Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Freudinger, Larry.
This viewgraph presentation reviews the planned global sensor network that will monitor the Earth's climate, and resources using airborne sensor systems. The vision is an intelligent, affordable Earth Observation System. Global Test Range is a lab developing trustworthy services for airborne instruments - a specialized Internet Service Provider. There is discussion of several current and planned missions.
The NASA Real Time Mission Monitor (RTMM) is a situational awareness tool that integrates satellite, airborne and surface data sets; weather information; model and forecast outputs; and vehicle state data (e.g., aircraft navigation, satellite tracks and instrument field-of-views) for field experiment management RTMM optimizes science and logistic decision-making during field experiments by presenting timely data and graphics to the users to improve real time situational awareness of the experiment's assets. The RTMM is proven in the field as it supported program managers, scientists, and aircraft personnel during the NASA African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses experiment during summer 2006 in Cape Verde, Africa. The integration and delivery of this information is made possible through data acquisition systems, network communication links and network server resources built and managed by collaborators at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). RTMM is evolving towards a more flexible and dynamic combination of sensor ingest, network computing, and decision-making activities through the use of a service oriented architecture based on community standards and protocols.
The Aerostructures Test Wing (ATW) was an apparatus used in a flight experiment during a program of research on aeroelastic instabilities. The ATW experiment was performed to study a specific instability known as flutter. Flutter is a destructive phenomenon caused by adverse coupling of structural dynamics and aerodynamics. The process of determining a flight envelope within which an aircraft will not experience flutter, known as flight flutter testing, is very dangerous and expensive because predictions of the instability are often unreliable. The ATW was a small-scale airplane wing that comprised an airfoil and boom (see upper part of Figure 1). For flight tests, the ATW was mounted on the F-15B/FTF-II testbed, which is a second-generation flight-test fixture described in Flight-Test Fixture for Aerodynamic Research (DRC- 95-27), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 19, No. 9, September 1995, page 84. The ATW was mounted horizontally on this fixture, and the entire assembly was attached to the undercarriage of the F-15B airplane (see lower part of Figure 1). The primary objective of the ATW project was to investigate traditional and advanced methodologies for predicting the onset of flutter. In particular, the ATW generated data that were used to evaluate a flutterometer. This particular flutterometer is an on-line computer program that uses method analysis to estimate worst-case flight conditions associated with flutter. This software was described in A Flutterometer Flight Test Tool NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 1999, page 52.