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At least 235 records · Page 13

Space shuttle main engine: Certification for manned space flight

SSME requirements were identified in NASA approved documents. Design verification specifications (DVS) are used to define requirements and method of verification. Detailed and complete plans provide for verification of each requirement by lab tests, component tests, and engine tests. These tests are planned to expose problems early. The culmination of the development process is engine certification. The certification consists of two certification cycles on each of two engines. The certification cycle is made up of 10 tests and 5000 seconds.

Weesner, Ronald G.↗

USML-1 Glovebox experiments

This report covers the development of and results from three experiments that were flown in the Materials Science Glovebox on USML-1: Marangoni convection in Closed Containers (MCCC), Double Float Zone (DFZ), and Fiber Pulling in Microgravity (FPM). The Glovebox provided a convenient, low cost method for doing simple 'try and see' experiments that could test new concepts or elucidate microgravity phenomena. Since the Glovebox provided essentially one (or possibly two levels of confinement, many of the stringent verification and test requirements on the experiment apparatus could be relaxed and a streamlined test and verification plan for flight qualification could be implemented. Furthermore, the experiments were contained in their own carrying cases whose external configurations could be identified early in the integration sequence for stowage considerations while delivery of the actual experiment apparatus could be postponed until only a few months before flight. This minimized the time fluids must be contained and reduced the possibility of corrosive reactions that could ruin the experiment. In many respects, this exercise was as much about developing a simpler, cheaper way of doing crew-assisted science as it was about the actual scientific accomplishments of the individual experiments. The Marangoni Convection in Closed Containers experiment was designed to study the effects of a void space in a simulated Bridgman crystal growth configuration and to determine if surface tension driven convective flows that may result from thermal gradients along any free surfaces could affect the solidification process. The Fiber Pulling in Microgravity experiment sought to separate the role of gravity drainage from capillarity effects in the break-up of slender cylindrical liquid columns. The Stability of a Double Float Zone experiment explored the feasibility of a quasi-containerless process in which a solidifying material is suspended by two liquid bridges of its own melt.

Naumann, Robert J.↗

Precision Cleaning - Path to Premier

ITT Space Systems Division s new Precision Cleaning facility provides critical cleaning and packaging of aerospace flight hardware and optical payloads to meet customer performance requirements. The Precision Cleaning Path to Premier Project was a 2007 capital project and is a key element in the approved Premier Resource Management - Integrated Supply Chain Footprint Optimization Project. Formerly precision cleaning was located offsite in a leased building. A new facility equipped with modern precision cleaning equipment including advanced process analytical technology and improved capabilities was designed and built after outsourcing solutions were investigated and found lacking in ability to meet quality specifications and schedule needs. SSD cleans parts that can range in size from a single threaded fastener all the way up to large composite structures. Materials that can be processed include optics, composites, metals and various high performance coatings. We are required to provide verification to our customers that we have met their particulate and molecular cleanliness requirements and we have that analytical capability in this new facility. The new facility footprint is approximately half the size of the former leased operation and provides double the amount of throughput. Process improvements and new cleaning equipment are projected to increase 1st pass yield from 78% to 98% avoiding $300K+/yr in rework costs. Cost avoidance of $350K/yr will result from elimination of rent, IT services, transportation, and decreased utility costs. Savings due to reduced staff expected to net $4-500K/yr.

Mackler, Scott E.↗

Risk Assessment and Control through Countermeasure System Iplementation for Long-term Crew Exposure to Microgravity

Experience with the International Space Station (ISS) program demonstrates the degree to which engineering design and operational solutions must protect crewmembers from health risks due to long-term exposure to the microgravity environment. Risks to safety and health due to degradation in the microgravity environment include crew inability to complete emergency or nominal activities, increased risk of injury, and inability to complete safe return to the ground due to reduced strength or embrittled bones. These risks without controls slowly increase in probability for the length of the mission and become more significant for increasing mission durations. Countermeasures to microgravity include hardware systems that place a crewmember s body under elevated stress to produce an effect similar to daily exposure to gravity. The ISS countermeasure system is predominately composed of customized exercise machines. Historical treatment of microgravity countermeasure systems as medical research experiments unintentionally reduced the foreseen importance and therefore the capability of the systems to function in a long-term operational role. Long-term hazardous effects and steadily increasing operational risks due to non-functional countermeasure equipment require a more rigorous design approach and incorporation of redundancy into seemingly non- mission-critical hardware systems. Variations in the rate of health degradation and responsiveness to countermeasures among the crew population drastically increase the challenge for design requirements development and verification of the appropriate risk control strategy. The long-term nature of the hazards and severe limits on logistical re-supply mass, volume and frequency complicates assessment of hardware availability and verification of an adequate maintenance and sparing plan. Design achievement of medically defined performance requirements by microgravity countermeasure systems and incorporation of adequate failure tolerance significantly reduces these risks. Future implementation of on-site monitoring hardware for critical health parameters such as bone mineral density would allow greater responsiveness, efficiency, and optimized design of the countermeasures system.

Gernand, Jeremy M.↗

From Formal Requirements to Highly Assured Software for Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Operational requirements of safety-critical systems are often written in restricted specification logics. These restricted logics are amenable to automated analysis techniques such as model-checking, but are not rich enough to express complex requirements of unmanned systems. This short paper advocates for the use of expressive logics, such as higher-order logic, to specify the complex operational requirements and safety properties of unmanned systems. These rich logics are less amenable to automation and, hence, require the use of interactive theorem proving techniques. However, these logics support the formal verification of complex requirements such as those involving the physical environment. Moreover, these logics enable validation techniques that increase con dence in the correctness of numerically intensive software. These features result in highly-assured software that may be easier to certify. The feasibility of this approach is illustrated with examples drawn for NASA's unmanned aircraft systems.

Munoz, Cesar↗

Requirements for CFD validation experiments

A list of requirements for computational fluid dynamics verification is analyzed and evaluated. Requirements include: clearly defined physics and modeling, sensitivity studies, range, validation to real conditions, duplication of key experiments and computations, and combining experiments and computations. All results are presented in viewgraph format.

Bogdonoff, S. M.↗

From Livingstone to SMV: Formal Verification for Autonomous Spacecrafts

To fulfill the needs of its deep space exploration program, NASA is actively supporting research and development in autonomy software. However, the reliable and cost-effective development and validation of autonomy systems poses a tough challenge. Traditional scenario-based testing methods fall short because of the combinatorial explosion of possible situations to be analyzed, and formal verification techniques typically require a tedious, manual modelling by formal method experts. This paper presents the application of formal verification techniques in the development of autonomous controllers based on Livingstone, a model-based health-monitoring system that can detect and diagnose anomalies and suggest possible recovery actions. We present a translator that converts the models used by Livingstone into specifications that can be verified with the SMV model checker. The translation frees the Livingstone developer from the tedious conversion of his design to SMV, and isolates him from the technical details of the SMV program. We describe different aspects of the translation and briefly discuss its application to several NASA domains.

Pecheur, Charles↗

Hardware Development Process for Human Research Facility Applications

The simple goal of the Human Research Facility (HRF) is to conduct human research experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) astronauts during long-duration missions. This is accomplished by providing integration and operation of the necessary hardware and software capabilities. A typical hardware development flow consists of five stages: functional inputs and requirements definition, market research, design life cycle through hardware delivery, crew training, and mission support. The purpose of this presentation is to guide the audience through the early hardware development process: requirement definition through selecting a development path. Specific HRF equipment is used to illustrate the hardware development paths. The source of hardware requirements is the science community and HRF program. The HRF Science Working Group, consisting of SCientists from various medical disciplines, defined a basic set of equipment with functional requirements. This established the performance requirements of the hardware. HRF program requirements focus on making the hardware safe and operational in a space environment. This includes structural, thermal, human factors, and material requirements. Science and HRF program requirements are defined in a hardware requirements document which includes verification methods. Once the hardware is fabricated, requirements are verified by inspection, test, analysis, or demonstration. All data is compiled and reviewed to certify the hardware for flight. Obviously, the basis for all hardware development activities is requirement definition. Full and complete requirement definition is ideal prior to initiating the hardware development. However, this is generally not the case, but the hardware team typically has functional inputs as a guide. The first step is for engineers to conduct market research based on the functional inputs provided by scientists. CommerCially available products are evaluated against the science requirements as well as modifications needed to meet program requirements. Options are consolidated and the hardware development team reaches a hardware development decision point. Within budget and schedule constraints, the team must decide whether or not to complete the hardware as an in-house, subcontract with vendor, or commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) development. An in-house development indicates NASA personnel or a contractor builds the hardware at a NASA site. A subcontract development is completed off-site by a commercial company. A COTS item is a vendor product available by ordering a specific part number. The team evaluates the pros and cons of each development path. For example, in-bouse developments utilize existing corporate knowledge regarding bow to build equipment for use in space. However, technical expertise would be required to fully understand the medical equipment capabilities, such as for an ultrasound system. It may require additional time and funding to gain the expertise that commercially exists. The major benefit of subcontracting a hardware development is the product is delivered as an end-item and commercial expertise is utilized. On the other hand, NASA has limited control over schedule delays. The final option of COTS or modified COTS equipment is a compromise between in-house and subcontracts. A vendor product may exist that meets all functional requirements but req uires in-house modifications for successful operation in a space environment. The HRF utilizes equipment developed using all of the paths described: inhouse, subcontract, and modified COTS.

Bauer, Liz↗

A measurement system for large, complex software programs

This paper describes measurement systems required to forecast, measure, and control activities for large, complex software development and support programs. Initial software cost and quality analysis provides the foundation for meaningful management decisions as a project evolves. In modeling the cost and quality of software systems, the relationship between the functionality, quality, cost, and schedule of the product must be considered. This explicit relationship is dictated by the criticality of the software being developed. This balance between cost and quality is a viable software engineering trade-off throughout the life cycle. Therefore, the ability to accurately estimate the cost and quality of software systems is essential to providing reliable software on time and within budget. Software cost models relate the product error rate to the percent of the project labor that is required for independent verification and validation. The criticality of the software determines which cost model is used to estimate the labor required to develop the software. Software quality models yield an expected error discovery rate based on the software size, criticality, software development environment, and the level of competence of the project and developers with respect to the processes being employed.

Rone, Kyle Y.↗

Verifying performance requirements

Today, it is impossible to verify performance requirements on Ada software, except in a very approximate sense. There are several reasons for this difficulty, of which the main reason is the lack of use of information on the mapping of the program onto the target machine. An approach to a partial solution to the verification of performance requirements on Ada software is proposed, called the rule based verification approach. This approach is suitable when the target machine is well defined and when additional effort and expense are justified in order to guarantee that the performance requirements will be met by the final system.

Cross, Joseph↗

The Ten Lockheed Martin Cyber-Physical Challenges: Formalized, Analyzed, and Explained

Capturing and analyzing requirements of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) can be challenging, since CPS models typically involve time-varying and real-valued variables, physical system dynamics, or even adaptive behavior. MATLAB/Simulinkis a development and simulation framework that is widely used in industry to capture such systems. In this paper, we report on the application of NASA Ames tools to perform end-to-end analysis of the Ten Lockheed Martin Challenge Problems (LMCPS). LMCPS is a set of industrial Simulink model benchmarks and natural language requirements developed by domain experts. Our framework, which integrates the tools FRET and COCOSIM, is used to: 1) elicit, explain, and formalize the semantics of the given natural language requirements; 2) generate verification code and monitors that can be automatically attached to the Simulink models; 3) perform verification by using SMT-based model checkers. FRET and COCOSIM are open source, and can be used by other researchers and practitioners to replicate our case study. We provide a categorization of recurring patterns in the formalization of the requirements and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our automated verification approach.

Anastasia Mavridou↗

V. The X-15 flight research program in relation to the development of advanced military aircraft

The design, construction, and development of advanced military aircraft undoubtedly will involve the utilization of many relatively new concepts in several deafferent, but related, areas. In many cases, these new concepts will require new flight techniques or involve development problems inherent in the use of relatively unproven methods, materials, structures, systems, and configurations. Moreover, flight verification will be required of aircraft aerodynamics and flight behavior because of the usual uncertainties associated with predicted data. Solutions to these problems obviously would require flight testing involving extensive time and effort before the aircraft could become operationally acceptable. Upon the inception of the X-15 research airplane project, many new and far-reaching techniques and principles were studied and applied in the aircraft design and are currently being demonstrated and investigated. Because similar concepts are likely to be used in advanced military aircraft, the X-15 flight program will provide significant information, over a broad flight environment, pertinent to the development of these vehicles. This paper discusses the research objectives of the X-15 flight program, some of the flight aerodynamic characteristics currently being obtained, some development problems encountered, and the experience obtained with the advanced systems investigated.

Military aircraft↗

Control System Modeling for the Thirty Meter Telescope Primary Mirror

The Thirty Meter Telescope primary mirror is composed of 492 segments that are controlled to high precision in the presence of wind and vibration disturbances, despite the interaction with structural dynamics. The higher bandwidth and larger number of segments compared with the Keck telescopes requires greater attention to modeling to ensure success. We focus here on the development and validation of a suite of quasi-static and dynamic modeling tools required to support the design process, including robustness verification, performance estimation, and requirements flowdown. Models are used to predict the dynamic response due to wind and vibration disturbances, estimate achievable bandwidth in the presence of control-structure-interaction (CSI) and uncertainty in the interaction matrix, and simulate and analyze control algorithms and strategies, e.g. for control of focus-mode, and sensor calibration. Representative results illustrate TMT performance scaling with parameters, but the emphasis is on the modeling framework itself.

uncetainty↗

Accuracy requirements and benchmark experiments for CFD validation

The role of experiment in the development of Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for aerodynamic flow prediction is discussed. The CFD verification is a concept that depends on closely coordinated planning between computational and experimental disciplines. Because code applications are becoming more complex and their potential for design more feasible, it no longer suffices to use experimental data from surface or integral measurements alone to provide the required verification. Flow physics and modeling, flow field, and boundary condition measurements are emerging as critical data. Four types of experiments are introduced and examples given that meet the challenge of validation: flow physics experiments; flow modeling experiments; calibration experiments; and verification experiments. Measurement and accuracy requirements for each of these differ and are discussed. A comprehensive program of validation is described, some examples given, and it is concluded that the future prospects are encouraging.

Marvin, Joseph G.↗

Accuracy requirements and benchmark experiments for CFD validation

The role of experiment in the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for aerodynamic flow prediction is discussed. The CFD verification is a concept that depends on closely coordinated planning between computational and experimental disciplines. Because code applications are becoming more complex and their potential for design more feasible, it no longer suffices to use experimental data from surface or integral measurements alone to provide the required verification. Flow physics and modeling, flow field, and boundary condition measurements are emerging as critical data. Four types of experiments are introduced and examples are given that meet the challenge of validation: flow physics experiments; flow modeling experiments; calibration experiments; and verification experiments. Measurement and accuracy requirements for each of these differ and are discussed. A comprehensive program of validation is described, some examples given, and it is concluded that the future prospects are encouraging.

Marvin, Joseph G.↗

Synthesizing Certified Code

Code certification is a lightweight approach to demonstrate software quality on a formal level. Its basic idea is to require producers to provide formal proofs that their code satisfies certain quality properties. These proofs serve as certificates which can be checked independently. Since code certification uses the same underlying technology as program verification, it also requires many detailed annotations (e.g., loop invariants) to make the proofs possible. However, manually adding theses annotations to the code is time-consuming and error-prone. We address this problem by combining code certification with automatic program synthesis. We propose an approach to generate simultaneously, from a high-level specification, code and all annotations required to certify generated code. Here, we describe a certification extension of AUTOBAYES, a synthesis tool which automatically generates complex data analysis programs from compact specifications. AUTOBAYES contains sufficient high-level domain knowledge to generate detailed annotations. This allows us to use a general-purpose verification condition generator to produce a set of proof obligations in first-order logic. The obligations are then discharged using the automated theorem E-SETHEO. We demonstrate our approach by certifying operator safety for a generated iterative data classification program without manual annotation of the code.

Whalen, Michael↗

Cryogenic Thermal Distortion Performance Characterization for the JWST ISIM Structure

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) Structure is a precision optical metering structure for the JWST science instruments. Optomechanical performance requirements place stringent limits on the allowable thermal distortion of the metering structure between ambient and cryogenic operating temperature (~35 K). This paper focuses on thermal distortion testing and successful verification of performance requirements for the flight ISIM Structure. The ISIM Structure Cryoset Test was completed in Spring 2010 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the Space Environment Simulator Chamber. During the test, the ISIM Structure was thermal cycled twice between ambient and cryogenic (~35 K) temperatures. Photogrammetry was used to measure the Structure in the ambient and cryogenic states for each cycle to assess both cooldown thermal distortion and repeatability. This paper will provide details on the post-processing of the metrology datasets completed to compare measurements with performance requirements.

Johnston, John D.↗

Behavioral model simulation studies of an image compressor

The high initial cost of prototype Very Large Scaled Integrated (VLSI) parts requires that sufficient verifications be made to eliminate design errors before actually producing the prototypes. Logic simulation is the means by which the VLSI engineer can ensure that the design will function properly. The computer time required for logic simulation can be reduced through the use of behavioral models. Behavioral models, however, require time to write and verify and they do not always produce a dramatic speed up in logic simulation time. This paper presents a study of behavioral modeling aimed at discovering which circuit types benefit most from the use of behavioral models for logic simulation.

Madani, Navid↗