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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

AIRNOISEUAM: An Urban Air Mobility Noise-Exposure Prediction Tool

A new software tool called AIRNOISEUAM is introduced that models the noise exposure of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations. Given relevant UAM aircraft performance models, mission profiles, and Noise-Power-Distance data, AIRNOISEUAM predicts the noise exposure footprint for receptors on the ground. The performance of AIRNOISEUAM using a Robinson R66 helicopter model and a six-passenger quadrotor model, and a diverse set of scenarios from NASA’s UAM human-in-the-loop simulations is compared to that of the industry-standard tool with the same inputs. The predicted noise exposure results from both tools are found to be nearly identical. AIRNOISEUAM offers a fast-time, flexible interface and modular design to facilitate the dynamic requirements of the aviation research community.

Urban Air Mobility↗

Coordination between Federated Scheduling and Conflict Resolution in UAM Operations

This work proposes a federated scheduling algorithm and explores two mechanisms for coordinating federated scheduling and conflict resolution functions - two core traffic management functions in urban air mobility operations. A federated scheduling algorithm is first developed, together with data that needs to be shared among schedulers. Two mechanisms for coordinating scheduling and conflict resolution functions are then introduced and studied as conflicts in high-density operations may not be completely resolved by conflict resolution function alone. The first coordination mechanism is constructed based on the arrival scheduler at the destination and another one utilizes the departure scheduler at the origin. Experiments and trade space studies are conducted to compare these two mechanisms using fast-time traffic simulations. Results show that both mechanisms perform well in coordinating scheduling and conflict resolution functions and helping resolve all potential conflicts. Experiments also show that with proper parameter selection, both mechanisms can achieve better efficiency (less delay) while maintaining zero losses of separation.

Federated scheduling↗

Coordination between Federated Scheduling and Conflict Resolution in UAM Operations

This work proposes a federated scheduling algorithm and explores two mechanisms for coordinating federated scheduling and conflict resolution functions - two core traffic management functions in urban air mobility operations. A federated scheduling algorithm is first developed, together with data that needs to be shared among schedulers. Two mechanisms for coordinating scheduling and conflict resolution functions are then introduced and studied as conflicts in high-density operations may not be completely resolved by conflict resolution function alone. The first coordination mechanism is constructed based on the arrival scheduler at the destination and another one utilizes the departure scheduler at the origin. Experiments and trade space studies are conducted to compare these two mechanisms using fast-time traffic simulations. Results show that both mechanisms perform well in coordinating scheduling and conflict resolution functions and helping resolve all potential conflicts. Experiments also show that with proper parameter selection, both mechanisms can achieve better efficiency (less delay) while maintaining zero losses of separation.

Federated scheduling↗

Air Traffic Management TestBed: Messaging Performance

The Air Traffic Management (ATM) TestBed is an air traffic management modeling and simulation platform and framework developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to help design, configure, integrate, run, and monitor air traffic simulations. The communication middleware, implemented in the TestBed framework layer, is a core feature for data message exchange. The feature provides an abstraction layer called Messaging Support to allow switching one middleware to another without a need to rebuild the simulation components. Messaging performance such as latencies, run durations, and throughputs are important factors. Low latencies can produce accurate results in high-fidelity and visualization models. Short run durations are preferred because better run efficiency can be achieved. High throughputs allow more runs to be executed concurrently. This technical memorandum studies and compares the messaging performance by running a full-day, fast-time simulation using three communication middleware as well as tweaking the default communication middleware settings used by the TestBed. Results indicate that the messaging performance could be improved by disabling either compression or persistence settings, while the run duration and throughput could be further improved by disabling both settings with a tradeoff of the message latencies increased by a factor of ten.

Chok Fung Lai↗

Validation of an Automated System for Arrival Traffic Management

The fuel-efficiencies of arrival flights that were managed by an automated system were compared to the fuel-efficiencies of arrival flights that were managed by air traffic controllers. It was infeasible to have the automated system control arrivals in real operations, so the comparison was accomplished by setting up a fast-time simulation where the automated system could manage arrivals with the same initial conditions and flight plans as those that operated in real operations during a selected comparison period and in the same background traffic. For this study, Newark Liberty International Airport was selected as the arrival airport because its high traffic load and constrained arrival procedures were expected to highlight fuel-efficiency benefits of an automated system. In the simulation, the automated system managed Newark arrivals, and the other flights (arrivals to other airports, departures, and overflights) composed the background traffic. To match the simulation and the real operations background traffic, the other flights flew in simulation the same trajectory that they flew in real operations during the comparison period. Fuel-efficiency was measured by calculating fuel burns of the arrival trajectories. The fuel-efficiencies of arrival trajectories produced in the simulation were compared with the estimated fuel-efficiencies of arrival trajectories recorded from real operations during the comparison period. Results showed that automation managed arrivals burned 346 lbs less fuel per flight on average than controller managed arrivals.

air traffic control↗

Validation of an Automated System for Arrival Traffic Management

The fuel-efficiencies of arrival flights that were managed by an automated system were compared to the fuel-efficiencies of arrival flights that were managed by air traffic controllers. It was infeasible to have the automated system control arrivals in real operations, so the comparison was accomplished by setting up a fast-time simulation where the automated system could manage arrivals with the same initial conditions and flight plans as those that operated in real operations during a selected comparison period and in the same background traffic. For this study, Newark Liberty International Airport was selected as the arrival airport because its high traffic load and constrained arrival procedures were expected to highlight fuel-efficiency benefits of an automated system. In the simulation, the automated system managed Newark arrivals, and the other flights (arrivals to other airports, departures, and overflights) composed the background traffic. To match the simulation and the real operations background traffic, the other flights flew in simulation the same trajectory that they flew in real operations during the comparison period. Fuel-efficiency was measured by calculating fuel burns of the arrival trajectories. The fuel-efficiencies of arrival trajectories produced in the simulation were compared with the estimated fuel-efficiencies of arrival trajectories recorded from real operations during the comparison period. Results showed that automation managed arrivals burned 346 lbs less fuel per flight on average than controller managed arrivals.

air traffic control↗

SimUAM: A Comprehensive Microsimulation Toolchain to Evaluate the Impact of Urban Air Mobility in Metropolitan Areas

Over the past several years, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has galvanized enthusiasm from investors and researchers, marrying expertise in aircraft design, transportation, logistics, artificial intelligence, battery chemistry, and broader policymaking. However, two significant questions remain unexplored: (1) What is the value of UAM in a region’s transportation network? and (2) How can UAM be effectively deployed to realize and maximize this value to all stakeholders, including riders and local economies? To adequately understand the value proposition of UAM for metropolitan areas, the authors develop a holistic multi-modal toolchain, SimUAM, to model and simulate UAM and its impacts on travel behavior. This toolchain has several components: (1) Microsimulation Analysis for Network Traffic Assignment (MANTA): A fast, high-fidelity regional-scale traffic microsimulator, (2) VertiSim: Agranular, discrete-event vertiport and pedestrian simulator, (3) Flexible Engine for Fast-time Evaluation of Flight Environments (Fe3): A high-fidelity, trajectory-based aerial microsimulation. SimUAM, rooted in granular, GPU-based microsimulation, models millions of trips and their movements in the street network and in the air, producing interpretable and actionable performance metrics for UAM designs and deployments. Once the ground-air interface is modeled, the authors find that the market for UAM decreases across all network designs relative to models with static assumptions about transfer times. However, significant improvements can be made to balance the demand and optimize the networks for transfer time, likely increasing the number of benefited trips. The modularity, extensibility, and speed of the platform will allow for rapid scenario planning and sensitivity analysis, effectively acting as a detailed performance assessment tool.

urban air mobility↗

Analysis of Conflicts among Urban Air Mobility Aircraft and with Traditional Aircraft

This paper provides an initial analysis of conflicts among Urban Air Mobility aircraft and with traditional aircraft based on fast-time simulations of 20 full-day scenarios. Several sets of separation minima with added performance-based separation are applied, and the resulting separation conflicts are classified. Safety metrics relevant to separation standards are evaluated. The results shed light on future performance-based separation standards and safety metrics for separation standards involving Urban Air Mobility aircraft.

urban air mobility↗

Porting OVERFLOW CFD Code to GPUs: To Hackathons and Beyond!

OVERFLOW is an overset, structured computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code written in Fortran which is widely used in the government, industry, and academia. Over the last several years the OVERFLOW developers have been working to port miniapps based on computationally expensive parts of OVERFLOW to run on GPUs, primarily using OpenACC. This effort started at our first hackathon in 2019 and since then the OVERFLOW team has attended two additional hackathons (virtually). These hackathon environments have provided a great place to collaborate with others and learn from experts. These learning experiences enabled porting two miniapps to run effectively on NVIDIA GPUs using OpenACC. The first miniapp focused on motifs found in the solver itself and the final ported version runs three times fast ona single V100 compared to a 40 core, dual-socket Intel Skylake node. The speed up in this solverminiapp required multiple design changes including increasing the amount of parallelism available and the amount of work performed in each kernel. The second miniapp focused on overset MPI communication, also saw significant speedups over the CPU implementation using a CUDA-aware MPI implementation through OpenACC. This presentation will discuss our experience at the hackathons, our process of porting the miniapps to run on the GPUs, and several lessons learned throughout.

OpenACC↗

Analysis of Conflicts among Urban Air Mobility Aircraft and with Traditional Aircraft

This paper provides an initial analysis of conflicts among Urban Air Mobility aircraft and with traditional aircraft based on fast-time simulations of 20 full-day scenarios. Several sets of separation minima with added performance-based separation are applied, and the resulting separation conflicts are classified. Safety metrics relevant to separation standards are evaluated. The results shed light on future performance-based separation standards and safety metrics for separation standards involving Urban Air Mobility aircraft.

urban air mobility↗

Sirius: Simulation and Evaluation of Tactical Conflict Management in an Urban Environment

This presentation provides an overview of the SIRIUS framework, updates to the ICAROUS core modules, and highlights the results of recent simulation and evaluation of tactical deconfliction in an urban environment. The SIRIUS simulation framework provides a fast time method for simulation a large number of aircraft in parallel. Updates to the ICAROUS core modules highlighted in the presentation include the evaluation of the encounter type geometry and changes to the resolution type selection based on the encounter type and following right of way (ROW) rules. The main objective of the simulation was to evaluate the use of strategic and tactical conflict management strategies using a set of simulated UAM scenarios.

Andrew Peters↗

Overview of the National Airspace System (NAS) Digital Twin Simulation Environment

The National Airspace System (NAS) Digital Twin is an environment for building and running diverse, realistic simulations of current or future airspace operations. The environment allows for many different types of simulations including both fast-time and real-time operating modes. Playback of historical or live NAS traffic can be combined with simulated aircraft to create a detailed, live, virtual, and constructive environment. These capabilities go together to create an environment that allows for development of concepts through the entire Technology Readiness Levels scale from initial concept to field evaluations. This extended abstract will discuss details of the software-foundations of the NAS Digital Twin environment. Then, several example simulations and analyses will be presented to illustrate the breadth and power of the tool.

airspace simulation, digital twin↗

DANTi: A Tool for Assistive Detect and Avoid Research

This paper presents DANTi, a research tool developed at NASA Langley Research Center to support the validation of Assistive Detect and Avoid (ADAA) requirements for General Aviation (GA). ADAA is a future on-board aircraft technology intended to augment a pilot’s see-and-avoid capability by helping them identify and resolve traffic conflicts earlier and more efficiently. DANTi includes a realistic Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) display and a fast-time simulation environment that can be fully customized to meet different research requirements. DANTi is currently used within NASA efforts such as the Air Mobility Pathfinders project on future air transportation systems and a joint NASA/FAA Laboratory Integrated Test Environment (NFLITE) on next-generation airspace operations in urban environments. These efforts investigate ADAA requirements in advanced urban air mobility settings where new aircraft types, new services, and new traffic patterns will be integrated in an overall crowded airspace.

Detect and Avoid↗

Overview of the National Airspace System (NAS) Digital Twin Simulation Environment

The National Airspace System (NAS) Digital Twin is an environment for building and running diverse, realistic simulations of current or future airspace operations. The environment allows for many different types of simulations including both fast-time and real-time operating modes. Playback of historical or live NAS traffic can be combined with simulated aircraft to create a detailed, live, virtual, and constructive environment. These capabilities go together to create an environment that allows for development of concepts through the entire Technology Readiness Levels scale from initial concept to field evaluations. This extended abstract will discuss details of the software-foundations of the NAS Digital Twin environment. Then, several example simulations and analyses will be presented to illustrate the breadth and power of the tool.

airspace simulation↗

Graphical User Interface for a Biasing Board for the PSEC6

The PSEC6 is an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed for a readout system for a large area picosecond photodetector (LAPPD). The PSEC6 is currently in fabrication and pending testing. The testing system for the PSEC5, the previous iteration of the ASIC, required expensive and non-portable equipment, because the ASIC needs twelve adjustable reference voltages. The new testing system consists of an low-cost, open-source, cross-platform graphical user interface (GUI), a digital system, and a biasing board. The digital system is the interface between the GUI and biasing board, and can be implemented on a microcontroller or field-programmable gate array (FPGA). The biasing board contains twelve digital-to-analog converters (DACs) that are configurable via the GUI, which gives users the ability to write voltage values to all or specific DACs. The GUI was developed in C on Linux using the widget library GTK4 and cross-compiled for Windows compatibility. I2C and SPI protocols were implemented on an Adafruit Feather ESP32-S3 microcontroller to write commands to the DACs and PSEC6. A hardware implementation of the I2C protocol is in development on an FPGA. Since LAPPDs will be used by the Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) at Fermilab, the PSEC6 testing system in this internship project can potentially benefit future neutrino research. The project is relevant to the Department of Energy’s microelectronics mission, because the PSEC6 is an ASIC that will handle fast time signals arriving from the detector for readout. It also provided experience with building a cross-platform user interface, practicing digital design and implementation in hardware description language (HDL), and using simulations to inform new design iterations.

Guerrero, Sasha Camila [North Central Coll.]↗

A measurement of the fast luminescent decay time of P-15 phosphor

During the development of a delayed coincidence apparatus for the study of atomic decays, the need arose for a bright, fast, and inexpensive light source with known decay characteristics. A sample of P-15 phosphor was obtained for use as a calibration light source. A short pulse duration was employed to preferentially excite the short lifetime components relative to the longer-lived ones. The computer analysis revealed that the raw MCA decay curve data could be described well by a sum of three exponentials with decay times of about 88 nsec, about 6.5 nsec, and 1.04 + or - 2%.

Sutton, J. F.↗

Fast, Real-Time, Animated Displays

Displays for Advanced Concepts Simulator (ACS) generated on Adage Raster Display System 3000 (RDS 3000). Improved programming techniques developed, and revisions to language implementation made. Both types of changes took better advantage of high-speed characteristics of RDS 3000 hardware. Increases in speed resulted from: utilization of parallel-processing capabilities of AGG4, and use of AGG4 to take advantage of certain high-speed characteristics of display memory not previously used. Result was fourfold increase in animation-update rate to 16 frames per second.

Kahlbaum, William M.↗