic and quasi-periodic simulations are used. Solutions to Poisson's equation for fixed and floating point boundary conditions are generated. Finally, attention is also given to oblique and two-dimensional magnetic double layers.

Goertz, C. K.↗

NASA NTRS2004

A Scalable Architecture of a Structured LDPC Decoder

We present a scalable decoding architecture for a certain class of structured LDPC codes. The codes are designed using a small (n,r) protograph that is replicated Z times to produce a decoding graph for a (Z x n, Z x r) code. Using this architecture, we have implemented a decoder for a (4096,2048) LDPC code on a Xilinx Virtex-II 2000 FPGA, and achieved decoding speeds of 31 Mbps with 10 fixed iterations. The implemented message-passing algorithm uses an optimized 3-bit non-uniform quantizer that operates with 0.2dB implementation loss relative to a floating point decoder.

optical communications↗

NASA NTRS2011

Fast Plasma Investigation for MMS: Simulation of the Burst Triggering System

The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will study small-scale reconnection structures and their rapid motions from closely spaced platforms using instruments capable of high angular, energy, and time resolution measurements. To meet these requirements, the Fast Plasma Instrument (FPI) consists of eight (8) identical half top-hat electron sensors and eight (8) identical ion sensors and an Instrument Data Processing Unit (IDPU). The sensors (electron or ion) are grouped into pairs whose 6 degree x 180 degree fields-of-view (FOV) are set 90 degrees apart. Each sensor is equipped with electrostatic aperture steering to allow the sensor to scan a 45 degree x 180 degree fan about the its nominal viewing (0 deflection) direction. Each pair of sensors, known as the Dual Electron Spectrometer (DES) and the Dual Ion Spectrometer (DIS), occupies a quadrant on the MMS spacecraft and the combination of the eight electron/ion sensors, employing aperture steering, image the full-sky every 30-ms (electrons) and 150-ms (ions), respectively. To probe the diffusion regions of reconnection, the highest temporal/spatial resolution mode of FPI results in the DES complement of a given spacecraft generating 6.5-Mb (raised dot) per second of electron data while the DIS generates 1.1-Mb (raised dot) per second of ion data yielding an FPI total data rate of 6.6-Mb (raised dot) per second. The FPI electron/ion data is collected by the IDPU then transmitted to the Central Data Instrument Processor (CIDP) on the spacecraft for science interest ranking. Only data sequences that contain the greatest amount of temporal/spatial structure will be intelligently down-linked by the spacecraft. This requires a data ranking process known as the burst trigger system. The burst trigger system uses pseudo physical quantities to approximate the local plasma environments. As each pseudo quantity will have a different value, a set of two scaling factors is employed for each pseudo term. These pseudo quantities are then combined at the instrument, spacecraft, and observatory level leading to a final ranking of data based on expected scientific interest. Here, we present simulations of the fixed point burst trigger system for the FPI. A variety of data sets based on previous mission data as well as analytical formulations are tested. Comparisons of floating point calculations versus the fixed point hardware simulation are shown. Analysis of the potential sources of error from overflows, quantization, etc. are examined and mitigation methods are presented. Finally a series of calibration curves are presented, showing the expected error in pseudo quantities based solely on the scale parameters chosen and the expected data range. We conclude with a presentation of the current base-lined FPI burst trigger approach.

Barrie, A. C.↗

NASA NTRS2014

The Situational Awareness Sensor Suite for the ISS (SASSI): A Mission Concept to Investigate ISS Charging and Wake Effects

The complex interaction between the International Space Station (ISS) and the surrounding plasma environment often generates unpredictable environmental situations that affect operations. Examples of affected systems include extravehicular activity (EVA) safety, solar panel efficiency, and scientific instrument integrity. Models and heuristically‐derived best practices are well‐suited for routine operations, but when it comes to unusual or anomalous events or situations, especially those driven by space weather, there is no substitute for real‐time monitoring. Space environment data collected in real‐time (or near‐real time) can be used operationally for both real‐time alarms and data sources in assimilative models to predict environmental conditions important for operational planning. Fixed space weather instruments mounted to the ISS can be used for monitoring the ambient space environment, but knowing whether or not (or to what extent) the ISS affects the measurements themselves requires adequate space situational awareness (SSA) local to the ISS. This paper presents a mission concept to use a suite of plasma instruments mounted at the end of the ISS robotic arm to systematically explore the interaction between the Space Station structure and its surrounding environment. The Situational Awareness Sensor Suite for the ISS (SASSI) would be deployed and operated on the ISS Express Logistics Carrier (ELC) for long‐term "survey mode" observations and the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) for short‐term "campaign mode" observations. Specific areas of investigation include: 1) ISS frame and surface charging during perturbations of the local ISS space environment, 2) calibration of the ISS Floating Point Measurement Unit (FPMU), 3) long baseline measurements of ambient ionospheric electric potential structures, 4) electromotive force-induced currents within large structures moving through a magnetized plasma, and 5) wake‐induced ion waves in both electrostatic (i.e. particles) and electromagnetic modes. SASSI will advance the understanding of plasma‐boundary interaction phenomena, demonstrate a suite a sensors acting in concert to provide effective SSA, and validate and/or calibrate existing ISS space environment instruments and models.

Krause, L. Habash↗

NASA NTRS1997

High-Temperature Extensometry and PdCr Temperature-Compensated Wire Resistance Strain Gages Compared

A detailed experimental evaluation is underway at the NASA Lewis Research Center to compare and contrast the performance of the PdCr/Pt dual-element temperature-compensated wire resistance strain gage with that of conventional high-temperature extensometry. The advanced PdCr gage, developed by researchers at Lewis, exhibits desirable properties and a relatively small and repeatable apparent strain to 800 C. This gage represents a significant advance in technology because existing commercial resistance strain gages are not reliable for quasi-static strain measurements above approx. 400 C. Various thermal and mechanical loading spectra are being applied by a high-temperature thermomechanical uniaxial testing system to evaluate the two strain-measurement systems. This is being done not only to compare and contrast the two strain sensors, but also to investigate the applicability of the PdCr strain gage to the coupon-level specimen testing environment typically employed when the high-temperature mechanical behavior of structural materials is characterized. Strain measurement capabilities to 800 C are being investigated with a nickel-base superalloy, Inconel 100 (IN 100), substrate material and application to TMC's is being examined with the model system, SCS-6/Ti-15-3. Furthermore, two gage application techniques are being investigated in the comparison study: namely, flame-sprayed and spot welding. The apparent strain responses of both the weldable and flame-sprayed PdCr wire strain gages were found to be cyclically repeatable on both IN 100 and SCS-6/Ti-15-3 [0]_8. In general, each gage exhibited some uniqueness with respect to apparent strain behavior. Gages mounted on the IN 100 specimens tended to show a repeatable apparent strain within the first few cycles, because the thermal response of IN 100 was stable. This was not the case, however, for the TMC specimens, which typically required several thermal cycles to stabilize the thermal strain response. Thus, progressive changes in the apparent strain behavior were corroborated by the extensometer, which unlike the mounted gage can distinguish quantitative changes in the material's thermal strain response. One specimen was instrumented with both a fixed and floating gage. From the difference in output of these two gages, the thermal expansion strains were calculated. These data, which are given in the figure, show excellent agreement with the values measured by the high-temperature extensometry.

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