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NASA NTRS1971

A numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for supercritical fluid thermodynamic analysis

An explicit numerical solution of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations is applied to the thermodynamic analysis of supercritical oxygen in the Apollo cryogenic storage system. The wave character is retained in the conservation equations which are written in the basic fluid variables for a two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Control-volume cells are employed to simplify imposition of boundary conditions and to ensure strict observance of local and global conservation principles. Non-linear real-gas thermodynamic properties responsible for the pressure collapse phenomonon in supercritical fluids are represented by tabular and empirical functions relating pressure and temperature to density and internal energy. Wall boundary conditions are adjusted at one cell face to emit a prescribed mass flowrate. Scaling principles are invoked to achieve acceptable computer execution times for very low Mach number convection problems. Detailed simulations of thermal stratification and fluid mixing occurring under low acceleration in the Apollo 12 supercritical oxygen tank are presented which model the pressure decay associated with de-stratification induced by an ordinary vehicle maneuver and heater cycle operation.

Heinmiller, P. J.↗

NASA NTRS1972

Effect of stratified inequality of blood flow on gas exchange in liquid-filled lungs.

This investigation set out to answer two questions: (1) are the distal alveoli in the terminal lung units less well perfused than the proximal alveoli, i.e., is there stratification of blood flow; and (2) if so, does this enhance gas exchange in the presence of stratified inequality of ventilation. Excised dog lungs were ventilated with saline and perfused with blood. Following single inspirations of xenon 133 in saline and various periods of breath holding, the expired xenon concentration against volume was measured and it confirmed marked stratified inequality of ventilation under these conditions. By measuring the rate of depletion of xenon from alveoli during a period of blood flow, we showed that the alveoli which emptied at the end of expiration had 16% less blood flow than those exhaling earlier. However, by measuring the xenon concentration in pulmonary venous blood, we found that about 10% less tracer was transferred from the alveoli into the blood when the inspired xenon was stratified within the respiratory zone. Thus while stratification of blood flow was confirmed, it was shown to impair rather than enhance the efficiency of gas transfer.

West, J. B.↗

NASA NTRS1972

The occultation of beta Scorpii by Jupiter and Io. I - Jupiter.

Use of computer-controlled one-dimensional area-scanning photometers to observe the occultation of the Beta Scorpii system by Jupiter on May 13, 1971. Six high-quality light curves were obtained; three of the occultations of the brighter component Beta Sco A and three of Beta Sco C. The mean scale height of the Jovian upper atmosphere is 32 plus or minus 6 km near -10 deg zenographic latitude, 31 plus or minus 2 km at -47 deg zenographic latitude, and 24 plus or minus 2 km at -57 deg zenographic latitude. The determination of the atmospheric scale height is highly sensitive to the background level subtracted, providing a possible explanation of an earlier result by Baum and Code (1953) placing the scale height at about 8 km. Correlated departures of the light curve from a theoretical isothermal curve are reproduced in the three bright-star curves, and are thus not due to random density fluctuations in the Jovian atmosphere, but are rather due to global stratification. Details of the stratification, which includes at least a number of warm layers, are examined by deconvolution of the light curves. There is evidence for a high-temperature (T greater than 300 K) thermosphere on two of the bright-star light curves.

Hubbard, W. B.↗

NASA NTRS1972

Viscous stability theory for thermally stratified flow - Discontinuous jets and shear layers.

The method used by Drazin to investigate the stability of unbounded, viscous, homogeneous, parallel shear flow to small wavenumber disturbances is extended to study the effect of thermal stratification on the stability of unbounded jets and shear layers. By this method the stability characteristics of continuous profiles are inferred from the stability characteristics of discontinuous profiles. The characteristic value problem for discontinuous jet and shear layers is posed by the requirement that the solutions of the governing differential equation satisfy the matching conditions and boundedness conditions for layers that extend to infinity. The analysis leads to a characteristic determinant which is required to vanish for the characteristic values of the parameters: the Reynolds number, the wavenumber, and the wave speed. The stabilizing effect of the thermal stratification as parameterized by the Richardson number was found to be most stabilizing for small wavenumber (large-scale) disturbances.

Gage, K. S.↗

NASA NTRS1973

Remote Sensing in Lake Superior Studies

An investigation was made of surface water transport in the extreme western arm of Lake Superior from July 25 to September 15, 1972. Temperature and water velocity profile measurements were made to determine the nature of currents at the tip of the lake. Bathythermographs and thermistor probes were used for these measurements. From the end of July to August 9, no pronounced steady stratification took place. A series of days with variable winds produced, under N.E. winds, warm water pileup at the tip of the lake, which was subsequently driven out by westerly winds. Some evidence of upwelling was indicated by cold surface waters near the shore. After August 9 considerable stratification with slight upwelling was noted.

Sydor, M.↗

NASA NTRS1973

Analysis of stratified and closely spaced jets exhausting into a crossflow

Procedures have been developed for determining the flow field about jets with velocity stratification exhausting into a crossflow. Jets with three different types of exit velocity stratification have been considered: (1) jets with a relatively high velocity core; (2) jets with a relatively low velocity core; and (3) jets originating from a vaned nozzle. The procedure developed for a jet originating from a high velocity core nozzle is to construct an equivalent nozzle having the same mass flow and thrust but having a uniform exit velocity profile. Calculations of the jet centerline and induced surface static pressures have been shown to be in good agreement with test data for a high velocity core nozzle. The equivalent ideal nozzle has also been shown to be a good representation for jets with a relatively low velocity core and for jets originating from a vaned nozzle in evaluating jet-induced flow fields. For the singular case of a low velocity core nozzle, namely a nozzle with a dead air core, and for the vaned nozzle, an alternative procedure has been developed. The internal mixing which takes place in the jet core has been properly accounted for in the equations of motion governing the jet development. Calculations of jet centerlines and induced surface static pressures show good agreement with test data these nozzles.

Ziegler, H.↗

NASA NTRS1974

Agriculture, forestry, range resources

In the area of crop specie identification, it has been found that temporal data analysis, preliminary stratification, and unequal probability analysis were several of the factors that contributed to high identification accuracies. Single data set accuracies on fields of greater than 80,000 sq m (20 acres) are in the 70- to 90-percent range; however, with the use of temporal data, accuracies of 95 percent have been reported. Identification accuracy drops off significantly on areas of less than 80,000 sq m (20 acres) as does measurement accuracy. Forest stratification into coniferous and deciduous areas has been accomplished to a 90- to 95-percent accuracy level. Using multistage sampling techniques, the timber volume of a national forest district has been estimated to a confidence level and standard deviation acceptable to the Forest Service at a very favorable cost-benefit time ratio. Range specie/plant community vegetation mapping has been accomplished at various levels of success (69- to 90-percent accuracy). However, several investigators have obtained encouraging initial results in range biomass (forage production) estimation and range readiness predictions. Soil association map correction and soil association mapping in new area appear to have been proven feasible on large areas; however, testing in a complex soil area should be undertaken.

Crea, W. J.↗

NASA NTRS1974

Interaction between the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers

The two-layer system of an atmosphere over water bodies is reduced to a single-layer problem. Values of the interfacial quantities, such as the friction velocity, the surface velocity, the angles, alpha and beta, between the surface shear stress and the geostrophic wind velocity and the surface wind velocity, respectively, and the surface roughness, all of which depend upon external parameters, such as the geostrophic wind and stratifications, are obtained. The geostrophic drag coefficient, the geostrophic wind coefficient, and the angles alpha, and beta, of the turbulent flow at the sea-air interface are functions of a dimensionless number, mfG/kg, with S sub 1 and S sub 2 as two free stratification parameters. The surface roughness is uniquely determined from the geostrophic wind rather than from the wind profile in the boundary layer.

Yeh, G.-T.↗

NASA NTRS1975

Temperature waves in a stratified sea

Calculations on the effect of density stratification on the propagation of temperature waves show that in layers with a positive maximum density gradient the temperature waves damp out more quickly. In a linear distribution of density with depth and a constant intensity of turbulent exchange, density stratification makes temperature wave amplitudes inversely proportional to density distribution in comparison with values from the open uniform sea.

Vanlan, V.↗

NASA NTRS1974

Agricultural inventory techniques with orbital and high-altitude imagery

An investigation was conducted regarding the feasibility of an employment of satellite imagery for land-use stratifications, taking into account present operational systems. It was found that satellite imagery of the quality of ERTS-1 can offer a feasible solution to the problem of out-of-date stratification. Other studies reported are concerned with the level of accuracy obtainable in a crop inventory for a specific crop using high-altitude aircraft photographs.

Hay, C. M.↗

NASA NTRS1976

Rotating stratified flow over finite isolated topography

Inviscid, steady, stratified rotating flow over a finite, isolated topographic feature is critically analyzed. The formulation is based on approximating the horizontal momentum by the geostrophic momentum. A boundary value problem governs the perturbation pressure field. The solution is an anticyclonic, topographically-bound vortex whose characteristics are independent of the upstream velocity but do depend on stratification, rotation, and the nature of the topography. The vortex is baroclinic in the vicinity of the mountain but barotropic in the far field. The velocity field is a combination of the bound vortex and an upstream velocity interacting with the perturbation pressure field. The effects of stratification, upstream velocity and the nature of the topography are investigated, and fluid trajectories are plotted.

Merkine, L.-O.↗

NASA NTRS1976

Temperature distribution of a hot water storage tank in a simulated solar heating and cooling system

A 2,300-liter hot water storage tank was studied under conditions simulating a solar heating and cooling system. The initial condition of the tank, ranging from 37 C at the bottom to 94 C at the top, represented a condition midway through the start-up period of the system. During the five-day test period, the water in the tank gradually rose in temperature but in a manner that diminished its temperature stratification. Stratification was found not to be an important factor in the operation of the particular solar system studied.

Namkoong, D.↗

NASA NTRS1980

Computer classified Landsat data used as a forest stratifier

Results of two forest stratification projects are presented to show that Landsat data, when combined with guided clustering techniques, can provide detailed stratification of forest environment. It is shown that conifer species groupings, vegetative cover classes, and three size classes can be discriminated with accuracies ranging from 83 to 91%.

Fox, L., III↗

NASA NTRS1981

FOCIS: A forest classification and inventory system using LANDSAT and digital terrain data

Accurate, cost-effective stratification of forest vegetation and timber inventory is the primary goal of a Forest Classification and Inventory System (FOCIS). Conventional timber stratification using photointerpretation can be time-consuming, costly, and inconsistent from analyst to analyst. FOCIS was designed to overcome these problems by using machine processing techniques to extract and process tonal, textural, and terrain information from registered LANDSAT multispectral and digital terrain data. Comparison of samples from timber strata identified by conventional procedures showed that both have about the same potential to reduce the variance of timber volume estimates over simple random sampling.

Strahler, A. H.↗

NASA NTRS1980

Time-dependent lunar density models

Simple models of the geochemical and geophysical evolution of the moon were constructed with the particular aim of investigating the mass density distribution within the moon as a function of time. The strongly inverted (densest material on top) density distribution resulting from fractional crystallization of the lunar magma ocean was found to rearrange itself into a highly stable stratification. Density stratification due to compositional variation dominated gravitational stability; thus, thermally driven convection was found to be suppressed in regions with relaxed (rearranged so as to minimize the gravitational potential energy) compositional density variation. The suppression of convection as a heat transfer process results in considerable modification of thermal evolution. The models produced sufficient density segregation from magma oceans of a few hundred km thickness, such that relaxation to the most stable rearrangement yielded a polar moment of inertia approximating that measured for the present-day moon. Thus, lunar models matching moment-of-inertia constraints but lacking a metallic core are motivated.

Herbert, F.↗

NASA NTRS1982

An operational large-scale marine planetary boundary layer model

A marine planetary boundary layer (PBL) model is presented and compared with data from sea-based experiments. The PBL model comprises two layers, the outer an Ekman-Taylor layer with stratification-dependent secondary flow, and the logarithmic surface layer corrected for stratification and humidity effects and variable surface roughness. Corrections are noted for air much warmer than water in stable conditions and for low wind speeds. The layers are analytically defined along with similarity relations and a resistance law for inclusion in a program. An additional interfacial layer correction is developed and shown to be significant for heat flux calculations. Experimental data from GOASEX were used to predict the windfield in the Gulf of Alaska, and JASIN data was used for windfields SE of Iceland. The JASIN-derived wind field predictions were accurate to within 1 m/sec and 10 deg in a 200 km triangle.

Brown, R. A.↗

NASA NTRS1981

Using ecological zones to increase the detail of Landsat classifications

Changes in classification detail of forest species descriptions were made for Landsat data on 2.2 million acres in northwestern California. Because basic forest canopy structures may exhibit very similar E-M energy reflectance patterns in different environmental regions, classification labels based on Landsat spectral signatures alone become very generalized when mapping large heterogeneous ecological regions. By adding a seven ecological zone stratification, a 167% improvement in classification detail was made over the results achieved without it. The seven zone stratification is a less costly alternative to the inclusion of complex collateral information, such as terrain data and soil type, into the Landsat data base when making inventories of areas greater than 500,000 acres.

Fox, L., III↗

NASA NTRS1977

Development of techniques for producing static strata maps and development of photointerpretive methods based on multitemporal LANDSAT data

Progress in the evaluation of the static stratification procedure and the development of alternative photointerpretive techniques to the present LACIE procedure for the identification of training fields is reported. Statistically significant signature controlling variables were defined for use in refining the stratification procedure. A subset of the 1973-74 Kansas LACIE segments for wheat was analyzed.

Colwell, R. N.↗