SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “small scale processes”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 217 records · Page 12

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1990

Micromechanical model of crack growth in fiber reinforced brittle materials

A model based on the micromechanical mechanism of crack growth resistance in fiber reinforced ceramics is presented. The formulation of the model is based on a small scale geometry of a macrocrack with a bridging zone, the process zone, which governs the resistance mechanism. The effect of high toughness of the fibers in retardation of the crack advance, and the significance of the fiber pullout mechanism on the crack growth resistance, are reflected in this model. The model allows one to address issues such as influence of fiber spacing, fiber flexibility, and fiber matrix friction. Two approaches were used. One represents the fracture initiation and concentrated on the development of the first microcracks between fibers. An exact closed form solution was obtained for this case. The second case deals with the development of an array of microcracks between fibers forming the bridging zone. An implicit exact solution is formed for this case. In both cases, a discrete fiber distribution is incorporated into the solution.

Rubinstein, Asher A.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Composition and Maturity of Apollo 16 Regolith Core 60013/14

Samples from every half-centimeter dissection interval of double drive tube 60013/14 (sections 60013 and 60014) were analyzed by magnetic techniques for Fe concentration and surface maturity parameter I(sub s)/ Fe(O), and by neutron activation for concentrations of 25 lithophile and siderophile elements. Core 60013/14 is one of three regolith cores taken in a triangular array 40-50 m apart on the Cayley plains during Apollo 16 mission to the Moon. The core can be divided into three zones based both on I(sub s)/FeO and composition. Unit A (0-44 cm depth) is compositionally similar to other soils from the surface of the central region of the site and is mature throughout, although maturity decreases with depth. Unit B (44-59 cm) is submature and compositionally more feldspathic than Unit A. Regions of lowest maturity in Unit B are characterized by lower Sm/Sc ratios than any soil obtained from the Cayley plains as a result of some unidentified lithologic component with low surface maturity. The component is probably some type of mafic anorthosite that does not occur in such high abundance in any of the other returned soils. Unit C (59-62 cm) is more mature than Unit B and compositionally equivalent to an 87: 13 mixture of soil such as that from Unit A and plagioclase such as found in ferroan anorthosite. Similar soils, but containing greater abundances of anorthosite (plagioclase), are found at depth in the other two cores of the array. These units of immature to submature soil enriched to varying degrees (compared to the mature surface soil) in ferroan anorthosite consisting of approx. 99% plagioclase are the only compositionally distinct subsurface similarities among the three cores. Each of the cores contains other units that are compositionally dissimilar to any soil unit in the other two cores. These compositionally distinct units probably derive from local subsurface blocks deposited by the event(s) that formed the Cayley plains. The ferroan anorthosite with approx. 99% plagioclase, however, must represent some subsurface lithology that is significant on the scale of tens of meters. The compositional uniformity of the surface soil (0-10 cm depth) over distances of kilometers reflects the large-scale uniformity of the plains deposits; the fine- structure reflects small-scale nonuniformity and the inefficiency of the impact-mixing process at depths as shallow as even one meter.

Korotev, Randy T.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Small Scale High Speed Turbomachinery

A small scale, high speed turbomachine is described, as well as a process for manufacturing the turbomachine. The turbomachine is manufactured by diffusion bonding stacked sheets of metal foil, each of which has been pre-formed to correspond to a cross section of the turbomachine structure. The turbomachines include rotating elements as well as static structures. Using this process, turbomachines may be manufactured with rotating elements that have outer diameters of less than four inches in size, and/or blading heights of less than 0.1 inches. The rotating elements of the turbomachines are capable of rotating at speeds in excess of 150 feet per second. In addition, cooling features may be added internally to blading to facilitate cooling in high temperature operations.

London, Adam P.↗

NASA NTRS2018

Small Scale High Speed Turbomachinery

London, Adam P.↗

NASA NTRS1973

Development of high-emittance scales on thoriated nickel-chromium-aluminum-base alloys

The surface regions of a DSNiCrAl alloy have been doped, by a pack diffusion process, with small amounts of Mn, Fe, or Co, and the effect of these dopants on the total normal emissivity of the scales produced by subsequent high temperature oxidation has been measured. While all three elements lead to a modest increase in emissivity, (up to 23% greater than the undoped alloy) only the change caused by manganese is thermally stable. However, this increased emissivity is within 85 percent of that of TDNiCr oxidized to form a chromia scale. The maganese-doped alloy is some 50 percent weaker than undoped DSNiCrAl after the doping treatment, and approximately 30 percent weaker after oxidation.

Seltzer, M. S.↗

NASA NTRS2020

Possible Evolution of Minifilament-Eruption-Produced Solar Coronal Jets, Jetlets, and Spicules, into Magnetic-Twist-Wave “Switchbacks” Observed by the Parker Solar Probe (PSP)

Many solar coronal jets result from erupting miniature-filament (“minifilament”) magnetic flux ropes that reconnect with encountered surrounding far-reaching field. Many of those minifilament flux ropes are apparently built and triggered to erupt by magnetic flux cancelation. If that cancelation (or some other process) results in the flux rope’s field having twist, then the reconnection with the far-reaching field transfers much of that twist to that reconnected far- reaching field. In cases where that surrounding field is open, the twist can propagate to far distances from the Sun as a magnetic-twist Alfv ́enic pulse. We argue that such pulses from jets could be the kinked-magnetic-field structures known as “switchbacks,” detected in the solar wind during perihelion passages of the Parker Solar Probe (PSP). For typical coronal-jet-generated Alfv ́enic pulses, we expect that the switchbacks would flow past PSP with a duration of several tens of minutes; larger coronal jets might produce switchbacks with passage durations∼1 hr.Smaller-scale jet-like features on the Sun known as “jetlets” may be small-scale versions of coronal jets, produced in a similar manner as the coronal jets. We estimate that switchbacks from jetlets would flow past PSP with a duration of a few minutes. Chromospheric spiculesare jet-like features that are even smaller than jetlets. If some portion of their population are indeed very-small-scale versions of coronal jets, then we speculate that the same processes could result in switchbacks that pass PSP with durations ranging from about∼2 min down to tens of seconds.

Alphonse C Sterling↗

DOE OSTI2025

Material extrusion with integrated compression molding of NdFeB/SmFeN nylon bonded magnets using small- and large-scale pellet-based 3D-printers

High-density bonded rare-earth magnets are manufactured using pellet-fed additive manufacturing (AM)/material extrusion and an integrated additive manufacturing-compression molding (AM-CM) process. Neodymium iron boron – samarium iron nitride in polyamide 12 (NdFeB-SmFeN/PA12) of 93 % weight fraction (65 % volume fraction) are used for the study. The mechanical properties (tensile strength and modulus), magnetic properties (maximum energy density, coercivity, remanence) are reported. Manufacturing parameters such as layer height, barrel temperatures, screw speed and gantry feed rate are optimized to obtain the highest possible density of the magnets using a small-scale desktop material extrusion printer. Large scale integrated additive manufacturing-compression molding (AM-CM) is then utilized to increase the density of the magnets by reducing porosity defects common in the material extrusion process. The density of as-printed magnets was 5.2 g/cm 3 with a BH max value of 124.14 kJ/m 3 , tensile strength of 20 MPa and a modulus of 2 GPa. AM-CM increased the density of the compound by 5.5 % (5.49 g/cm 3 ). The reduction in porosity was confirmed using X-ray tomography (XCT). Improvement in mechanical strength of the material was also observed, with an increase in tensile strength of 25 % (25.09 MPa) and increase in tensile modulus of 275 % (5.49 GPa). Scanning electron microscopy showed increased particle-matrix adhesion with the integrated AM-CM process.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Multilevel Approach For SolvingLarge-Scale QUBO Problems With Noisy Hybrid Quantum Approximate Optimization

Quantum approximate optimization is one ofthe promising candidates for useful quantum computation,particularly in the context of finding approximate solutionsto Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO)problems. However, the existing quantum processing units(QPUs) are of relatively small size, and canonical mappingsof QUBO via the Ising model require one qubit per vari-able, rendering direct large-scale optimization infeasible.In classical optimization, a general strategy for addressingmany large-scale problems is via multilevel/multigrid meth-ods, where the large target problem is iteratively coarsenedand the global solution is constructed from multiple small-scale optimization runs. In this work, we experimentallytest how existing QPUs perform when used as a sub-solverwithin such a multilevel strategy. To this aim, we com-bine and extend (via additional classical processing steps)the recently proposed Noise-Directed Adaptive Remapping(NDAR) and Quantum Relax&Round (QRR) algorithms.We first demonstrate the effectiveness of our heuristicextensions on Rigetti’s superconducting transmon deviceAnkaa-2. We find approximate solutions to10instances offully connected82-qubit Sherrington-Kirkpatrick graphswith random integer-valued coefficients obtaining normal-ized approximation ratios (ARs) in the range∼0.98−1.0,and the same class with real-valued coefficients (ARs∼0.94−1.0). Then, we implement the extended NDAR andQRR algorithms as subsolvers in the multilevel algorithmfor6large-scale graphs with at most∼27,000variables.In practice, the QPU (with classical post-processing steps)is used to find approximate solutions to dozens of at most82-qubit problems, which are iteratively used to constructthe global solution. We observe that quantum optimizationresults are competitive in terms of the quality of solutionswhen compared to classical heuristics used as subsolverswithin the multilevel approach.Reproducibility: source code and data are available at[TBA upon acceptance]

quantum computing↗

DOE OSTI2026

Time-resolved spray characterization via unified optical flow and binarization technique

This work leverages an unsupervised machine learning and advanced image processing techniques to characterize the breakup of fuel sprays in a small-scale combustor under reacting conditions, providing valuable insights into near-nozzle flow phenomenology. The proposed methodology integrates an improved optical flow model on a convolutional neural network to extract flow vectors with a binarization technique to assess droplets’ size and shape across the region of interest. The velocimetry approach demonstrates superior performance compared to a state-of-the-art optical flow model when applied to high-speed X-ray phase contrast spray images, achieving more accurate and reliable flow predictions. Moreover, breakup processes are quantified by breakup length and sphericity in accordance with velocity estimations, allowing a more complete characterization of the flow. This study establishes a robust methodology for analyzing spray morphology and primary breakup in compact combustors, contributing valuable means of understanding and optimizing fuel spray behavior in advanced combustion systems.

42 ENGINEERING↗

NASA NTRS2019

A Model for Energy Buildup and Eruption Onset in Coronal Mass Ejections

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and eruptive flares (EFs) are the most energetic explosions in the solar system. Their underlying origin is the free energy that builds up slowly in the sheared magnetic field of a filament channel. We report the first end-to-end numerical simulation of a CME/EF, from zero-free-energy initial state through filament channel formation to violent eruption, driven solely by the magnetic-helicity condensation process. Helicity is the topological measure of linkages between magnetic flux systems, and is conserved in the corona, building up inexorably until it is ejected into interplanetary space. Numerous investigations have demonstrated that helicity injected by small-scale vortical motions, such as those observed in the photosphere, undergoes an inverse cascade from small scales to large, “condensing” at magnetic-polarity boundaries. Our new results verify that this process forms a filament channel within a compact bipolar region embedded in a background dipole field, and show for the first time that a fast CME eventually occurs via the magnetic-breakout mechanism. We further show that the trigger for explosive eruption is reconnection onset in the flare current sheet that develops above the polarity inversion line: this reconnection forms flare loops below the sheet and a CME flux rope above, and initiates high-speed outward flow of the CME. Our findings have important implications for magnetic self organization and explosive behavior in solar and other astrophysical plasmas, as well as for understanding and predicting explosive solar activity.

filaments↗

NASA NTRS2012

High Precision, Absolute Total Column Ozone Measurements from the Pandora Spectrometer System: Comparisons with Data from a Brewer Double Monochromator and Aura OMI

We present new, high precision, high temporal resolution measurements of total column ozone (TCO) amounts derived from ground-based direct-sun irradiance measurements using our recently deployed Pandora single-grating spectrometers. Pandora's small size and portability allow deployment at multiple sites within an urban air-shed and development of a ground-based monitoring network for studying small-scale atmospheric dynamics, spatial heterogeneities in trace gas distribution, local pollution conditions, photochemical processes and interdependencies of ozone and its major precursors. Results are shown for four mid- to high-latitude sites where different Pandora instruments were used. Comparisons with a well calibrated double-grating Brewer spectrometer over a period of more than a year in Greenbelt MD showed excellent agreement and a small bias of approximately 2 DU (or, 0.6%). This was constant with slant column ozone amount over the full range of observed solar zenith angles (15-80), indicating adequate Pandora stray light correction. A small (1-2%) seasonal difference was found, consistent with sensitivity studies showing that the Pandora spectral fitting TCO retrieval has a temperature dependence of 1% per 3K, with an underestimation in temperature (e.g., during summer) resulting in an underestimation of TCO. Pandora agreed well with Aura-OMI (Ozone Measuring Instrument) satellite data, with average residuals of <1% at the different sites when the OMI view was within 50 km from the Pandora location and OMI-measured cloud fraction was <0.2. The frequent and continuous measurements by Pandora revealed significant short-term (hourly) temporal changes in TCO, not possible to capture by sun-synchronous satellites, such as OMI, alone.

Ozone↗

NASA NTRS2013

The Iterative Design Process in Research and Development: A Work Experience Paper

The iterative design process is one of many strategies used in new product development. Top-down development strategies, like waterfall development, place a heavy emphasis on planning and simulation. The iterative process, on the other hand, is better suited to the management of small to medium scale projects. Over the past four months, I have worked with engineers at Johnson Space Center on a multitude of electronics projects. By describing the work I have done these last few months, analyzing the factors that have driven design decisions, and examining the testing and verification process, I will demonstrate that iterative design is the obvious choice for research and development projects.

Sullivan, George F. III↗

DOE OSTI2024

Reactive transport modeling of the Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) system at Stockton University, New Jersey during seasonal operations

Hydrogeochemical processes associated with Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) operations can often impact the system performance owing to mineral precipitation either at the wellbore or in the aquifer owing to changes in temperature and fluid disequilibria. Although failure of ATES systems due to mineral precipitation ("fouling") is common, predictive reactive-transport models have rarely been applied to plan their design and operation. Here, the objective of this study is to develop a reactive-transport model by coupling thermal, hydrological, and chemical (THC) processes to evaluate effects of introduced atmospheric oxygen on water chemistry, mineral precipitation/dissolution, porosity, and permeability changes associated with an ATES system at Stockton University (New Jersey, USA). The THC model builds on a Thermal-Hydrological-Mechanical (THM) model of the site that evaluated system failure owing to possible fracturing in the caprock or around the wellbore. The causes of the system failure are not known – potential causes include hydraulic fracturing owing to elevated pump pressures that took place, a flow pathway created by one of the boreholes, or a pre-existing natural hydrologic connection between the upper unconfined aquifer and the ATES aquifer, any of which could have led to oxygenated water entering the reservoir and causing the observed Fe-oxide fouling on well screens. The THC model is used to evaluate some of the hypotheses and observations regarding system failure owing to geochemical processes. The reactive-transport code TOUGHREACT V4 was used to model the THC processes during seasonal heating and cooling operations at the Stockton ATES site over 6 years of operation. In the THC simulations, the primary effects on geochemistry were observed when the injection water is saturated with atmospheric oxygen. Simulations show greater precipitation of goethite near the cold wells as compared to the warm wells. Although volume fractions of Fe-hydroxides were relatively small, the model was aimed at processes in the aquifer at the scale of meters and larger rather than at the scale of mm or cm (i.e., a well screen). Kaolinite is the dominant precipitating phase, also around the cold wells. Illite dissolves near the cold wells and precipitates near the warm wells. There is a net decrease in the porosity near the cold wells and increase near the warm wells, although a slight amount of thermal contraction near the cold wells and expansion near the warm wells is responsible for a significant proportion of the porosity change. Owing to the coarse discretization of the numerical grid near the wells (compared to the screen thickness) the magnitude of permeability changes at the wellbore are likely underestimated. The reactive transport model in this study can be used for characterization of aquifers, optimizing the operational parameters (temperature, pressure, pH etc.), and planning of mitigation strategies for ATES systems.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS1991

High resolution atmospheric and surface variability from combined MAMS and VAS radiances

Measuring of the variation of atmospheric and surface quantities such as moisture and stability at small scales is an important step to monitoring, understanding and forecasting mesoscale processes. For instance, moisture and stability products from the geostationary platform VISSR Atmospheric Sounder (VAS) exhibit interesting detail at the meso B (20-200 km) level (Chesters et al., 1986; Smith et al., 1985). However, variations at the meso C scale (2-20 km) and at the lower end of the meso B scale (20-100 km) suffer from the effects of noise. Noise can be greatly reduced by using a high resolution data collection system. The Multispectral Atmospheric Mapping Sensor (MAMS), with its 100-m resolution over a 36km swath, is well suited to provide high resolution mesoscale information about the atmosphere and surface of the earth. A more complete depiction of the atmospheric state at the smaller scales is possible through the combination of the high horizontal resolution MAMS data with the vertical sounding data of the VAS. This paper demonstrates a procedure for combining MAMS and VAS data in a physical retrieval to produce high resolution derived products of precipitable water (PW), lifted index (LI), and skin temperature (TS). The variability of these products is evaluated in a structure function analysis similar to that of Hillger and Vonder Haar (1979). Results for 19 June 1986 from the Cooperative Hunstville Meteorological Experiment (COHMEX) are presented.

Moeller, Christopher C.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Coherent structures in the universe and the adhesion model

An adhesion model is used to study the formation process of large-scale structures due to nonlinear gravitational growth of small initial fluctuations in the universe dominated by dark matter. The model is compared with 2D N-body simulations with initial power-law spectral indices n = -2, 0, +2, and various cutoffs. It is found that the adhesion model imitates the skeleton of the structure extremely well for the parameters of the initial spectra until the stage when the nonlinear scale reaches the correlation length R(phi) of the initial gravitational potential. The model explains the origin of large-scale coherent sructures, such as superpancakes and superfilaments, as a result of coherent motion of clumps due to large-scale inhomogeneities in the initial gravitational potential. It is found that clumps of mass identified in the N-body simulations correspond to several knots in the adhesion model, which influences the way of calculating the mass distribution function. The distribution functions of velocities and masses of clumps and areas of cells in the adhesion model satisfy self-similar scaling laws of the n = 2 model.

Kofman, Lev↗

NASA NTRS1999

Clouds in ECMWF's 30 KM Resolution Global Atmospheric Forecast Model (TL639)

Global models of the general circulation of the atmosphere resolve a wide range of length scales, and in particular cloud structures extend from planetary scales to the smallest scales resolvable, now down to 30 km in state-of-the-art models. Even the highest resolution models do not resolve small-scale cloud phenomena seen, for example, in Landsat and other high-resolution satellite images of clouds. Unresolved small-scale disturbances often grow into larger ones through non-linear processes that transfer energy upscale. Understanding upscale cascades is of crucial importance in predicting current weather, and in parameterizing cloud-radiative processes that control long term climate. Several movie animations provide examples of the temporal and spatial variation of cloud fields produced in 4-day runs of the forecast model at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, England, at particular times and locations of simultaneous measurement field campaigns. model resolution is approximately 30 km horizontally (triangular truncation TL639) with 31 vertical levels from surface to stratosphere. Timestep of the model is about 10 minutes, but animation frames are 3 hours apart, at timesteps when the radiation is computed. The animations were prepared from an archive of several 4-day runs at the highest available model resolution, and archived at ECMWF. Cloud, wind and temperature fields in an approximately 1000 km X 1000 km box were retrieved from the archive, then approximately 60 Mb Vis5d files were prepared with the help of Graeme Kelly of ECMWF, and were compressed into MPEG files each less than 3 Mb. We discuss the interaction of clouds and radiation in the model, and compare the variability of cloud liquid as a function of scale to that seen in cloud observations made in intensive field campaigns. Comparison of high-resolution global runs to cloud-resolving models, and to lower resolution climate models is leading to better understanding of the upscale cascade and suggesting new cloud-radiation parameterizations for climate models.

Cahalan, R. F.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Tectonic Effects of Climate Change on Venus

Venusian plains regions are globally crossed by closely spaced small-strain deformation features such as polygonal and gridded terrains, and wrinkle ridges. The observation that the spacing of these small-strain features is relatively globally uniform suggests that a global scale process is repsonsible for their formation.

Venus↗

NASA NTRS1991

Mixing transition and the cascade to small scales in a plane mixing layer

Direct numerical simulations of time-developing plane mixing layers have been performed using a variety of initial conditions. Up to two pairings of the dominant spanwise rollers have been simulated. When the flow is sufficiently three-dimensional, a pairing can cause the mixing layer to undergo a transition to small-scale turbulence. This small-scale transition is accompanied by increased mixing of a passive scalar, similar to observations of the mixing transition in experiments. As part of the transition process, thin vortex sheets are generated by vortex stretching and roll up in a two-dimensional mixing layer. This higher-order rollup is part of the cascade to small-scale turbulence. Estimates are obtained for the degree of three-dimensionality required for the pairing to initiate the transition.

Moser, R. D.↗