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Lehman, Daniel

Publications and source records attributed to Lehman, Daniel.

Report on ISS Oxygen Production, Resupply, and Partial Pressure Management

The majority of oxygen used on International Space Station (ISS) is for metabolic support and denitrogenation procedures prior to Extra-Vehicular Activities. Oxygen is supplied by various visiting vehicles such as the Progress and Shuttle in addition to oxygen production capability on both the United States On-Orbit Segment (USOS) and Russian Segment (RS). To maintain a habitable atmosphere the oxygen partial pressure is controlled between upper and lower bounds. The full range of the allowable oxygen partial pressure along with the increased ISS cabin volume is utilized as a buffer allowing days to pass between oxygen production or direct addition of oxygen to the atmosphere from reserves. This paper summarizes amount of oxygen supplied and produced from all of the sources and describes past experience of managing oxygen partial pressure along with the range of management options available to the ISS.

Schaezler, Ryan↗

Fluid Merging Viscosity Measurement (FMVM) Experiment on the International Space Station

The concept of using low gravity experimental data together with fluid dynamical numerical simulations for measuring the viscosity of highly viscous liquids was recently validated on the International Space Station (ISS). After testing the proof of concept for this method with parabolic flight experiments, an ISS experiment was proposed and later conducted onboard the ISS in July, 2004 and subsequently in May of 2005. In that experiment a series of two liquid drops were brought manually together until they touched and then were allowed to merge under the action of capillary forces alone. The merging process was recorded visually in order to measure the contact radius speed as the merging proceeded. Several liquids were tested and for each liquid several drop diameters were used. It has been shown that when the coefficient of surface tension for the liquid is known, the contact radius speed can then determine the coefficient of viscosity for that liquid. The viscosity is determined by fitting the experimental speed to theoretically calculated contact radius speed for the same experimental parameters. Experimental and numerical results will be presented in which the viscosity of different highly viscous liquids were determined, to a high degree of accuracy, using this technique.

Antar, Basil N.↗

Gas-Liquid Separation Strategies in Microgravity Environment

Bubble entrainment in liquids represents a serious problem in the microgravity environment. Whenever bubbles are entrained in a liquid,they tend to remain stationary in the liquid bulk in the absence of any external forcing. This is due to the reduction or complete absence of the buoyancy force in the microgravity environment, Thus the buoyancy force can not the be exploited to place the bubbles at the top of the liquid volume as in Ig(sub o) conditions. This situation represents a serious drawback in many space based engineering and scientific applications. We have demonstrated in a series of low gravity experiments conducted during parabolic flight on board aircraft that bubbles can be controlled in such a manner as to increase,the probability of their expulsion from a liquid bulk. In these tests the liquid'bulk was made either to be contained within, or to flow through specially designed containers using capillary force alone. Such containers appear to facilitate bubble removal, from the liquid bulk. Different successful liquid flow configurations will be discussed and the efficacy of the resulting bubble expulsion mechanisms will be demonstrated.

Antar, Basil N.↗