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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 289 records · Page 16

The F-12 series aircraft approach to design for control system reliability

The F-12 series aircraft control system design philosophy is reviewed as it pertains to functional reliability. The basic control system, i.e., cables, mixer, feel system, trim devices, and hydraulic systems are described and discussed. In addition, the implementation of the redundant stability augmentation system in the F-12 aircraft is described. Finally, the functional reliability record that has been achieved is presented.

Schenk, F. L.↗

Design Evaluation of High Reliability Lithium Batteries

Within one year, a lithium battery design can be qualified for device use through the application of accelerated discharge testing, calorimetry measurements, real time tests and other supplemental testing. Materials and corrosion testing verify that the battery components remain functional during expected battery life. By combining these various methods, a high reliability lithium battery can be manufactured for applications which require zero defect battery performance.

Buchman, R. C.↗

Design features and results from fatigue reliability research machines.

The design, fabrication, development, operation, calibration and results from reversed bending combined with steady torque fatigue research machines are presented. Fifteen-centimeter long, notched, SAE 4340 steel specimens are subjected to various combinations of these stresses and cycled to failure. Failure occurs when the crack in the notch passes through the specimen automatically shutting down the test machine. These cycles-to-failure data are statistically analyzed to develop a probabilistic S-N diagram. These diagrams have many uses; a rotating component design example given in the literature shows that minimum size and weight for a specified number of cycles and reliability can be calculated using these diagrams.

Lalli, V. R.↗

Probabilistic Design of a Plate-Like Wing to Meet Flutter and Strength Requirements

An approach is presented for carrying out reliability-based design of a metallic, plate-like wing to meet strength and flutter requirements that are given in terms of risk/reliability. The design problem is to determine the thickness distribution such that wing weight is a minimum and the probability of failure is less than a specified value. Failure is assumed to occur if either the flutter speed is less than a specified allowable or the stress caused by a pressure loading is greater than a specified allowable. Four uncertain quantities are considered: wing thickness, calculated flutter speed, allowable stress, and magnitude of a uniform pressure load. The reliability-based design optimization approach described herein starts with a design obtained using conventional deterministic design optimization with margins on the allowables. Reliability is calculated using Monte Carlo simulation with response surfaces that provide values of stresses and flutter speed. During the reliability-based design optimization, the response surfaces and move limits are coordinated to ensure accuracy of the response surfaces. Studies carried out in the paper show the relationship between reliability and weight and indicate that, for the design problem considered, increases in reliability can be obtained with modest increases in weight.

Stroud, W. Jefferson↗

Theory of reliable systems

The analysis and design of reliable systems are discussed. The attributes of system reliability studied are fault tolerance, diagnosability, and reconfigurability. Objectives of the study include: to determine properties of system structure that are conducive to a particular attribute; to determine methods for obtaining reliable realizations of a given system; and to determine how properties of system behavior relate to the complexity of fault tolerant realizations. A list of 34 references is included.

Meyer, J. F.↗

Design for Verification: Using Design Patterns to Build Reliable Systems

Components so far have been mainly used in commercial software development to reduce time to market. While some effort has been spent on formal aspects of components, most of this was done in the context of programming language or operating system framework integration. As a consequence, increased reliability of composed systems is mainly regarded as a side effect of a more rigid testing of pre-fabricated components. In contrast to this, Design for Verification (D4V) puts the focus on component specific property guarantees, which are used to design systems with high reliability requirements. D4V components are domain specific design pattern instances with well-defined property guarantees and usage rules, which are suitable for automatic verification. The guaranteed properties are explicitly used to select components according to key system requirements. The D4V hypothesis is that the same general architecture and design principles leading to good modularity, extensibility and complexity/functionality ratio can be adapted to overcome some of the limitations of conventional reliability assurance measures, such as too large a state space or too many execution paths.

Mehlitz, Peter C.↗

Reliability Sensitivity Analysis and Design Optimization of Composite Structures Based on Response Surface Methodology

This report discusses the development and application of two alternative strategies in the form of global and sequential local response surface (RS) techniques for the solution of reliability-based optimization (RBO) problems. The problem of a thin-walled composite circular cylinder under axial buckling instability is used as a demonstrative example. In this case, the global technique uses a single second-order RS model to estimate the axial buckling load over the entire feasible design space (FDS) whereas the local technique uses multiple first-order RS models with each applied to a small subregion of FDS. Alternative methods for the calculation of unknown coefficients in each RS model are explored prior to the solution of the optimization problem. The example RBO problem is formulated as a function of 23 uncorrelated random variables that include material properties, thickness and orientation angle of each ply, cylinder diameter and length, as well as the applied load. The mean values of the 8 ply thicknesses are treated as independent design variables. While the coefficients of variation of all random variables are held fixed, the standard deviations of ply thicknesses can vary during the optimization process as a result of changes in the design variables. The structural reliability analysis is based on the first-order reliability method with reliability index treated as the design constraint. In addition to the probabilistic sensitivity analysis of reliability index, the results of the RBO problem are presented for different combinations of cylinder length and diameter and laminate ply patterns. The two strategies are found to produce similar results in terms of accuracy with the sequential local RS technique having a considerably better computational efficiency.

Rais-Rohani, Masoud↗

Reliability approach to rotating-component design

A probabilistic methodology for designing rotating mechanical components using reliability to relate stress to strength is explained. The experimental test machines and data obtained for steel to verify this methodology are described. A sample mechanical rotating component design problem is solved by comparing a deterministic design method with the new design-by reliability approach. The new method shows that a smaller size and weight can be obtained for specified rotating shaft life and reliability, and uses the statistical distortion-energy theory with statistical fatigue diagrams for optimum shaft design. Statistical methods are presented for (1) determining strength distributions for steel experimentally, (2) determining a failure theory for stress variations in a rotating shaft subjected to reversed bending and steady torque, and (3) relating strength to stress by reliability.

Kececioglu, D. B.↗

High level design proof of a reliable computing platform

The main objectives are: to establish hardware/software platform for ultra-reliable computing; to use fault tolerant computer architecture; to use formal methods to prevent design and implementation errors; and to construct reliability model to quantify reliability estimate. The results show that: ultra-reliable control systems are hard to achieve; simple fault tolerant design is postulated; formal specification of design is constructed; and preliminary correctness proofs are obtained.

Divito, Ben L.↗

Digital risk analysis in nuclear engineering projects: Designing for safety, performance, reliability, and security

Cyber-informed engineering and security-by-design frameworks are important in promoting the need to identify cybersecurity concerns early in the systems engineering lifecycle so risks from adversarial cyber-attacks can be eliminated or reduced through engineering design practices. In addition to adversarial risk, risk in operational technology systems also includes non-adversarial and unintentional risk from other factors such as human performance errors, environmental conditions, design flaws, and device degradation or failure. This paper introduces a new concept for characterizing digital risk, both adversarial and non-adversarial, and provides the basis for initial research into a novel digital risk analysis approach focused on incorporating attack difficulty into a multi-attribute analysis technique using robust decision-making. This digital risk characterization is also used to frame a discussion on the challenges of competing objectives and competing stakeholder requirements in an integrated energy system project that incorporates a small modular reactor and industrial facility.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Structural control research and experiments at NASA/LaRC

The advances made in the area of structural dynamics and control using the flexible beam facility at the NASA Langley Research Center are surveyed. Spectral attention is given to the progress in adaptive control and reliability improvements using advanced control concepts. Both theoretical and experimental results are given to delineate the nature of the work being undertaken. With regard to adaptive control, emphasis is placed on parameter and system identification and on comparisons between competing on-line algorithms. In addition, results are presented for on-line modal control laws that are interfaced to a parameter identification scheme. This gives an on-line distributed adaptive control system. With regard to reliability, a design process is outlined that incorporates reliability over the design mission life.

Montgomery, R. C.↗

Reliability Assessment of a Robust Design Under Uncertainty for a 3-D Flexible Wing

The paper presents reliability assessment results for the robust designs under uncertainty of a 3-D flexible wing previously reported by the authors. Reliability assessments (additional optimization problems) of the active constraints at the various probabilistic robust design points are obtained and compared with the constraint values or target constraint probabilities specified in the robust design. In addition, reliability-based sensitivity derivatives with respect to design variable mean values are also obtained and shown to agree with finite difference values. These derivatives allow one to perform reliability based design without having to obtain second-order sensitivity derivatives. However, an inner-loop optimization problem must be solved for each active constraint to find the most probable point on that constraint failure surface.

Gumbert, Clyde R.↗

Interdisciplinary technology

The 'computational test-cell' will enable the incorporation of new methodologies, such as concurrent engineering and probabilistic methods, into the propulsion design process. This will provide the capability to conduct credible, interdisciplinary analyses of new propulsion concepts and designs. Probabilistic methods can be used as the basis for reliability-based design. Recently methods have been devised that provide the capability of simulating the performance of propulsion systems at several levels of resolution. These methods make it possible to quantify uncertainty and to establish confidence bounds for the calculated values. The introduction of reliability-based design methodology along with probabilistic analyses will provide a tool to reduce the design space for new systems and to reduce our dependence on hardware testing for proof-of-concept and system integration demonstrations. The resulting simulations will reduce the need for testing and identify potential operational problems early in the design process. This capability will make it possible to compute the expected performance, stability, reliability, and life of propulsion components, subsystems, and systems at design and off-design conditions, to bring life cycle cost trade-offs early into the design process and to determine optimum designs to satisfy specified mission requirements.

Nichols, Lester D.↗

Design of Composite Structures for Reliability and Damage Tolerance

A summary of research conducted during the first year is presented. The research objectives were sought by conducting two tasks: (1) investigation of probabilistic design techniques for reliability-based design of composite sandwich panels, and (2) examination of strain energy density failure criterion in conjunction with response surface methodology for global-local design of damage tolerant helicopter fuselage structures. This report primarily discusses the efforts surrounding the first task and provides a discussion of some preliminary work involving the second task.

Rais-Rohani, Masoud↗