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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.

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At least 217 records · Page 12

Fully Coupled Aeroelastic Stability Analysis of Adaptive Shape Memory Alloy Structural Technologies for Airframe Noise Reduction

This final report documents work performed by ATA Engineering, Inc., (ATA) to develop computational models and analyze the coupled fluid-structure response of two types of noise treatments applied to the leading-edge-slat component of a high-lift system typical of modern transport aircraft. The first treatment is a slat-gap filler (SGF), which closes the gap between the suction surfaces of a deployed slat and an aircraft main wing, and the second treatment is a slat-cove filler (SCF), which replaces the recirculating flow on the slat cove with a surface that promotes flow attachment. The representative airframe chosen for this work was NASA’s High-Lift Common Research Model (CRM-HL) in a baseline high-lift configuration. Superelastic shape memory alloys (SMAs) have been identified as enabling materials for these structural treatments. Since the technology elements rely upon having a highly reconfigurable structure, designs were assessed for their static aeroelastic deflection as well as their dynamic aeroelastic stability using coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and nonlinear computational structural dynamics (NL-CSD) tools. Specifically, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problems were solved computationally using the CFD solver Loci/CHEM and the NL-CSD solver Abaqus. As a part of the overall project, a similar capability was implemented using the CFD solver FUN3D coupled to Abaqus, although that work is documented in a separate report and that FSI framework was not used to analyze any of NASA’s SGF and SCF configurations. The technical approach consisted of solving for the flow field around the entire vehicle using a global CFD model, followed by extraction of relevant local subdomain data for CFD and NL-CSD co-simulations. The SGF design was analyzed using both 2D and 3D co-simulations to predict quasi-static aeroelastic deformations and to assess dynamic aeroelastic stability, whereas the SCF was analyzed in 2D only. SGF static aeroelastic response predictions focused on characterizing the deformed shape, with maximum displacements predicted to be on the order of magnitude of the technology element panel thickness. SGF dynamic aeroelastic response predictions used Partial Floquet analysis of the temporal evolution of selected nodal displacements to quantify the sign and magnitude of aeroelastic damping. Results suggest that the CRM-HL operating conditions would result in a dynamically stable response. The simulated dynamic pressure was also increased up to a factor of about four, and resulting responses suggest that predicted dynamic stability would be achieved with some margin.

Fluid Structure Interaction↗

Thermosolutal convection during directional solidification

During solidification of a binary alloy at constant velocity vertically upward, thermosolutal convection can occur if the solute rejected at the crystal-melt interface decreases the density of the melt. We assume that the crystal-melt interface remains planar and that the flow field is periodic in the horizontal direction. The time-dependent nonlinear differential equations for fluid flow, concentration, and temperature are solved numerically in two spatial dimensions for small Prandtl numbers and moderately large Schmidt numbers. For slow solidification velocities, the thermal field has an important stabilizing influence: near the onset of instability the flow is confined to the vicinity of the crystal-melt interface. Further, for slow velocities, as the concentration increases, the horizontal wavelength of the flow decreases rapidly - a phenomenon also indicated by linear stability analysis. The lateral inhomogeneity in solute concentration due to convection is obtained from the calculations. For a narrow range of solutal Rayleigh numbers and wavelengths, the flow is periodic in time.

Mcfadden, G. B.↗

Space Station Active Thermal Control System modeling

The Space Station Active Thermal Control System (ATCS) has been modeled using modified SINDA/SINFLO programs to solve two-phase Thermo-fluid problems. The modifications include changes in several subroutines to incorporate implicit solution which allows larger time step as compared to that for explicit solutions. Larger time step saves computer time but involves larger computational error. Several runs were made using various time steps for the ATCS model. It has been found that for a reasonable approach, three times larger time step as compared to that used in explicit method is a good value which will reduce the computer time by approximately 50 percent and still maintain the accuracy of the output data to within 90 percent of the explicit values.

Hye, Abdul↗

Performance characteristics of a thermal energy storage module - A transient PCM/forced convection conjugate analysis

The performance of a thermal energy storage module is simulated numerically. The change of phase of the phase-change material (PCM) and the transient forced convective heat transfer for the transfer fluid with low Prandtl numbers are solved simultaneously as a conjugate problem. A parametric study and a system optimization are conducted. The numerical results show that module geometry is crucial to the design of a space-based thermal energy storage system.

Cao, Y.↗

Study of shock-induced combustion using an implicit TVD scheme

The supersonic combustion flowfields associated with various hypersonic propulsion systems, such as the ram accelerator, the oblique detonation wave engine, and the scramjet, are being investigated using a new computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The code solves the fully coupled Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations and species continuity equations in an efficient manner. It employs an iterative method and a second order differencing scheme to improve computational efficiency. The code is currently being applied to study shock wave/boundary layer interactions in premixed combustible gases, and to investigate the ram accelerator concept. Results obtained for a ram accelerator configuration indicate a new combustion mechanism in which a shock wave induces combustion in the boundary layer, which then propagates outward and downstream. The combustion process creates a high pressure region over the back of the projectile resulting in a net positive thrust forward.

Yungster, Shayne↗

NAS technical summaries: Numerical aerodynamic simulation program, March 1991 - February 1992

NASA created the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Program in 1987 to focus resources on solving critical problems in aeroscience and related disciplines by utilizing the power of the most advanced supercomputers available. The NAS Program provides scientists with the necessary computing power to solve today's most demanding computational fluid dynamics problems and serves as a pathfinder in integrating leading-edge supercomputing technologies, thus benefiting other supercomputer centers in Government and industry. This report contains selected scientific results from the 1991-92 NAS Operational Year, March 4, 1991 to March 3, 1992, which is the fifth year of operation. During this year, the scientific community was given access to a Cray-2 and a Cray Y-MP. The Cray-2, the first generation supercomputer, has four processors, 256 megawords of central memory, and a total sustained speed of 250 million floating point operations per second. The Cray Y-MP, the second generation supercomputer, has eight processors and a total sustained speed of one billion floating point operations per second. Additional memory was installed this year, doubling capacity from 128 to 256 megawords of solid-state storage-device memory. Because of its higher performance, the Cray Y-MP delivered approximately 77 percent of the total number of supercomputer hours used during this year.

Source record↗

NAS technical summaries. Numerical aerodynamic simulation program, March 1992 - February 1993

NASA created the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Program in 1987 to focus resources on solving critical problems in aeroscience and related disciplines by utilizing the power of the most advanced supercomputers available. The NAS Program provides scientists with the necessary computing power to solve today's most demanding computational fluid dynamics problems and serves as a pathfinder in integrating leading-edge supercomputing technologies, thus benefitting other supercomputer centers in government and industry. The 1992-93 operational year concluded with 399 high-speed processor projects and 91 parallel projects representing NASA, the Department of Defense, other government agencies, private industry, and universities. This document provides a glimpse at some of the significant scientific results for the year.

Source record↗

NAS Technical Summaries, March 1993 - February 1994

NASA created the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Program in 1987 to focus resources on solving critical problems in aeroscience and related disciplines by utilizing the power of the most advanced supercomputers available. The NAS Program provides scientists with the necessary computing power to solve today's most demanding computational fluid dynamics problems and serves as a pathfinder in integrating leading-edge supercomputing technologies, thus benefitting other supercomputer centers in government and industry. The 1993-94 operational year concluded with 448 high-speed processor projects and 95 parallel projects representing NASA, the Department of Defense, other government agencies, private industry, and universities. This document provides a glimpse at some of the significant scientific results for the year.

Source record↗

Two-Dimensional Dynamic Simulation of a Continuous Foil Bearing

In this paper, the two dimensional(radial and circumferential) transient Navier-Stokes equations are used to solve the hydrodynamic problem in conjunction with the time dependent motion of the journal, and the deformable, spring supported foil. The elastic deformation of the foil and its supports are simulated by a finite element model. The time-dependent Navier-Stokes formulation is used to solve for the interaction between the fluid lubricant, the motion of the journal and the deformable foil boundary. The steady state, the quasi-transient and the full transient dynamic simulation of the foil-fluid journal interaction are examined on a comparative basis. For the steady state simulation, the fluid lubricant pressures are evaluated for a particular journal position, by means of an iterative scheme until convergence is achieved in both the fluid pressures and the corresponding foil deformation. For the quasi-transient case, the transient motion of the journal is calculated using a numerical integration scheme for the velocity and displacement of the journal. The deformation of the foil is evaluated through numerical iteration in feedback mode with the fluid film pressure generated by the journal motion until convergence at every time step is achieved. For the full transient simulation, a parallel real-time integration scheme is used to evaluate simultaneously the new journal position and the new deformed shape of the foil at each time step. The pressure of the fluid lubricant is iterated jointly with the corresponding journal position and the deformed foil geometry until convergence is achieved. A variable time-stepping Newmark-Beta integration procedure is used to evaluate the transient dynamics at each time step of the bearing.

Braun, M. Jack↗

Research Efforts in Development of NPARC 2D/3D CFD Codes

The objective of the research was to develop a capability in the NPARC computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code to efficiently solve for unsteady airflows with moving geometry and grids. The application of interest was the unsteady flow in a high-speed aircraft inlet operating at the supercritical condition in which a terminal shock resides within the diffuser.

Slater, John W.↗

A Second Law Based Unstructured Finite Volume Procedure for Generalized Flow Simulation

An unstructured finite volume procedure has been developed for steady and transient thermo-fluid dynamic analysis of fluid systems and components. The procedure is applicable for a flow network consisting of pipes and various fittings where flow is assumed to be one dimensional. It can also be used to simulate flow in a component by modeling a multi-dimensional flow using the same numerical scheme. The flow domain is discretized into a number of interconnected control volumes located arbitrarily in space. The conservation equations for each control volume account for the transport of mass, momentum and entropy from the neighboring control volumes. In addition, they also include the sources of each conserved variable and time dependent terms. The source term of entropy equation contains entropy generation due to heat transfer and fluid friction. Thermodynamic properties are computed from the equation of state of a real fluid. The system of equations is solved by a hybrid numerical method which is a combination of simultaneous Newton-Raphson and successive substitution schemes. The paper also describes the application and verification of the procedure by comparing its predictions with the analytical and numerical solution of several benchmark problems.

Majumdar, Alok↗

Navier-Stokes Computations on Commodity Computers

In this paper we discuss and demonstrate the feasibility of solving high-fidelity, nonlinear computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problems of practical interest on commodity machines, namely Pentium Pro PC's. Such calculations have now become possible due to the progress in computational power and memory of the off-the-shelf commodity computers, along with the growth in bandwidth and communication speeds of networks. A widely used CFD code known as TLNS3D, which was developed originally on large shared memory computers was selected for this effort. This code has recently been ported to massively parallel processor (MPP) type machines, where natural partitioning along grid blocks is adopted in which one or more blocks are distributed to each of the available processors. In this paper, a similar approach is adapted to port this code to a cluster of Pentium Pro computers. The message passing among the processors is accomplished through the use of standard message passing interface (MPI) libraries. Scaling studies indicate fairly high level of parallelism on such clusters of commodity machines, thus making solutions to Navier-Stokes equations for practical problems more affordable.

Vatsa, Veer N.↗

Effect of the Acceleration of Elongated Bodies of Revolution Upon the Resistance in a Compressible Flow

The problem of the motion of an elongated body of revolution in an incompressible fluid may, as is known, be solved approximately with the aid of the distribution of sources along the axis of the body. In determining the velocity field, the question of whether the body moves uniformly or with an acceleration is no factor in the problem. The presence of acceleration must be taken into account in determining the pressures acting on the body. The resistance of the body arising from the accelerated motion may be computed either directly on the basis of these pressures or with the aid of the so-called associated masses (inertia coefficients). A different condition holds in the case of the motion of bodies in a compressible gas. In this case the finite velocity of sound must be taken into account.

Frankl, F. I.↗

Dynamic Deployment Simulations of Inflatable Space Structures

The feasibility of using Control Volume (CV) method and the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method in LSDYNA to simulate the dynamic deployment of inflatable space structures is investigated. The CV and ALE methods were used to predict the inflation deployments of three folded tube configurations. The CV method was found to be a simple and computationally efficient method that may be adequate for modeling slow inflation deployment sine the inertia of the inflation gas can be neglected. The ALE method was found to be very computationally intensive since it involves the solving of three conservative equations of fluid as well as dealing with complex fluid structure interactions.

Wang, John T.↗

Simulink Model of the Ares I Upper Stage Main Propulsion System

A numerical model of the Ares I upper stage main propulsion system is formulated based on first principles. Equation's are written as non-linear ordinary differential equations. The GASP fortran code is used to compute thermophysical properties of the working fluids. Complicated algebraic constraints are numerically solved. The model is implemented in Simulink and provides a rudimentary simulation of the time history of important pressures and temperatures during re-pressurization, boost and upper stage firing. The model is validated against an existing reliable code, and typical results are shown.

Burchett, Bradley T.↗

Physical Principle for Generation of Randomness

A physical principle (more precisely, a principle that incorporates mathematical models used in physics) has been conceived as the basis of a method of generating randomness in Monte Carlo simulations. The principle eliminates the need for conventional random-number generators. The Monte Carlo simulation method is among the most powerful computational methods for solving high-dimensional problems in physics, chemistry, economics, and information processing. The Monte Carlo simulation method is especially effective for solving problems in which computational complexity increases exponentially with dimensionality. The main advantage of the Monte Carlo simulation method over other methods is that the demand on computational resources becomes independent of dimensionality. As augmented by the present principle, the Monte Carlo simulation method becomes an even more powerful computational method that is especially useful for solving problems associated with dynamics of fluids, planning, scheduling, and combinatorial optimization. The present principle is based on coupling of dynamical equations with the corresponding Liouville equation. The randomness is generated by non-Lipschitz instability of dynamics triggered and controlled by feedback from the Liouville equation. (In non-Lipschitz dynamics, the derivatives of solutions of the dynamical equations are not required to be bounded.)

Zak, Michail↗

Implementation of Finite Volume based Navier Stokes Algorithm Within General Purpose Flow Network Code

This paper describes a finite volume based numerical algorithm that allows multi-dimensional computation of fluid flow within a system level network flow analysis. There are several thermo-fluid engineering problems where higher fidelity solutions are needed that are not within the capacity of system level codes. The proposed algorithm will allow NASA's Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program (GFSSP) to perform multi-dimensional flow calculation within the framework of GFSSP s typical system level flow network consisting of fluid nodes and branches. The paper presents several classical two-dimensional fluid dynamics problems that have been solved by GFSSP's multi-dimensional flow solver. The numerical solutions are compared with the analytical and benchmark solution of Poiseulle, Couette and flow in a driven cavity.

Schallhorn, Paul↗

Numerical Study of Lander Engine Plume Impingement on the Surface of Europa

Plume exhaust from lander engines would be of concern when landing on the surface of Europa since it could have detrimental effects on both the landing surface and powered descent vehicle. The plume could also entrain particles and redirect them up toward the landing vehicle, as well as erode and contaminate the surface where science would be conducted. In this work, a numerical methodology is developed and validated to conduct a first-order assessment of individual engine plumes of a potential Europa Lander vehicle. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to solve the flow field inside and immediately downstream of the nozzle, while the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is applied further downstream where the flow becomes rarefied. An interface between the two domains is defined where macroscopic flow data is passed from the CFD domain to the DSMC domain, establishing a one-way coupling. Plume pressure and velocity fields, as well as ground heating, pressure and density flux profiles, are obtained at altitudes from 25 m down to 10 m, spanning the final stages of landing. The codes and methodologies used in this study are successfully validated with simulations conducted by Morris et al. of the Apollo Lunar Module Descent Engine (LMDE) exhaust plume impinging onto the lunar surface.

Lam, Rebekah↗