SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
This data file is for test 2. In this test a sample of granite with a pre-cut (man made fracture) is confined, heated and differential stress is applied. The max temperature in this this system development test is 95C. More test details can be found on the spreadsheets--note that there are 2 spreadsheets
Silver-exchanged mordenite (AgZ) has been identified as a potential sorbent for iodine present in the off-gas streams of a used nuclear fuel reprocessing facility. In such a facility, both elemental and organic forms of iodine are released from the dissolver in gaseous form. These species of iodine must be captured with high efficiency for a facility to avoid radioactive iodine release above regulatory limits in the gaseous effluent of the plant. Studies completed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) examined the adsorption of organic iodine in the form of CH3I by AgZ. Upon breakthrough of the feed gas through the sorbent bed, elemental iodine was observed in the effluent stream, despite the fact that the only source of iodine in the system was the CH3I in the feed gas.1 This behavior does not appear to have been reported previously nor has it been independently confirmed. Thus, as a result of these prior studies, multiple knowledge gaps relating to the adsorption of CH3I by AgZ were identified, and a multi-lab test plan, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), INL, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and Sandia National Laboratories, was formulated to address each in a systematic way.2 For this report, the scope of work for ORNL was further narrowed to three thin-bed experiments that would characterize CH3I adsorption onto AgZ in the presence of water, NO, and NO2. Completion of these three-thin bed experiments demonstrated that organic iodine in the form of CH3I was adsorbed by reduced silver mordenite (Ag0Z) to a 50% higher loading than that of I2 when adsorbed from a dry air stream. Adsorption curves suggest different adsorption mechanisms for I2 and CH3I. In the presence of NO and NO2 gas, the loading of CH3I onto Ag0Z is suppressed and may be reversible. Further, the presence of NO and NO2 gas appears to oxidize CH3I to I2; this is indicated by an adsorption curve similar to that of I2 on Ag0Z. Finally, the loss of organic iodine loading capacity by Ag0Z in the presence of NOx is unaffected by the addition of water vapor to the gas stream; no marked additional loss in capacity or retention was observed.
Increasing operating temperatures of solar receivers is paramount to the efficiency of concentrated solar thermal (CST) and solar power (CSP) systems. Owing to its high temperature stability combined with excellent thermal and optical properties, SiC has been the material of choice for application in high-temperature solar receivers. We report the results of our study of the effective heat transfer characteristics of several candidate SiC structure motifs, or feature geometries, which are fabricated via additive manufacturing. The SiC structure motifs studied include different permutations of three-dimensional periodic lattices and defined shapes. A solar-thermal simulating laboratory test setup is constructed using a 4kW CO2 laser system with beam shaping optics to apply concurrent radiative heating power on one face of 2”-diameter cylindrical feature specimens, representing the structure motifs of interest for receiver element design, while flowing through the sample as heat transfer fluid. Using the test setup, simulative test conditions representative of a concentrated solar flux of up to ~2000 suns could be achieved in the lab tests under varying air flow through the test structure. A simple 1D numerical analysis scheme is developed to extract an effective or compound heat transfer coefficient representative of the test structure under steady-state heat flow conditions. The test results and their use to guide the selection and optimization of SiC material and structure motifs for the receiver element design fabrication are discussed.
Critical to the creation of a multi-component SiC receiver design concept capable of meeting the SETO CST cost goal objectives of <$150/kWth is the optimal utilization of material for solar absorption and heat transfer to transport fluid. This is to maximize the solar-thermal efficiency in the techno-economic analysis of derived use case. As a first step in preparation of sub-component design for on-sun test evaluations we use different proposed SiC absorber element in a customized laser heat flux test to assess an effective heat transfer coefficient characteristic of the design. The test results are analyzed to extract the effective heat transfer coefficient, thus enable optimization of the geometry of receiver components for heat transfer, efficiency attributes and the thermo-structural management of the components. High intensity CO2 laser is used in combination with air flow through the test specimen to assess the effective heat transfer coefficient under heat flux conditions corresponding to high solar concentrations in the range of 1000-2000 suns.
NASA Glenn Research Center, in cooperation with Rockwell Collins, is working to develop a prototype Control and Non-Payload Communications (CNPC) radio platform as part of NASA Integrated Systems Research Program's (ISRP) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) project. A primary focus of the project is to work with the FAA and industry standards bodies to build and demonstrate a safe, secure, and efficient CNPC architecture that can be used by industry to evaluate the feasibility of deploying a system using these technologies in an operational capacity. GRC has been working in conjunction with these groups to assess threats, identify security requirements, and to develop a system of standards-based security controls that can be applied to the current GRC prototype CNPC architecture as a demonstration platform. The security controls were integrated into a lab test bed mock-up of the Mobile IPv6 architecture currently being used for NASA flight testing, and a series of network tests were conducted to evaluate the security overhead of the controls compared to the baseline CNPC link without any security. The aim of testing was to evaluate the performance impact of the additional security control overhead when added to the Mobile IPv6 architecture in various modes of operation. The statistics collected included packet captures at points along the path to gauge packet size as the sample data traversed the CNPC network, round trip latency, jitter, and throughput. The effort involved a series of tests of the baseline link, a link with Robust Header Compression (ROHC) and without security controls, a link with security controls and without ROHC, and finally a link with both ROHC and security controls enabled. The effort demonstrated that ROHC is both desirable and necessary to offset the additional expected overhead of applying security controls to the CNPC link.
This file contains additional data for this test (hydroshear test 3.2). In this test a sample of granite with a pre-cut (man made fracture) is confined, heated and differential stress is applied. The max temperature in this this system development test is 95C. More test details can be found on the spreadsheets.
This project focused on assessment and discovery of fluid-rock interaction in geothermal reservoirs. We accomplished work in four main areas: 1) fracture formation and the relationship between fluid flow and shear failure, 2) assessment of fracture geometry and fluid permeability using novel acoustic measurements, 3) an improved understanding of how drilling, injection and geothermal production influence local seismicity, and 4) development of process based models for using induced seismicity to assess the critical stress-state in Earth's crust. This submission contains relevant true triaxial granite and shale experiments and associated run sheets accompanied with links to final technical report and presentation project slides.
No abstract available
This project will outfit the Simulated Propellant Loading System (SPLS) at KSC's Cryogenics Test Laboratory with a new programmable logic control system. The control system upgrade enables the Advanced Ground Systems Maintenace Element Integration Team and other users of the SPLS to conduct testing in a controls environment similar to that used at the launch pad.
APEX is an experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Virginia, USA, that searches for a new gauge boson (A') with sub-GeV mass and coupling to ordinary matter of g' ~ (10 -6 - 10⁻²)e. Electrons impinge upon a fixed target of high-Z material. An A' is produced via a process analogous to photon bremsstrahlung, decaying to an e⁺+e⁻ pair. A test run was held in July of 2010, covering m A' = 175 to 250 MeV and couplings g'/e > 10⁻³. A full run is approved and will cover m A' ~ 65 to 525 MeV and g'/e > 2.3 x 10⁻⁴, and is expected to occur sometime in 2016 or 2017.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The NNSA Laboratories have entered into an interagency collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to explore strategies for prevention of Earth impacts by asteroids. Assessment of such strategies relies upon use of sophisticated multi-physics simulation codes. This document describes the task of verifying and cross-validating, between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), modeling capabilities and methods to be employed as part of the NNSA-NASA collaboration. The approach has been to develop a set of test problems and then to compare and contrast results obtained by use of a suite of codes, including MCNP, RAGE, Mercury, Ares, and Spheral. This document provides a short description of the codes, an overview of the idealized test problems, and discussion of the results for deflection by kinetic impactors and stand-off nuclear explosions.
This data documentation report describes geologic and hydrologic laboratory analysis and data collected in support of site characterization of the Physical Experiment 1 (PE1) testbed, Aqueduct Mesa, Nevada. The documentation includes a summary of laboratory tests performed, discussion of sample selection for assessing heterogeneity of various testbed properties, methods, and results per data type.
Laboratory tests of a thermomechanical (TM) pump utilizing a commercially available porous disk have been conducted. Various size disks, heater configurations, and outlet flow impedances have been used to characterize scale models of the pump proposed for the Superfluid Helium On-Orbit Transfer (SHOOT) Flight Experiment. The results yield the scalability of the TM pump to larger diameters, and hence larger pumping rates, the dependence of flow rate on back pressure and heater power, and the limits of pumping speed due to internal losses within the porous disk due to mutual and superfluid friction. Analysis indicates that for low back pressures the flow rate is limited by the superfluid friction rather than the mutual friction. For the porous plug used in the early tests this amounts to a practical limit of 4.4 liters per hour per square centimeter. For a baselined flight plug area of 180 sq cm this yields 790 liters per hour.
A design strategy which integrates model reduction by modal cost analysis and a multiobjective controller synthesis algorithm is used to design controllers for NASA's Mini-Mast system. The necessary modeling and control algorithms are easily programmed in Matlab standard software. Hence, this method is very practical for controller design for large space structures. The design algorithm also presents a solution for the important problem of tuning multiple-loop controllers.
NASA fs Kedalion engineering analysis lab at Johnson Space Center is on the forefront of validating and using many contemporary avionics hardware/software development and integration techniques, which represent new paradigms to heritage NASA culture. Kedalion has validated many of the Orion hardware/software engineering techniques borrowed from the adjacent commercial aircraft avionics solution space, with the intention to build upon such techniques to better align with today fs aerospace market. Using agile techniques, commercial products, early rapid prototyping, in-house expertise and tools, and customer collaboration, Kedalion has demonstrated that cost effective contemporary paradigms hold the promise to serve future NASA endeavors within a diverse range of system domains. Kedalion provides a readily adaptable solution for medium/large scale integration projects. The Kedalion lab is currently serving as an in-line resource for the project and the Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) program.
Gamma-ray burst (GRB) 130427A is one of the most energetic GRBs ever observed. The initial pulse up to 2.5 s is possibly the brightest well-isolated pulse observed to date. A fine time resolution spectral analysis shows power-law decays of the peak energy from the onset of the pulse, consistent with models of internal synchrotron shock pulses. However, a strongly correlated power-law behavior is observed between the luminosity and the spectral peak energy that is inconsistent with curvature effects arising in the relativistic outflow. It is difficult for any of the existing models to account for all of the observed spectral and temporal behaviors simultaneously.
Field work with instrumentation and technologies that are planned for flight missions is an important means to gain understanding that improves mission performance. This paper reports on results from field workin lunar analog volcanic terrain using an engineering model of the Honeybee Robotics TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploration of New Terrains)drill[1]. TRIDENT is a rotary percussive 1-meter class drill that is carried on the PRIME-1and VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover)[2] missions to the moon scheduled to launch in 2024. A similar drilling system was planned for the proposed IcebreakerDiscovery class mission to Mars[3]and the Mars Life Explorer mission recommended by the 2020 Decadal Survey of planetary science[4].The field work objectives were (1) to use data collected by the drill for operational purposes as a probe of subsurface material properties in formations that are analogous to those that may be encountered on planetary surfaces; (2) to correlate subsurface structures deduced by drilling with those inferred from interpretations ofGround Penetrating Radar (GPR)data