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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
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1999

In-Space Internet-Based Communications for Space Science Platforms Using Commercial Satellite Networks

The continuing technological advances in satellite communications and global networking have resulted in commercial systems that now can potentially provide capabilities for communications with space-based science platforms. This reduces the need for expensive government owned communications infrastructures to support space science missions while simultaneously making available better service to the end users. An interactive, high data rate Internet type connection through commercial space communications networks would enable authorized researchers anywhere to control space-based experiments in near real time and obtain experimental results immediately. A space based communications network architecture consisting of satellite constellations connecting orbiting space science platforms to ground users can be developed to provide this service. The unresolved technical issues presented by this scenario are the subject of research at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Assessment of network architectures, identification of required new or improved technologies, and investigation of data communications protocols are being performed through testbed and satellite experiments and laboratory simulations.

Kerczewski, Robert J.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Experimental Verification of Computational Models for Laminated Composites

The objective of the research reported herein is to develop a progressive damage methodology capable of predicting the residual strength of continuous fiber-reinforced, laminated, polymer matrix composites with through-penetration damage. The fracture behavior of center-notch tension panels with thin crack-like slits was studied. Since fibers are the major load-carrying constituent in polymer matrix composites, predicting the residual strength of a laminate requires a criterion for fiber fracture. The effects on fiber strain due to other damage mechanisms such as matrix cracking and delaminations must also be modeled. Therefore, the research herein examines the damage mechanisms involved in translaminate fracture and identifies the toughening mechanisms responsible for damage growth resistance in brittle epoxy matrix systems. The mechanics of matrix cracking and fiber fracture are discussed as is the mathematical framework for the progressive damage model developed by the authors. The progressive damage analysis algorithms have been implemented into a general purpose finite element code developed by NASA, the Computational Structural Mechanics Testbed (COMET). Damage growth is numerically simulated and the analytical residual strength predictions are compared to experimental results for a variety of notched panel configurations and materials systems.

Harris, Charles E.↗
NASA NTRS2012

HCIT Broadband Contrast Performance Sensitivity Studies

One of the important milestones of the TPF Coronagraph project is to demonstrate the ability to predict the performance sensitivities of the system at levels consistent with exo-planet detection requirement. We want to gain some general understanding about the potentials and the limitations of the current single-Deformable-Mirror (DM) High-contrast imaging testbed (HCIT) system through modeling and simulations. Specifically, we want to understand the effects of some common errors on the EFC-based control of e-field over a half dark-hole region and broadband contrast. Investigated errors include: (1) Absorbing particles on a flat-mirror (2) Defects on the Occulter surface (3) Dead actuators on the DM. We also investigated the effects of control bandwidth on the broadband contrast. We used a MACOS-based simulation algorithm which (1) combines a ray trace, diffraction model, & a broadband wavefront control algorithm (2) is capable of performing full three-dimensional near-field diffraction analysis

exoplanets↗
NASA NTRS2014

TPSAS-NF1676L-18905-DND

Aircraft loss of control is a leading cause of fatal accidents across all transport airplane and operational classes. Aircraft loss-of-control (LOC) accidents are highly complex in that they can result from numerous causal and contributing factors acting alone or (more often) in combination. Hence, there is no single intervention strategy to prevent these accidents. This presentation will define LOC as a dynamics and control problem, summarize LOC accident analysis results, and discuss current NASA research that supports a holistic approach for significantly reducing aircraft LOC accidents for current and future aircraft. The approach includes onboard systems technologies for LOC prevention and recovery, as well as a parallel effort for their validation. The onboard systems technologies provide improved situational awareness, guidance, and control under realistic LOC hazards, and include: hazards effects detection and mitigation; upset detection, prevention and recovery; and multiple hazards mitigation. Validation technologies include analytical, simulation, and experimental methods, tools and testbeds as well as the development of a comprehensive set of realistic LOC test scenarios. Future research directions will also be discussed.

Christine Belcastro↗
NASA NTRS1990

Flight simulation for wind shear encounter

A real-time piloted flight simulator is under development in the Laboratory for Control and Automation at Princeton University. This facility will be used to study piloted flight through a simulated wind shear. It will also provide a testbed for real-time flight guidance laws. The hardware configuration and aerodynamic model used are discussed. The microburst model to be incorporated into the simulation is introduced, and some proposed cockpit display concepts are described.

Mulgund, Sandeep S.↗
NASA NTRS1990

NASA-UCLA Workshop on Computational Techniques in Identification and Control of Flexible Flight Structures, Lake Arrowhead, CA, Nov. 2-4, 1989, Proceedings

The present conference on the identification and control of flexible flight structures with computational techniques encompasses existing and planned testbeds, modeling techniques, adaptive control, and numerical computation and simulation. Specific issues addressed include the NASA/MFSC ground test facility, an active control test on the NASA Minimast, the Astrex testbed for large precision space structures, the dynamic analysis of truss-beam modeling, combined structure-controls-integrated optimization, distributed parameter modeling applicable to the control of flexible flight structures, and approaches to nonclassically damped dynamic systems. Also addressed are adaptive control concepts, techniques for vibration and decentralized slew maneuver control, the discretization of second-order-in-time differential equations which are applicable to nonlinear wave problems, the finite-dimensional approximations of Riccati equations, and numerical simulations of actively controlled space structures.

Balakrishnan, A. V.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Design of passive piezoelectric damping for space structures

Passive damping of structural dynamics using piezoceramic electromechanical energy conversion and passive electrical networks is a relatively recent concept with little implementation experience base. This report describes an implementation case study, starting from conceptual design and technique selection, through detailed component design and testing to simulation on the structure to be damped. About 0.5kg. of piezoelectric material was employed to damp the ASTREX testbed, a 500kg structure. Emphasis was placed upon designing the damping to enable high bandwidth robust feedback control. Resistive piezoelectric shunting provided the necessary broadband damping. The piezoelectric element was incorporated into a mechanically-tuned vibration absorber in order to concentrate damping into the 30 to 40 Hz frequency modes at the rolloff region of the proposed compensator. A prototype of a steel flex-tensional motion amplification device was built and tested. The effective stiffness and damping of the flex-tensional device was experimentally verified. When six of these effective springs are placed in an orthogonal configuration, strain energy is absorbed from all six degrees of freedom of a 90kg. mass. A NASTRAN finite element model of the testbed was modified to include the six-spring damping system. An analytical model was developed for the spring in order to see how the flex-tensional device and piezoelectric dimensions effect the critical stress and strain energy distribution throughout the component. Simulation of the testbed demonstrated the damping levels achievable in the completed system.

Hagood, Nesbitt W., IV↗
NASA NTRS1997

Vigilante: Ultrafast Smart Sensor for Target Recognition and Precision Tracking in a Simulated CMD Scenario

VIGILANTE is an ultrafast smart sensor testbed for generic Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) applications with a series of capability demonstration focussed on cruise missile defense (CMD). VIGILANTE's sensor/processor architecture is based on next-generation UV/visible/IR sensors and a tera-operations per second sugar-cube processor, as well as supporting airborne vehicle. Excellent results of efficient ATR methodologies that use an eigenvectors/neural network combination and feature-based precision tracking have been demonstrated in the laboratory environment.

TARGET RECOGNITION↗
NASA NTRS2014

A Large Lunar Surface Testbed from Low Cost Material

For users needing to simulate the lunar surface, several distinct avenues have been used. Numerous volcanic areas, including Hawaii, have been used. While providing very large areas and scenic interest, field parties to such an area is expensive and limits testing time. An alternative is to build test facilities locally. This has been done many ways, contrast GRC-1, GSC-1, BP-1 and the KSC Morpheus facility [1-4]. GRC-1 is a mixture of sand and clay; GSC-1 and BP-1 are waste materials created in the process of crushing basaltic rock. The Morpheus field used salvaged concrete and crushed quartz rock [5]. Here I report about a 30 m X 30 m test area at MSFC which was both low cost and relatively high fidelity [6].

Rickman, Douglas↗
NASA NTRS1989

Model evaluation, recommendation and prioritizing of future work for the manipulator emulator testbed

The Manipulator Emulator Testbed (MET) is to provide a facility capable of hosting the simulation of various manipulator configurations to support concept studies, evaluation, and other engineering development activities. Specifically, the testbed is intended to support development of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) and related systems. The objective of this study is to evaluate the math models developed for the MET simulation of a manipulator's rigid body dynamics and the servo systems for each of the driven manipulator joints. Specifically, the math models are examined with regard to their amenability to pipeline and parallel processing. Based on this evaluation and the project objectives, a set of prioritized recommendations are offered for future work.

Kelly, Frederick A.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) New Observing Strategies (NOS) and NOS-Testbed (NOS-T)

With the advancement of space hardware technologies such as smaller spacecraft, component and instrument miniaturization and high performance space processors, and with the advancement of software technologies in artificial intelligence, big data analysis and autonomous decision making, Earth Science is looking at novel ways to observe phenomena that previously could not have been studied or would have been too expensive to study with traditional missions. In particular, the New Observing Strategies (NOS) component of the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program aims at leveraging these novel technologies as well as low cost and easy access to space to acquire multi-temporal or simultaneous multi-angular, multi-locations, multi-resolution and multi-spectral observations that will provide better multi-source measurements and will build a more dynamic and comprehensive picture of Earth Science phenomena that need to be studied and analyzed. For applications such as water resources management, air quality monitoring, biodiversity studies or disaster management, NOS will integrate the use of small instruments, small spacecraft, constellations of spacecraft and networks of sensors to design new missions that will provide the necessary measurements to improve future forecast and science modeling systems.Measurement acquisition will therefore be approached as a system of systems rather than on a mission basis, and a system of this complexity should not be expected to work without full integration and experimental characterization. Although most of the individual technologies enabling to link and coordinate multi-source observations are more or less mature, a few technologies need to be developed and all of them need to be integrated and tested as a system. In order for this validation to occur, the AIST Program is developing the NOS Testbed that includes 3 main goals:1.Validate novel NOS technologies, independently and as a system2.Demonstrate novel distributed operations concepts3.Socialize new Distributed Spacecraft Mission (DSM) and SensorWeb (SW) technologies and concepts to the science community by significantly retiring the risk of integrating these new technologies.The NOS Testbed will consist of multiple sensing nodes, simulated or actual, representing space, air and/or ground measurements, that are interconnected by a communications fabric (infrastructure that permits nodes to transmit and receive data between one another and interact with each other). Each node will be supported by hardware capabilities required to perform nodes monitoring and command & control, as well as intelligent "onboard" computing. The nodes will work together in a collaborative manner to demonstrate optimal science capabilities. The testbed will enable to validate technologies such as inter-node communication models, techniques and protocols; inter-node coordination; real-time data fusion and understanding; planning; sensor re-targeting; etc. Additionally, the testbed will have the capability to interact with various mission design tools, OSSEs and one or several forecast models. More details about the NOS Testbed will be presented at the confererence.

Earth Science missions; Advanced information Syste↗
NASA NTRS2016

Design, Development, and Testing of a UAV Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed for Aviation and Airspace Prognostics Research

The airspace is becoming more and more complicated, and will continue to do so in the future with the integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), autonomy, spacecraft, other forms of aviation technology into the airspace. The new technology and complexity increases the importance and difficulty of safety assurance. Additionally, testing new technologies on complex aviation systems & systems of systems can be very difficult, expensive, and sometimes unsafe in real life scenarios. Prognostic methodology provides an estimate of the health and risks of a component, vehicle, or airspace and knowledge of how that will change over time. That measure is especially useful in safety determination, mission planning, and maintenance scheduling. The developed testbed will be used to validate prediction algorithms for the real-time safety monitoring of the National Airspace System (NAS) and the prediction of unsafe events. The framework injects flight related anomalies related to ground systems, routing, airport congestion, etc. to test and verify algorithms for NAS safety. In our research work, we develop a live, distributed, hardware-in-the-loop testbed for aviation and airspace prognostics along with exploring further research possibilities to verify and validate future algorithms for NAS safety. The testbed integrates virtual aircraft using the X-Plane simulator and X-PlaneConnect toolbox, UAVs using onboard sensors and cellular communications, and hardware in the loop components. In addition, the testbed includes an additional research framework to support and simplify future research activities. It enables safe, accurate, and inexpensive experimentation and research into airspace and vehicle prognosis that would not have been possible otherwise. This paper describes the design, development, and testing of this system. Software reliability, safety and latency are some of the critical design considerations in development of the testbed. Integration of HITL elements in the development phases and veri cation/ validation are key elements to this report.

HITL↗
NASA NTRS2004

Integrated Modeling Approach for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission

Because of the complexity of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) design concepts, the project will rely heavily on the use of engineering and science simulations to predict on-orbit performance. Furthermore, current understanding of these missions indicates that the 3m to 8m class optical systems need to be as stable as picometers in wavefront and sub-milli arcsec in pointing. These extremely small requirements impose on the models a level of predictive accuracy heretofore never achieved, especially in the area of microgravity effects, material property accuracy, thermal solution convergence, and all other second order modeling effects typically ignored. New modeling tools and analysis paradigms are developed which emphasize computational accuracy and fully integrated analytical simulations. The process is demonstrated on sample problems using the TPF Coronagraph design concept. The TPF project is also planning a suite of testbeds through which various aspects of the models and simulations will be verified.

terrestrial planet finder↗
NASA NTRS2010

Vacuum-Compatible Wideband White Light and Laser Combiner Source System

For the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) Spectrum Calibration Development Unit (SCDU) testbed, wideband white light is used to simulate starlight. The white light source mount requires extremely stable pointing accuracy (<3.2 microradians). To meet this and other needs, the laser light from a single-mode fiber was combined, through a beam splitter window with special coating from broadband wavelengths, with light from multimode fiber. Both lights were coupled to a photonic crystal fiber (PCF). In many optical systems, simulating a point star with broadband spectrum with stability of microradians for white light interferometry is a challenge. In this case, the cameras use the white light interference to balance two optical paths, and to maintain close tracking. In order to coarse align the optical paths, a laser light is sent into the system to allow tracking of fringes because a narrow band laser has a great range of interference. The design requirements forced the innovators to use a new type of optical fiber, and to take a large amount of care in aligning the input sources. The testbed required better than 1% throughput, or enough output power on the lowest spectrum to be detectable by the CCD camera (6 nW at camera). The system needed to be vacuum-compatible and to have the capability for combining a visible laser light at any time for calibration purposes. The red laser is a commercially produced 635-nm laser 5-mW diode, and the white light source is a commercially produced tungsten halogen lamp that gives a broad spectrum of about 525 to 800 nm full width at half maximum (FWHM), with about 1.4 mW of power at 630 nm. A custom-made beam splitter window with special coating for broadband wavelengths is used with the white light input via a 50-mm multi-mode fiber. The large mode area PCF is an LMA-8 made by Crystal Fibre (core diameter of 8.5 mm, mode field diameter of 6 mm, and numerical aperture at 625 nm of 0.083). Any science interferometer that needs a tracking laser fringe to assist in alignment can use this system.

Azizi, Alineza↗
NASA NTRS2004

CDGPS-Based Relative Navigation for Multiple Spacecraft

This thesis investigates the use of Carrier-phase Differential GPS (CDGPS) in relative navigation filters for formation flying spacecraft. This work analyzes the relationship between the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) design parameters and the resulting estimation accuracies, and in particular, the effect of the process and measurement noises on the semimajor axis error. This analysis clearly demonstrates that CDGPS-based relative navigation Kalman filters yield good estimation performance without satisfying the strong correlation property that previous work had associated with "good" navigation filters. Several examples are presented to show that the Kalman filter can be forced to create solutions with stronger correlations, but these always result in larger semimajor axis errors. These linear and nonlinear simulations also demonstrated the crucial role of the process noise in determining the semimajor axis knowledge. More sophisticated nonlinear models were included to reduce the propagation error in the estimator, but for long time steps and large separations, the EKF, which only uses a linearized covariance propagation, yielded very poor performance. In contrast, the CDGPS-based Unscented Kalman relative navigation Filter (UKF) handled the dynamic and measurement nonlinearities much better and yielded far superior performance than the EKF. The UKF produced good estimates for scenarios with long baselines and time steps for which the EKF would diverge rapidly. A hardware-in-the-loop testbed that is compatible with the Spirent Simulator at NASA GSFC was developed to provide a very flexible and robust capability for demonstrating CDGPS technologies in closed-loop. This extended previous work to implement the decentralized relative navigation algorithms in real time.

Mitchell, Megan Leigh↗