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Aaron Michael Brandis

Publications and source records attributed to Aaron Michael Brandis.

6 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2022

Shock Tube Radiation Measurement in Expanding Air Flow

The EAST facility has been widely used in the past to provide experimental data aiming to validate radiative heating models. However, all the past studies involved measurements of compressing flows. In order to study recombining flows, an expansion cone has been installed in the EAST facility. Four spectrometers are mounted at different axial positions of the cone to measure the evolution of the radiation during expansion. Quantitative data from optical emission spectroscopy will be used to get the densities of radiative species. These data are intended to be compared with simulations in order to improve the current models used by the entry community.

Augustin Tibere-Inglesse↗
NASA NTRS2018

Radiative Heating Indicators and Uncertainty Analysis for Mars 2020

This paper will present analysis to evaluate a functional form and associated parameters to determine the radiative heating at various back-shell locations of the Mars 2020 aeroshell. The radiative heating indicators are used for preliminary vehicle design, and to determine the worst-case trajectories for peak radiative heat flux and load. Historically, the functional form for radiative heating is based on free-stream parameters of density, velocity and a length scale, typically the nose-radius (or equivalent). However, a fit of this form has been shown to not provide significant enough accuracy when compared to simulation results. Therefore, a fit based on post-shock equilibrium calculations of CO and CO2 number density, temperature and pressure has been devised. The results from the TPS 15 01 trajectory were used to develop the fit. The fit was then applied to the MSL best estimated trajectory (BET). Furthermore, the paper will quantify the uncertainty in simulations of the radiative heating for Mars 2020.

Mars 2020↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Updates to the NEQAIR Radiation Solver

The NEQAIR code is one of the original heritage solvers for radiative heating prediction in aerothermal environments, and is still used today for mission design purposes. This paper discusses the implementation of the first major revision to the NEQAIR code in the last five years, NEQAIR v14.0. The most notable features of NEQAIR v14.0 are the parallelization of the radiation computation, reducing runtimes by about 30×, and the inclusion of mid-wave CO2 infrared radiation.

Radiation↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Aerocapture at Saturn

The feasibility and benefits of using aerocapture for orbit insertion in the Saturn atmosphere are assessed in the context of existing technologies and likely science mission architectures in the Saturn system. We model aerocapture in-atmosphere flight performance in the presence of expected day-of-flight uncertainties, including those driven by limited knowledge of Saturn, to determine aerocapture flight system needs. We assess the impact of aerocapture on overall mission design for future science missions by including aerocapture in an end-to-end mission design and optimization scheme. Results indicate that aerocapture may feasible and beneficial with limited-to-no technology investment for missions designed to address near-term science priorities in the Saturn system.

Aerocapture↗