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At least 217 records · Page 12

Topography and tectonics of mid-oceanic ridge axes

Numerical fluid dynamic models of mid-oceanic ridge axes were constructed using distributions of material properties constrained by seismic studies and thermal calculations. The calculations indicate that spreading is passive except for forces caused by density differences due to thermal expansion and partial melt. Except for geometric differences due to temperature distribution, one set of mechanical properties can adequately explain central rifts of slow ridges and central peaks of fast ridges. Viscous head loss in the upwelling material dominates at low spreading rates where material ascends through a narrow conduit. Thermal expansion and partial melting dominate at high spreading rates where a wide low viscosity crustal magma chamber is present. The preferred rheology is 10 to the 20th poise for the upwelling lithosphere; less than 5 x 10 to the 17th for the crustal magma chamber and axial intrusion zone at fast ridges, and a yield stress of 200 bars for the lithosphere. The calculation correctly predicts the existence of central peaks at 'hot-spot' ridges, where seismic evidence indicates a large magma chamber.

Sleep, N. H.↗

The Mars Pathfinder Mission and Science Results

Mars Pathfinder, the first low-cost, quick Discovery class mission to be completed, successfully landed on the surface of Mars on July 4, 1997, deployed and navigated a small rover, and collected data from 3 science instruments and 10 technology experiments. The mission operated on Mars for 3 months and returned 2.3 Gbits of new data, including over 16,500 lander and 550 rover images, 16 chemical analyses of rocks and soil, and 8.5 million individual temperature, pressure and wind measurements. The rover traversed 100 m clockwise around the lander, exploring about 200 square meters of the surface. The mission captured the imagination of the public, and garnered front page headlines during the first week. A total of about 566 million internet "hits" were registered during the first month of the mission, with 47 million "hits" on July 8th alone, making the Pathfinder landing by far the largest internet event in history at the time. Pathfinder was the first mission to deploy a rover on Mars. It carried a chemical analysis instrument, to characterize the rocks and soils in a landing area over hundreds of square meters on Mars, which provided a calibration point or "ground truth" for orbital remote sensing observations. The combination of spectral imaging of the landing area by the lander camera, chemical analyses aboard the rover, and close-up imaging of colors, textures and fabrics with the rover cameras offered the potential of identifying rocks (petrology and mineralogy). With this payload, a landing site in Ares Vallis was selected because it appeared acceptably safe and offered the prospect of analyzing a variety of rock types expected to be deposited by catastrophic floods, which enabled addressing first-order scientific questions such as differentiation of the crust, the development of weathering products, and the nature of the early Martian environment and its subsequent evolution. The 3 instruments and rover allowed seven areas of scientific investigation: the geology and geomorphology of the surface, mineralogy and geochemistry of rocks and soils, physical properties of surface materials, magnetic properties of airborne dust, atmospheric science including aerosols, and rotational and orbital dynamics of Mars. Scientists were assembled into 7 Science Operations Groups that were responsible for requesting measurements by the 3 instruments, rover and engineering subsystems for carrying out their scientific investigations and for analyzing the data and reporting on their findings. The spacecraft was launched on December 4, 1996 and had a 7 month cruise to Mars, with four trajectory correction maneuvers. The vehicle entered the atmosphere directly following cruise stage separation. Parachute deployment, heatshield and lander separation, radar ground acquisition, airbag inflation and rocket ignition all occurred before landing at 2:58 AM true local solar time (9:56:55 AM PDT). The lander bounced at least 15 times up to 12 in high without airbag rupture, demonstrating the robustness of this landing system. Reconstruction of the final landing sequence indicates that the parachute/backshel1/1ander was tilted due to a northwest directed wind and wind shear, which resulted in the lander bouncing about I km to the northwest and initially downhill about 20 m from where the solid rockets fired. Two anomalously bright spots located in the lander scene are likely the heatshield, which continued in a ballistic trajectory about 2 km downrange (west southwest), and the backshell/parachute, which stayed nearer to where the rockets fired. Unconnected disturbed soil patches in the scene indicate that the final few bounces of the lander were from the east-southeast and were followed by a gentle roll to the west before coming to rest on the base petal. The location of the lander away from where the solid rockets fired and considerations of the exhaust products used to inflate the airbags and their fate, indicate that the Pathfinder landing system is one of the cleanest designed leaving the local area essentially contaminant free. The radio signal from the low-=gain antenna was received at 11:34 AM PDT indicating a successful landing.

Golombek, M. P.↗

The Two-Cavity Method for Characterizing Acoustical Materials—an Interlaboratory Study

This study focuses on understanding the sound absorption characteristics of porous acoustic materials, which are determined by two key parameters independent of material thickness: characteristic impedance and propagation constant. These parameters can be characterized by testing a porous sample concept in a normal incidence impedance tube using either the two-thickness or the two-cavity method. In the two-thickness method, two samples of varying thicknesses are required. In contrast, the two-cavity method requires testing one sample at two different air cavity depths behind the porous material. This method is particularly advantageous for materials that are costly or challenging to fabricate. This interlaboratory study evaluates the variability of characteristic properties determined using the two-cavity method. Porous acoustic materials were additively manufactured and tested in the Liner Technology Facility(LTF)at NASA Langley Research Center and the Mechanics, Acoustics and Dynamics Lab (MADLab) at Michigan Technological University. The characteristic properties derived from various cavity depth combinations were used to predict the surface impedance of the sample with a rigid backing. The prediction was then compared the measured impedance spectrum. It was also found that the combinations of cavity depths can significantly influence the accuracy of the deduced properties.

acoustic liners↗

Melting and transport properties of Al 2⁢ O 3 at extreme conditions

The high-pressure, temperature phase diagram and transport properties of materials are of broad interest to planetary sciences and high-energy-density sciences and applications. Alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) or its various forms (e.g., solutions with other oxides or silicates) are important constituents in Earth’s and super-Earths’ mantles, common window materials in dynamic compression experiments, and standard pressure calibrators in diamond-anvil-cell experiments. Its structures and transport properties are of particular importance but have not been well studied at above 100 GPa pressures. Based on extensive first-principles molecular dynamics calculations, we obtain atomic level insights on structural differences and accurate results on electrical conductivity (σ dc ), thermal conductivity (κ), and reflectivity of Al 2 O 3 in several phases at pressures of ~130–1300 GPa and temperatures of 4000–20,000 K. We find the solid-to-liquid state changes of Al 2 O 3 are accompanied by an insulator-to-semimetal transition with enhanced σ dc and κ, which is similar to other silicates and oxides and can facilitate magnetic field generation in deep interiors of rocky planets. We also find the solid-to-solid transition (from Rh 2 O 3 (II) to CaIrO 3 ) is accompanied by negligible changes in σ dc and κ at 160 GPa, contrary to previous expectations, whereas another higher pressure phase transition (CaIrO 3 to U 2 S 3 at 450 GPa) is associated with increases in σ dc and κ. Furthermore, we show the transport properties can be enhanced by oxygen vacancy in Al 2 O 3 , but are not significantly affected by forming solutions with MgSiO 3 , particularly when in the solid states.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Atomistic Simulations for Thermophysical Properties of Uranium-Containing Halide Molten Salts

Characterizing the thermophysical properties in both fuel and coolant salts are critical in modeling, developing, process optimizing and utilizing molten salt reactors (MSRs), as these properties directly relate to operation metrics and can inform on the selection of candidate salts. The demand for consistent, accurate and publicly available thermophysical property data has become more apparent in recent years as interests have increased from molten salt reactor developers. There are a number of challenges in experimentally measuring properties such as thermal conductivity, viscosity, density and heat capacity , which have led to sparse and often times conflicting data points or molten salts in general. Additionally, there are a number of hazards to consider when synthesizing, storing, using, treating and disposing of molten salts. With the advances in computational capabilities over the last 10 years, the use of atomistic simulations can be implemented to support these efforts. The primary objective of this work is characterize the thermophysical transport properties in a number of molten chloride salts, and in particular NaCl-UCl 3 using ab-initio molecular dynamic (AIMD) simulations. In this binary salt the UCl 3 acts as the primary fissile material and NaCl acts as a carrier salt due with its’ high solubility for actinides A number of studies on the thermophysical properties of NaCl-UCl 3 have been published but there is not a vast amount of viscosity data for this system. In 1975, Desyatnik, et al published a study reporting dynamic viscosities that were calculated from kinematic viscosity measurements, and using the coefficients provided the viscosity in a 70:30 NaCl:UCl 3 mixture is 2.29 cP and 2.88 for a 60:40 mixture. Termini et al. recently reported viscosities in the range of 2.75 – 3 cP for the 63:37 NaCl-UCl 3 mixture in the same temperature range using rolling ball viscosity measurements. Computational viscosity of a similar mixture (64:36) can be obtained from the work Andersson et al. using the reported diffusion coefficients, and the hydrodynamic radius from the pair-radial distribution functions (RDFs). Using Eq (1) (vida infra), the viscosity would be 2.50 cP at 1100K. This is not to say that these values are incorrect due to the varying reported values, but aims to highlight the necessity of this work. The data reported in this ongoing work are computations on a 64:36 mixture of NaCl-UCl 3 at 987K. This work is likely to be expanded into varying concentrations of this mixture along with the inclusion of other salt candidate mixtures.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

Nanoscale Magnetic Ordering Dynamics in a High Curie Temperature Ferromagnet

Thermally driven transitions between ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases are characterized by critical behavior with divergent susceptibilities, long-range correlations, and spin dynamics that can span kHz to GHz scales as the material approaches the critical temperature T c , but it has proven technically challenging to probe the relevant length and time scales with most conventional measurement techniques. In this study, we employ scanning nitrogen-vacancy center based magnetometry and relaxometry to reveal the critical behavior of a high-T c ferromagnetic oxide near its Curie temperature. Cluster analysis of the measured temperature-dependent nanoscale magnetic textures points to a 3D universality class with a correlation length that diverges near T c . Meanwhile, the temperature-dependent spin dynamics, measured through all optical relaxometry suggest that the phase transition is in the XY universality class. In conclusion, our results capture both static and dynamic aspects of critical behavior, providing insights into universal properties that govern phase transitions in magnetic materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Real-time measurement of materials properties at high temperatures by laser produced plasmas

Determination of elemental composition and thermophysical properties of materials at high temperatures, as visualized in the context of containerless materials processing in a microgravity environment, presents a variety of unusual requirements owing to the thermal hazards and interferences from electromagnetic control fields. In addition, such information is intended for process control applications and thus the measurements must be real time in nature. A new technique is described which was developed for real time, in-situ determination of the elemental composition of molten metallic alloys such as specialty steel. The technique is based on time-resolved spectroscopy of a laser produced plasma (LPP) plume resulting from the interaction of a giant laser pulse with a material target. The sensitivity and precision were demonstrated to be comparable to, or better than, the conventional methods of analysis which are applicable only to post-mortem specimens sampled from a molten metal pool. The LPP technique can be applied widely to other materials composition analysis applications. The LPP technique is extremely information rich and therefore provides opportunities for extracting other physical properties in addition to the materials composition. The case in point is that it is possible to determine thermophysical properties of the target materials at high temperatures by monitoring generation and transport of acoustic pulses as well as a number of other fluid-dynamic processes triggered by the LPP event. By manipulation of the scaling properties of the laser-matter interaction, many different kinds of flow events, ranging from shock waves to surface waves to flow induced instabilities, can be generated in a controllable manner. Time-resolved detection of these events can lead to such thermophysical quantities as volume and shear viscosities, thermal conductivity, specific heat, mass density, and others.

Kim, Yong W.↗

Molecular dynamics study of hydrogen Cottrell atmosphere in aluminum: Influence of solute-solute interactions in the dislocation core

Cottrell atmospheres form when solute atoms segregate to dislocations, and is one of the most basic processes by which solutes alter mechanical properties of materials. In the case of hydrogen, Cottrell atmospheres are believed to contribute to hydrogen embrittlement. Here, in this study, we use direct molecular dynamics simulations to study the formation of hydrogen Cottrell atmospheres around edge dislocations in aluminum. Using coarse-graining techniques, we resolve the temporal and spatial evolution of the hydrogen concentration field. By comparing our results with theories of Cottrell atmosphere formation and thermodynamics, we show that a repulsive, concentration-dependent H-H interaction reduces the peak atmosphere concentration at the dislocation core. Furthermore, this interaction differs significantly from the H-H interaction that is experienced in the bulk away from a dislocation.

Aluminum↗

Abnormal Slow Phonon Dynamics Toward Prolonging Excited States Dynamics Enabled by Crystalline‐Assembling Donor–Acceptor Molecules

Phonon dynamics are a critical factor to control the optical properties of excited states in light-emitting materials. Here, we report an extremely slow relaxation of photoexcited lattice vibrations enabled by assembling the donor-acceptor (D–A) molecules [2-(9,9-dimethylacridin-10(9H)-yl)-9,9-dimethyl-9H-thioxanthene 10,10-dioxide], namely AC molecules, into dipolar crystal. By using photoexcitation-modulated Raman spectroscopy, we find that the crystalline-lattice vibrations monitored by Raman-scattering laser beam of 785 nm demonstrate an un-usual slow relaxation in the time scale of seconds after ceasing photoexcitation beam of 343 nm in such dipolar crystal. This presents extremely slow phonon dynamics enabled by crystalline-assembling the D–A molecules into a dipolar crystal. Simultaneously, the photoluminescence (PL) exhibits a prolonged behavior, lasting 10 ms after ceasing photoexcitation in dipolar AC crystal. This phenomenon provides an experimental hypothesis that the slow phonon dynamics function as an important mechanism to unusually prolong excited states dynamics upon crystalline-assembling the D–A molecules into dipolar crystal. Here, this hypothesis can be verified by directly suppressing the phonon dynamics through freezing D–A molecular liquid into dipolar crystalline solid at 77 K to largely prolong the PL to 1 s- after removing photoexcitation. Clearly, crystalline-assembling D–A molecules provide the necessary conditions to enable slow phonon dynamics toward prolonging excited states dynamics.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Dynamic Characterization of Galfenol (Fe81.6Ga18.4)

Galfenol has the potential to transform the smart materials industry by allowing for the development of multifunctional, load-bearing devices. One of the primary technical challenges faced by this development is the very limited experimental data on Galfenol's frequency-dependent response to dynamic stress, which is critically important for the design of such devices. This report details a novel and precise characterization of the constitutive behavior of polycrystalline Galfenol (Fe81.6Ga18.4) under quasi-static (1 Hz) and dynamic (4 to 1000 Hz) stress loadings. Mechanical loads are applied using a high-frequency load frame. Quasi-static minor and major hysteresis loop measurements of magnetic flux density and strain are presented for constant electromagnet currents (0 to 1.1 A) and constant magnetic fields 0 to 14 kA/m (0 to 180 Oe). The dynamic stress amplitude for minor and major loops is 2.88 and 31.4 MPa (418 and 4550 psi), respectively. Quasi-static material properties closely match published values for similar Galfenol materials. Quasi-static actuation responses are also measured and compared to quasi-static sensing responses; the high degree of reversibility seen in the comparison is consistent with published measurements and modeling results. Dynamic major and minor loops are measured for dynamic stresses up to 31 MPa (4496 psi) and 1 kHz, and the bias condition resulting in maximum, quasi-static sensitivity. Eddy current effects are quantified by considering solid and laminated Galfenol rods. Three key sources of error in the dynamic measurements are accounted for: (1) electromagnetic noise in strain signals due to Galfenol's magnetic response, (2) error in load signals due to the inertial force of fixturing, and (3) phase misalignment between signals due to conditioning electronics. For dynamic characterization, strain error is kept below 1.2 percent of full scale by wiring two collocated gauges in series (noise cancellation) and through leadwire weaving. Inertial force error is kept below 0.41 percent by measuring the dynamic force in the specimen using a nearly collocated piezoelectric load washer. The phase response of all conditioning electronics is explicitly measured and corrected for. In general, as frequency is increased, the sensing response becomes more linear because of an increase in eddy currents. As frequency increases above approximately 100 Hz, the elbow in the strain-versus-stress response disappears as the active (soft) regime stiffens toward the passive (hard) regime. Under constant-field conditions, the loss factors of the solid rod peak between 200 and 600 Hz, rather than exhibiting a monotonic increase. Compared to the solid rod, the laminated rod exhibits much slower increases in hysteresis with frequency, and its quasi-static behavior extends to higher frequencies. The elastic modulus of the laminated rod decreases between 100 and 300 Hz; this trend is currently unexplained.

Dynamic sensing↗

MechBERT: Language Models for Extracting Chemical and Property Relationships about Mechanical Stress and Strain

Language models are transforming materials-aware naturallanguage processing by enabling the extraction of dynamic, context-rich information from unstructured text, thus, moving beyond the limitations of traditional information-extraction methods. Moreover, small language models are on the rise because some of them can perform better than large language models (LLMs) when given domain-specific questionanswer tasks, especially about an application area that relies on a highly specialized vernacular, such as materials science. We therefore present a new class of MechBERT language models for understanding mechanical stress and strain in materials. These employ Bidirectional Encoder Representations for transformer (BERT) architectures. We showcase four MechBERT models, all of which were pretrained on a corpus of documents that are textually rich in chemicals and their stress–strain properties and were fine-tuned on question-answering tasks. We evaluated the level of performance of our models on domain-specific as well as general English-language question-answer tasks and also explored the influence of the size and type of BERT architectures on model performance. We find that our MechBERT models outperform BERT-based models of the same size and maintain relevancy better than much larger BERT-based models when tasked with domain-specific question-answering tasks within the stress–strain engineering sector. These small language models also enable much faster processing and require a much smaller fraction of data to pretrain them, affording them greater operational efficiency and energy sustainability than LLMs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Prediction of vacancy defect diffusion paths in high entropy alloys via machine learning on molecular dynamics data

Identifying the diffusion path of point defects is a critical step in understanding their evolution and the mechanisms of related phenomena. Defect diffusion occurs at small length and time scales, with impacts on material properties that may continue to evolve over ns to μs, ms, and the continuum scale (s, min, etc., and cm, m, etc.). The time scale accessible to molecular dynamics (MD) simulations is limited by small step sizes, typically in the fs range. Thus, surrogate models of MD simulations through machine learning (ML)-based algorithms are of great interest, especially for complex systems such as high entropy alloys (HEAs). In this work, dynamics governing vacancy migration in HEA were approximated with graph convolutional network (GCN) models as ansatzes for kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) rate catalogs. Network design considered that diffusion in crystalline solids generally depends on interactions between defects and their immediate neighbor atoms. Graphs represented the vacancy surroundings, MD-generated trajectories provided training and comparison datasets, and unsupervised GCN models approximated interatomic dynamics governing vacancy migration in HEAs as ansatzes for KMC. A proof-of-concept model trained on MD data for the Fe, Ni, Cr, Co, and Cu HEA environment was used with two different neighbor interactions to assess the feasibility of training a GCN to predict vacancy defect transition rates in the HEA environment. The resulting setup rapidly generated MD-formatted synthetic trajectories based on dynamics learned from the MD training set, with a time acceleration of roughly two orders of magnitude and a similar diffusion coefficient to MD observations. Additionally, Nudged Elastic Band (NEB) calculations were performed on randomly generated FeNiCrCoCu HEA structures to determine vacancy migration barriers across nearest-neighbor sites. Transition probabilities for each jump, categorized by atomic type, were extracted from these calculations. NEB-based and GCN-based approaches led to similar outcomes.

Reimer, C↗

Investigation of a bearingless helicopter rotor concept having a composite primary structure

Experimental and analytical investigations were conducted to evaluate a bearingless helicopter rotor concept (CBR) made possible through the use of the specialized nonisotropic properties of composite materials. The investigation was focused on four principal areas which were expected to answer important questions regarding the feasibility of this concept. First, an examination of material properties was made to establish moduli, ultimate strength, and fatigue characteristics of unidirectional graphite/epoxy, the composite material selected for this application. The results confirmed the high bending modulus and strengths and low shear modulus expected of this material, and demonstrated fatigue properties in torsion which make this material ideally suited for the CBR application. Second, a dynamically scaled model was fabricated and tested in the low speed wind tunnel to explore the aeroelastic characteristics of the CBR and to explore various concepts relative to the method of blade pitch control. Two basic control configurations were tested, one in which pitch flap coupling could occur and another which eliminated all coupling. It was found that both systems could be operated successfully at simulated speeds of 180 knots; however, the configuration with coupling present revealed a potential for undesirable aeroelastic response. The uncoupled configuration behaved generally as a conventional hingeless rotor and was stable for all conditions tested.

Bielawa, R. L.↗

Thermomechanical properties of polymeric materials and related stresses

The thermomechanical properties of a number of widely used polymeric materials were determined by thermomechanical analysis and dynamic mechanical analysis. A combined profile of the coefficient of thermal expansion and the modulus change over a wide temperature range obtained by the analyses shows clearly the drastic effect of the glass transition on both the CTE and the modulus of a polymer, and the damaging potential due to such effect.

Lee, Sheng Yen↗

Investigation of the Structural Damping of a Full-scale Airplane Wing

An investigation to determine the structural damping characteristics of a full-scale airplane wing was conducted by the shock-excitation method wherein the wing was loaded to a predetermined deflection and the load suddenly released. The test specimen vibrated at its fundamental bending frequency of 1.69 cycles per second. Only the first 2 or 3 cycles showed any indication of a higher frequency being superimposed upon the fundamental bending frequency. The damping was found to increase from about 0.002 to critical at an amplitude of vibration of plus and minus 0.05 inch to approximately 0.006 of critical at an amplitude of + or - 5 inches.

LOADS AND STRESSES, STRUCTURAL - DYNAMIC↗

Report of the Stability and Dynamics Session

Important issues: Mass gauging; Stability dynamics of disconnected capillary surfaces; Slow capillary driven flow (i.e. wicking); Long-term material property evolution in micro-g; Dumping problem with freezing of dump lines.

Alexander, Iwan↗

Probalistic Finite Elements (PFEM) structural dynamics and fracture mechanics

The purpose of this work is to develop computationally efficient methodologies for assessing the effects of randomness in loads, material properties, and other aspects of a problem by a finite element analysis. The resulting group of methods is called probabilistic finite elements (PFEM). The overall objective of this work is to develop methodologies whereby the lifetime of a component can be predicted, accounting for the variability in the material and geometry of the component, the loads, and other aspects of the environment; and the range of response expected in a particular scenario can be presented to the analyst in addition to the response itself. Emphasis has been placed on methods which are not statistical in character; that is, they do not involve Monte Carlo simulations. The reason for this choice of direction is that Monte Carlo simulations of complex nonlinear response require a tremendous amount of computation. The focus of efforts so far has been on nonlinear structural dynamics. However, in the continuation of this project, emphasis will be shifted to probabilistic fracture mechanics so that the effect of randomness in crack geometry and material properties can be studied interactively with the effect of random load and environment.

Liu, Wing-Kam↗

Impact of thermal energy storage properties on solar dynamic space power conversion system mass

A 16 parameter solar concentrator/heat receiver mass model is used in conjunction with Stirling and Brayton Power Conversion System (PCS) performance and mass computer codes to determine the effect of thermal energy storage (TES) material property changes on overall PCS mass as a function of steady state electrical power output. Included in the PCS mass model are component masses as a function of thermal power for: concentrator, heat receiver, heat exchangers (source unless integral with heat receiver, heat sink, regenerator), heat engine units with optional parallel redundancy, power conditioning and control (PC and C), PC and C radiator, main radiator, and structure. Critical TES properties are: melting temperature, heat of fusion, density of the liquid phase, and the ratio of solid-to-liquid density. Preliminary results indicate that even though overalll system efficiency increases with TES melting temperature up to 1400 K for concentrator surface accuracies of 1 mrad or better, reductions in the overall system mass beyond that achievable with lithium fluoride (LiF) can be accomplished only if the heat of fusion is at least 800 kJ/kg and the liquid density is comparable to that of LiF (1880 kg/cu m.

Juhasz, Albert J.↗