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At least 289 records · Page 16

Effective Materials Property Information Management for the 21st Century

This paper discusses key principles for the development of materials property information management software systems. There are growing needs for automated materials information management in various organizations. In part these are fueled by the demands for higher efficiency in material testing, product design and engineering analysis. But equally important, organizations are being driven by the need for consistency, quality and traceability of data, as well as control of access to sensitive information such as proprietary data. Further, the use of increasingly sophisticated nonlinear, anisotropic and multi-scale engineering analyses requires both processing of large volumes of test data for development of constitutive models and complex materials data input for Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) software. And finally, the globalization of economy often generates great needs for sharing a single "gold source" of materials information between members of global engineering teams in extended supply chains. Fortunately, material property management systems have kept pace with the growing user demands and evolved to versatile data management systems that can be customized to specific user needs. The more sophisticated of these provide facilities for: (i) data management functions such as access, version, and quality controls; (ii) a wide range of data import, export and analysis capabilities; (iii) data "pedigree" traceability mechanisms; (iv) data searching, reporting and viewing tools; and (v) access to the information via a wide range of interfaces. In this paper the important requirements for advanced material data management systems, future challenges and opportunities such as automated error checking, data quality characterization, identification of gaps in datasets, as well as functionalities and business models to fuel database growth and maintenance are discussed.

Ren, Weiju↗

Aircraft Conceptual Design Using Vehicle Sketch Pad

Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP) is a parametric geometry modeling tool that is intended for use in the conceptual design of aircraft. The intent of this software is to rapidly model aircraft configurations without expending the expertise and time that is typically required for modeling with traditional Computer Aided Design (CAD) packages. VSP accomplishes this by using parametrically defined components, such as a wing that is defined by span, area, sweep, taper ratio, thickness to cord, and so on. During this phase of frequent design builds, changes to the model can be rapidly visualized along with the internal volumetric layout. Using this geometry-based approach, parameters such as wetted areas and cord lengths can be easily extracted for rapid external performance analyses, such as a parasite drag buildup. At the completion of the conceptual design phase, VSP can export its geometry to higher fidelity tools. This geometry tool was developed by NASA and is freely available to U.S. companies and universities. It has become integral to conceptual design in the Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch (ASAB) here at NASA Langley Research Center and is currently being used at over 100 universities, aerospace companies, and other government agencies. This paper focuses on the use of VSP in recent NASA conceptual design studies to facilitate geometry-centered design methodology. Such a process is shown to promote greater levels of creativity, more rapid assessment of critical design issues, and improved ability to quickly interact with higher order analyses. A number of VSP vehicle model examples are compared to CAD-based conceptual design, from a designer perspective; comparisons are also made of the time and expertise required to build the geometry representations as well.

Fredericks, William J.↗

Database for Safety-Oriented Tracking of Chemicals

SafetyChem is a computer program that maintains a relational database for tracking chemicals and associated hazards at Johnson Space Center (JSC) by use of a Web-based graphical user interface. The SafetyChem database is accessible to authorized users via a JSC intranet. All new chemicals pass through a safety office, where information on hazards, required personal protective equipment (PPE), fire-protection warnings, and target organ effects (TOEs) is extracted from material safety data sheets (MSDSs) and recorded in the database. The database facilitates real-time management of inventory with attention to such issues as stability, shelf life, reduction of waste through transfer of unused chemicals to laboratories that need them, quantification of chemical wastes, and identification of chemicals for which disposal is required. Upon searching the database for a chemical, the user receives information on physical properties of the chemical, hazard warnings, required PPE, a link to the MSDS, and references to the applicable International Standards Organization (ISO) 9000 standard work instructions and the applicable job hazard analysis. Also, to reduce the labor hours needed to comply with reporting requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the data can be directly exported into the JSC hazardous- materials database.

Stump, Jacob↗

Streamlining Payload Integration

Payload integration onto space transport vehicles and the International Space Station (ISS) is a complex process. Yet, cargo transport is the sole reason for any space mission, be it for ferrying humans, science, or hardware. As the largest such effort in history, the ISS offers a wide variety of payload experience. However, for any payload to reach the Space Station under the current process, Payload Developers face a list of daunting tasks that go well beyond just designing the payload to the constraints of the transport vehicle and its stowage topology. Payload customers are required to prove their payload s functionality, structural integrity, and safe integration - including under less than nominal situations. They must also plan for or provide training, procedures, hardware labeling, ground support, and communications. In addition, they must deal with negotiating shared consumables, integrating software, obtaining video, and coordinating the return of data and hardware. All the while, they must meet export laws, launch schedules, budget limits, and the consensus of more than 12 panel and board reviews. Despite the cost and infrastructure overhead, payload proposals have increased. Just in the span from FY08 to FY09, the NASA Payload Space Station Support Office budget rose from $78M to $96M in attempt to manage the growing manifest, but the potential number of payloads still exceeds available Payload Integration Management manpower. The growth has also increased management difficulties due to the fact that payloads are more frequently added to a flight schedule late in the flow. The current standard ISS template for payload integration from concept to payload turn-over is 36 months, or 18 months if the payload already has a preliminary design. Customers are increasingly requiring a turn-around of 3 to 6-months to meet market needs. The following paper suggests options for streamlining the current payload integration process in order to meet customer schedule needs and reduce costs for both the integration support teams and the developers, without reducing quality or compromising safety. Issues for the key integration areas of planning, training, verification, and safety are presented in a Root-Cause Analysis study, with plausible solutions provided that involve technology and tools already available to the ISS community. Although based upon the ISS process, the payload integration techniques outlined herein also offer an integration template for any space transport endeavor.

Lufkin, Susan N.↗

NASA Tech Briefs, May 2010

Topics covered include: Instrument for Analysis of Greenland's Glacier Mills Cryogenic Moisture Apparatus; A Transportable Gravity Gradiometer Based on Atom Interferometry; Three Methods of Detection of Hydrazines; Crossed, Small-Deflection Energy Analyzer for Wind/Temperature Spectrometer; Wavefront Correction for Large, Flexible Antenna Reflector; Novel Micro Strip-to-Waveguide Feed Employing a Double-Y Junction; Thin-Film Ferro Electric-Coupled Microstripline Phase Shifters With Reduced Device Hysteresis; Two-Stage, 90-GHz, Low-Noise Amplifier; A 311-GHz Fundamental Oscillator Using InP HBT Technology; FPGA Coprocessor Design for an Onboard Multi-Angle Spectro-Polarimetric Imager; Serrating Nozzle Surfaces for Complete Transfer of Droplets; Turbomolecular Pumps for Holding Gases in Open Containers; Triaxial Swirl Injector Element for Liquid-Fueled Engines; Integrated Budget Office Toolbox; PLOT3D Export Tool for Tecplot; Math Description Engine Software Development Kit; Astronaut Office Scheduling System Software; ISS Solar Array Management; Probabilistic Structural Analysis Program; SPOT Program; Integrated Hybrid System Architecture for Risk Analysis; System for Packaging Planetary Samples for Return to Earth; Offset Compound Gear Drive; Low-Dead-Volume Inlet for Vacuum Chamber; Simple Check Valves for Microfluidic Devices; A Capillary-Based Static Phase Separator for Highly Variable Wetting Conditions; Gimballing Spacecraft Thruster; Finned Carbon-Carbon Heat Pipe with Potassium Working Fluid; Lightweight Heat Pipes Made from Magnesium; Ceramic Rail-Race Ball Bearings; Improved OTEC System for a Submarine Robot; Reflector Surface Error Compensation in Dual-Reflector Antennas; Enriched Storable Oxidizers for Rocket Engines; Planar Submillimeter-Wave Mixer Technology with Integrated Antenna; Widely Tunable Mode-Hop-Free External-Cavity Quantum Cascade Laser; Non-Geiger-Mode Single-Photon Avalanche Detector with Low Excess Noise; Using Whispering-Gallery-Mode Resonators for Refractometry; RF Device for Acquiring Images of the Human Body; Reactive Collision Avoidance Algorithm; Fast Solution in Sparse LDA for Binary Classification; Modeling Common-Sense Decisions in Artificial Intelligence; Graph-Based Path-Planning for Titan Balloons; Nanolaminate Membranes as Cylindrical Telescope Reflectors; Air-Sea Spray Airborne Radar Profiler Characterizes Energy Fluxes in Hurricanes; Large Telescope Segmented Primary Mirror Alignment; and Simplified Night Sky Display System.

Source record↗

Developing a Logistics Data Process for Support Equipment for NASA Ground Operations

The United States NASA Space Shuttle has long been considered an extremely capable yet relatively expensive rocket. A great part of the roughly US $500 million per launch expense was the support footprint: refurbishment and maintenance of the space shuttle system, together with the long list of resources required to support it, including personnel, tools, facilities, transport and support equipment. NASA determined to make its next rocket system with a smaller logistics footprint, and thereby more cost-effective and quicker turnaround. The logical solution was to adopt a standard Logistics Support Analysis (LSA) process based on GEIA-STD-0007 http://www.logisticsengineers.org/may09pres/GEIASTD0007DEXShortIntro.pdf which is the successor of MIL-STD-1388-2B widely used by U.S., NATO, and other world military services and industries. This approach is unprecedented at NASA: it is the first time a major program of programs, Project Constellation, is factoring logistics and supportability into design at many levels. This paper will focus on one of those levels NASA ground support equipment for the next generation of NASA rockets and on building a Logistics Support Analysis Record (LSAR) for developing and documenting a support solution and inventory of resources for. This LSAR is actually a standards-based database, containing analyses of the time and tools, personnel, facilities and support equipment required to assemble and integrate the stages and umbilicals of a rocket. This paper will cover building this database from scratch: including creating and importing a hierarchical bill of materials (BOM) from legacy data; identifying line-replaceable units (LRUs) of a given piece of equipment; analyzing reliability and maintainability of said LRUs; and therefore making an assessment back to design whether the support solution for a piece of equipment is too much work, i.e., too resource-intensive. If one must replace or inspect an LRU too much, perhaps a modification of the design of the equipment can make such operational effort unnecessary. Finally, this paper addresses processes of tying resources to a timeline of tasks performed in ground operations: this enables various overarching analyses, e.g., a summarization of all resources used for a given piece of equipment. Quality Control of data will also be discussed: importing and exporting data from product teams, including spreadsheets-todatabase or data exchange between databases.

Chakrabarti, Suman↗

Automated Derivation of Complex System Constraints from User Requirements

The Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) located at the Marshall Space Flight Center has the responsibility of integrating US payload science requirements for the International Space Station (ISS). All payload operations must request ISS system resources so that the resource usage will be included in the ISS on-board execution timelines. The scheduling of resources and building of the timeline is performed using the Consolidated Planning System (CPS). The ISS resources are quite complex due to the large number of components that must be accounted for. The planners at the POIC simplify the process for Payload Developers (PD) by providing the PDs with a application that has the basic functionality PDs need as well as list of simplified resources in the User Requirements Collection (URC) application. The planners maintained a mapping of the URC resources to the CPS resources. The process of manually converting PD's science requirements from a simplified representation to a more complex CPS representation is a time-consuming and tedious process. The goal is to provide a software solution to allow the planners to build a mapping of the complex CPS constraints to the basic URC constraints and automatically convert the PD's requirements into systems requirements during export to CPS.

Foshee, Mark↗

Automated Computer Access Request System

The Automated Computer Access Request (AutoCAR) system is a Web-based account provisioning application that replaces the time-consuming paper-based computer-access request process at Johnson Space Center (JSC). Auto- CAR combines rules-based and role-based functionality in one application to provide a centralized system that is easily and widely accessible. The system features a work-flow engine that facilitates request routing, a user registration directory containing contact information and user metadata, an access request submission and tracking process, and a system administrator account management component. This provides full, end-to-end disposition approval chain accountability from the moment a request is submitted. By blending both rules-based and rolebased functionality, AutoCAR has the flexibility to route requests based on a user s nationality, JSC affiliation status, and other export-control requirements, while ensuring a user s request is addressed by either a primary or backup approver. All user accounts that are tracked in AutoCAR are recorded and mapped to the native operating system schema on the target platform where user accounts reside. This allows for future extensibility for supporting creation, deletion, and account management directly on the target platforms by way of AutoCAR. The system s directory-based lookup and day-today change analysis of directory information determines personnel moves, deletions, and additions, and automatically notifies a user via e-mail to revalidate his/her account access as a result of such changes. AutoCAR is a Microsoft classic active server page (ASP) application hosted on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

Snook, Bryan E.↗

Remote Characterization of Biomass Measurements: Case Study of Mangrove Forests

Accurately quantifying forest biomass is of crucial importance for climate change studies. By quantifying the amount of above and below ground biomass and consequently carbon stored in forest ecosystems, we are able to derive estimates of carbon sequestration, emission and storage and help close the carbon budget. Mangrove forests, in addition to providing habitat and nursery grounds for over 1300 animal species, are also an important sink of biomass. Although they only constitute about 3% of the total forested area globally, their carbon storage capacity -- in forested biomass and soil carbon -- is greater than that of tropical forests (Lucas et al, 2007). In addition, the amount of mangrove carbon -- in the form of litter and leaves exported into offshore areas is immense, resulting in over 10% of the ocean's dissolved organic carbon originating from mangroves (Dittmar et al, 2006) The measurement of forest above ground biomass is carried out on two major scales: on the plot scale, biomass can be measured using field measurements through allometric equation derivation and measurements of forest plots. On the larger scale, the field data are used to calibrate remotely sensed data to obtain stand-wide or even regional estimates of biomass. Currently, biomass can be calculated using average stand biomass values and optical data, such as aerial photography or satellite images (Landsat, Modis, Ikonos, SPOT, etc.). More recent studies have concentrated on deriving forest biomass values using radar (JERS, SIR-C, SRTM, Airsar) and/or lidar (ICEsat/GLAS, LVIS) active remote sensing to retrieve more accurate and detailed measurements of forest biomass. The implementation of a generation of new active sensors (UAVSar, DesdynI, Alos/Palsar, TerraX) has prompted the development of new tecm'liques of biomass estimation that use the combination of multiple sensors and datasets, to quantify past, current and future biomass stocks. Focusing on mangrove forest biomass estimation, this book chapter has 3 main objectives: a) To describe in detail the field methodologies used to derive accurate estimates of biomass in mangrove forests b) To explain how mangrove forest biomass can be measured using several remote sensing techniques and datasets c) To give a detailed explanation of the measurement challenges and errors that arise in each estimate of forest biomass

Fatoyinbo, Temilola E.↗

Reducing NPR 7120.5D to Practice: Preparing for a Life-Cycle Review

In March 2007, NASA issued revised rules for space flight project management, NPR 7120.5D, 'NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements.' Central to the new rules was the construct of Key Decision Points, maturity gates that the project team must pass in order to continue development. In order that the KDP decision be fully informed, the NPR required, as entrance criteria for the gate, the generation and delivery of specified planning, technical, and cost/schedule documents (gate products) and a life-cycle review, the Preliminary Design Review. Building on JPL experience on the Prometheus and Juno projects, the team successfully organized for and conducted these reviews on an aggressive schedule. Key actions were taken to proactively interact with the SRB, produce high-quality gate products with stakeholder review, generate review presentation materials, and handle a myriad of supporting logistical functions. A review preparation team was established, including a Review Captain and leads for documentation, information systems, and logistics, and their roles, responsibilities and task assignments were identified. Aids were produced, including a detailed review preparation schedule and a comprehensive gate products production table. Institutional support was leveraged early and often. Implementation strategy reflected the needs of a nationally-distributed team, as well as applicable export control and IT security requirements. This paper gives a brief overview of the GRAIL mission and its project management challenges, provides a detailed description of project PMSR and PDR preparation and execution activities, including positive and negative lessons learned, and identifies recommendations for future NASA (and non-NASA) project teams.

NPR 7120.5D↗

Integrating Variances into an Analytical Database

For this project, I enrolled in numerous SATERN courses that taught the basics of database programming. These include: Basic Access 2007 Forms, Introduction to Database Systems, Overview of Database Design, and others. My main job was to create an analytical database that can handle many stored forms and make it easy to interpret and organize. Additionally, I helped improve an existing database and populate it with information. These databases were designed to be used with data from Safety Variances and DCR forms. The research consisted of analyzing the database and comparing the data to find out which entries were repeated the most. If an entry happened to be repeated several times in the database, that would mean that the rule or requirement targeted by that variance has been bypassed many times already and so the requirement may not really be needed, but rather should be changed to allow the variance's conditions permanently. This project did not only restrict itself to the design and development of the database system, but also worked on exporting the data from the database to a different format (e.g. Excel or Word) so it could be analyzed in a simpler fashion. Thanks to the change in format, the data was organized in a spreadsheet that made it possible to sort the data by categories or types and helped speed up searches. Once my work with the database was done, the records of variances could be arranged so that they were displayed in numerical order, or one could search for a specific document targeted by the variances and restrict the search to only include variances that modified a specific requirement. A great part that contributed to my learning was SATERN, NASA's resource for education. Thanks to the SATERN online courses I took over the summer, I was able to learn many new things about computers and databases and also go more in depth into topics I already knew about.

Sanchez, Carlos↗

The Kepler Science Operations Center Pipeline Framework Extensions

The Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) is responsible for several aspects of the Kepler Mission, including managing targets, generating on-board data compression tables, monitoring photometer health and status, processing the science data, and exporting the pipeline products to the mission archive. We describe how the generic pipeline framework software developed for Kepler is extended to achieve these goals, including pipeline configurations for processing science data and other support roles, and custom unit of work generators that control how the Kepler data are partitioned and distributed across the computing cluster. We describe the interface between the Java software that manages the retrieval and storage of the data for a given unit of work and the MATLAB algorithms that process these data. The data for each unit of work are packaged into a single file that contains everything needed by the science algorithms, allowing these files to be used to debug and evolve the algorithms offline.

Klaus, Todd C.↗

Presearch Data Conditioning in the Kepler Science Operations Center Pipeline

We describe the Presearch Data Conditioning (PDC) software component and its context in the Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) pipeline. The primary tasks of this component are to correct systematic and other errors, remove excess flux due to aperture crowding, and condition the raw flux light curves for over 160,000 long cadence (~thirty minute) and 512 short cadence (~one minute) targets across the focal plane array. Long cadence corrected flux light curves are subjected to a transiting planet search in a subsequent pipeline module. We discuss the science algorithms for long and short cadence PDC: identification and correction of unexplained (i.e., unrelated to known anomalies) discontinuities; systematic error correction; and excess flux removal. We discuss the propagation of uncertainties from raw to corrected flux. Finally, we present examples of raw and corrected flux time series for flight data to illustrate PDC performance. Corrected flux light curves produced by PDC are exported to the Multi-mission Archive at Space Telescope [Science Institute] (MAST) and will be made available to the general public in accordance with the NASA/Kepler data release policy.

Twicken, Joseph D.↗

Photometric Analysis in the Kepler Science Operations Center Pipeline

We describe the Photometric Analysis (PA) software component and its context in the Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) pipeline. The primary tasks of this module are to compute the photometric flux and photocenters (centroids) for over 160,000 long cadence (~thirty minute) and 512 short cadence (~one minute) stellar targets from the calibrated pixels in their respective apertures. We discuss the science algorithms for long and short cadence PA: cosmic ray cleaning; background estimation and removal; aperture photometry; and flux-weighted centroiding. We discuss the end-to-end propagation of uncertainties for the science algorithms. Finally, we present examples of photometric apertures, raw flux light curves, and centroid time series from Kepler flight data. PA light curves, centroid time series, and barycentric timestamp corrections are exported to the Multi-mission Archive at Space Telescope [Science Institute] (MAST) and are made available to the general public in accordance with the NASA/Kepler data release policy.

Twicken, Joseph D.↗

Configuring the Orion Guidance, Navigation, and Control Flight Software for Automated Sequencing

The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle is being designed with greater automation capabilities than any other crewed spacecraft in NASA s history. The Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) flight software architecture is designed to provide a flexible and evolvable framework that accommodates increasing levels of automation over time. Within the GN&C flight software, a data-driven approach is used to configure software. This approach allows data reconfiguration and updates to automated sequences without requiring recompilation of the software. Because of the great dependency of the automation and the flight software on the configuration data, the data management is a vital component of the processes for software certification, mission design, and flight operations. To enable the automated sequencing and data configuration of the GN&C subsystem on Orion, a desktop database configuration tool has been developed. The database tool allows the specification of the GN&C activity sequences, the automated transitions in the software, and the corresponding parameter reconfigurations. These aspects of the GN&C automation on Orion are all coordinated via data management, and the database tool provides the ability to test the automation capabilities during the development of the GN&C software. In addition to providing the infrastructure to manage the GN&C automation, the database tool has been designed with capabilities to import and export artifacts for simulation analysis and documentation purposes. Furthermore, the database configuration tool, currently used to manage simulation data, is envisioned to evolve into a mission planning tool for generating and testing GN&C software sequences and configurations. A key enabler of the GN&C automation design, the database tool allows both the creation and maintenance of the data artifacts, as well as serving the critical role of helping to manage, visualize, and understand the data-driven parameters both during software development and throughout the life of the Orion project.

Odegard, Ryan G.↗

Conversion of Component-Based Point Definition to VSP Model and Higher Order Meshing

Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP) has become a powerful conceptual and parametric geometry tool with numerous export capabilities for third-party analysis codes as well as robust surface meshing capabilities for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. However, a capability gap currently exists for reconstructing a fully parametric VSP model of a geometry generated by third-party software. A computer code called GEO2VSP has been developed to close this gap and to allow the integration of VSP into a closed-loop geometry design process with other third-party design tools. Furthermore, the automated CFD surface meshing capability of VSP are demonstrated for component-based point definition geometries in a conceptual analysis and design framework.

Ordaz, Irian↗

Mission and Implementation of an Affordable Lunar Return

We present an architecture that establishes the infrastructure for routine space travel by taking advantage of the Moon's resources, proximity and accessibility. We use robotic assets on the Moon that are teleoperated from Earth to prospect, test, demonstrate and produce water from lunar resources before human arrival. This plan is affordable, flexible and not tied to any specific launch vehicle solution. Individual surface pieces are small, permitting them to be deployed separately on small launchers or combined together on single large launchers. Schedule is our free variable; even under highly constrained budgets, the architecture permits this program to be continuously pursued using small, incremental, cumulative steps. The end stage is a fully functional, human-tended lunar outpost capable of producing 150 metric tonnes of water per year enough to export water from the Moon and create a transportation system that allows routine access to all of cislunar space. This cost-effective lunar architecture advances technology and builds a sustainable transportation infrastructure. By eliminating the need to launch everything from the surface of the Earth, we fundamentally change the paradigm of spaceflight.

Spudis, Paul↗

Satellite-Derived Distributions, Inventories and Fluxes of Dissolved and Particulate Organic Matter Along the Northeastern U.S. Continental Margin

Estuaries and the coastal ocean experience a high degree of variability in the composition and concentration of particulate and dissolved organic matter (DOM) as a consequence of riverine and estuarine fluxes of terrigenous DOM, sediments, detritus and nutrients into coastal waters and associated phytoplankton blooms. Our approach integrates biogeochemical measurements, optical properties and remote sensing to examine the distributions and inventories of organic carbon in the U.S. Middle Atlantic Bight and Gulf of Maine. Algorithms developed to retrieve colored DOM (CDOM), Dissolved (DOC) and Particulate Organic Carbon (POC) from NASA's MODIS-Aqua and SeaWiFS satellite sensors are applied to quantify the distributions and inventories of DOC and POC. Horizontal fluxes of DOC and POC from the continental margin to the open ocean are estimated from SeaWiFS and MODIS-Aqua distributions of DOC and POC and horizontal divergence fluxes obtained from the Northeastern North Atlantic ROMS model. SeaWiFS and MODIS imagery reveal the importance of estuarine outflow to the export of CDOM and DOC to the coastal ocean and a net community production of DOC on the shelf.

Mannino, A.↗