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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 307 records · Page 17

A miniature tactical Rb frequency standard

Work on an innovative design for miniature rubidium frequency standards has reached the pre-production demonstration stage at Litton Guidance and Control Systems. Pre-production units were built and tested under contract to the Rome Air Development Center of the U.S. Air Force Systems Command. The units, which are designed for use in tactical military applications, feature fast warm-up, low power consumption, and vibration insensitivity. The output stability under vibration is maintained without the need for external shock-mounts. The design objectives and test results are discussed.

Kwon, T. M.↗

A flightpath overshoot flying qualities metric for the landing task

An analysis was conducted of the attitude and flightpath angle response of configurations used in the Total In-Flight Simulator (TIFS) pitch-rate command systems program. The results show poor correlation between pilot ratings and attitude response and indicate that attitude was not a major influence in the results. A strong correlation was found to exist, however, between the amount of flightpath angle peak overshoot and the pilot ratings. This correlation is similar to the best correlations that have been obtained in recent closed-loop and time-domain analyses but has the advantage of greatly simplified implementation and interpretation.

Berry, D. T.↗

A flightpath overshoot flying qualities metric for the landing task

An analysis was conducted of the attitude and flightpath angle response of configurations used in the Total In-Flight Simulator (TIFS) pitch-rate command systems program. The resutls show poor correlation between pilot ratings and attitude response and indicate that attitude was not a major influence in the results. A strong correlation was found to exist, however, between the amount of fightpath angle peak overshoot and the pilot ratings. This correlation is similar to the best correlations that have been obtained in recent closed-loop and time-domain analyses but has the advantage of greatly simplified implementation and interpretation.

Berry, D. T.↗

Advanced composites for large Navy spacecraft

An overview is given of work conducted on contract for the Naval Sea Systems Command. The objective of this contract was to provide direction for the development of high modulus graphite reinforced metal matrix composites. These advanced materials can have a significant effect on the performance of a spacecraft before, during and after an evasive maneuver. The work conducted on this program was organized into seven technical tasks. Task 1 was development of a generic Navy spacecraft model. Finite element models of candidate structural designs were developed. In Task 2, the finite-element model(s) of the structure were used to conduct analytical assessments involving conventional materials, resin matrix composites and metal matrix composites (MMC). In Task 3 and 4, MMC material design, fabrication and evaluation was conducted. This consisted of generating material designs and developing a data base for a broad range of graphite reinforced MMC materials. All material was procured according to specifications which set material quality and material property standards. In Task 5, a set of evasive maneuvering requirements were derived and used in Task 6 to conduct analytical simulations. These analytical simulations used current SOA material properties and projected material properties to provide an indication of key payoffs for material development. In Task 7, a set of material development recommendations was generated.

Davis, William E.↗

Helicopter transmission testing at NASA Lewis Research Center

The helicopter has evolved into a highly valuable air mobile vehicle for both military and civilian needs. The helicopter transmission requires advanced studies to develop a technology base for future rotorcraft advances. A joint helicopter transmission research program between the NASA Lewis Research Center and the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command has existed since 1970. Program goals are to reduce weight and noise and to increase life and reliability. The current experimental activities at Lewis consist of full-scale helicopter transmission testing, a base effort in gearing technology, and a future effort in noise reduction technology. The experimental facilities at Lewis for helicopter transmission testing are described. A description of each of the rigs is presented along with some significant results and near-term plans.

Lewicki, David G.↗

Analyzing Commonality In A System

Cost decreased by use of fewer types of parts. System Commonality Analysis Tool (SCAT) computer program designed to aid managers and engineers in identifying common, potentially common, and unique components of system. Incorporates three major functions: program for creation and maintenance of data base, analysis of commonality, and such system utilities as host-operating-system commands and loading and unloading of data base. Produces reports tabulating maintenance, initial configurations, and expected total costs. Written in FORTRAN 77.

Pacheco, Alfred↗

Helicopter transmission research at NASA Lewis Research Center

A joint helicopter transmission research program between NASA Lewis Research Center and the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command has existed since 1970. Program goals are to reduce weight and noise and to increase life and reliability. Reviewed are significant advances in technology for gears and transmissions and the experimental facilities at NASA Lewis for helicopter transmission testing are described. A description of each of the rigs is presented along with some significant results from the experiments.

Coy, John J.↗

Design guide: Designing and building high voltage power supplies, volume 1

This report contains an accumulation of publications and analyses aimed at developing guidelines for improving both high voltage and low voltage power supplies for the U.S. Air Force systems command. It is the intent of the report to supply good design and manufacturing techniques for the packaging and the building of high quality, reliable, long-life power supplies. These data are based on the wealth of engineering practices established by design and manufacturing engineers.

William G Dunbar↗

Gear noise, vibration, and diagnostic studies at NASA Lewis Research Center

The NASA Lewis Research Center and the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command are involved in a joint research program to advance the technology of rotorcraft transmissions. This program consists of analytical as well as experimental efforts to achieve the overall goals of reducing weight, noise, and vibration, while increasing life and reliability. Recent analytical activities are highlighted in the areas of gear noise, vibration, and diagnostics performed in-house and through NASA and U.S. Army sponsored grants and contracts. These activities include studies of gear tooth profiles to reduce transmission error and vibration as well as gear housing and rotordynamic modeling to reduce structural vibration transmission and noise radiation, and basic research into current gear failure diagnostic methodologies. Results of these activities are presented along with an overview of near term research plans in the gear noise, vibration, and diagnostics area.

Zakrajsek, James J.↗

Evaluation of speech recognizers for use in advanced combat helicopter crew station research and development

The U.S. Army Crew Station Research and Development Facility uses vintage 1984 speech recognizers. An evaluation was performed of newer off-the-shelf speech recognition devices to determine whether newer technology performance and capabilities are substantially better than that of the Army's current speech recognizers. The Phonetic Discrimination (PD-100) Test was used to compare recognizer performance in two ambient noise conditions: quiet office and helicopter noise. Test tokens were spoken by males and females and in isolated-word and connected-work mode. Better overall recognition accuracy was obtained from the newer recognizers. Recognizer capabilities needed to support the development of human factors design requirements for speech command systems in advanced combat helicopters are listed.

Simpson, Carol A.↗

Artificial intelligence within AFSC

Information on artificial intelligence research in the Air Force Systems Command is given in viewgraph form. Specific research that is being conducted at the Rome Air Development Center, the Space Technology Center, the Human Resources Laboratory, the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, the Armamant Laboratory, and the Wright Research and Development Center is noted.

Gersh, Mark A.↗

Learning control for minimizing a quadratic cost during repetitions of a task

In many applications, control systems are asked to perform the same task repeatedly. Learning control laws have been developed over the last few years that allow the controller to improve its performance each repetition, and to converge to zero error in tracking a desired trajectory. This paper generates a new type of learning control law that learns to minimize a quadratic cost function for tracking. Besides being of interest in its own right, this objective alleviates the need to specify a desired trajectory that can actually be performed by the system. The approach used here is to adapt appropriate methods from numerical optimization theory in order to produce learning control algorithms that adjust the system command from repetition to repetition in order to converge to the quadratic cost optimal trajectory.

Longman, Richard W.↗

Probabilistic fatigue methodology for six nines reliability

Fleet readiness and flight safety strongly depend on the degree of reliability that can be designed into rotorcraft flight critical components. The current U.S. Army fatigue life specification for new rotorcraft is the so-called six nines reliability, or a probability of failure of one in a million. The progress of a round robin which was established by the American Helicopter Society (AHS) Subcommittee for Fatigue and Damage Tolerance is reviewed to investigate reliability-based fatigue methodology. The participants in this cooperative effort are in the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command (AVSCOM) and the rotorcraft industry. One phase of the joint activity examined fatigue reliability under uniquely defined conditions for which only one answer was correct. The other phases were set up to learn how the different industry methods in defining fatigue strength affected the mean fatigue life and reliability calculations. Hence, constant amplitude and spectrum fatigue test data were provided so that each participant could perform their standard fatigue life analysis. As a result of this round robin, the probabilistic logic which includes both fatigue strength and spectrum loading variability in developing a consistant reliability analysis was established. In this first study, the reliability analysis was limited to the linear cumulative damage approach. However, it is expected that superior fatigue life prediction methods will ultimately be developed through this open AHS forum. To that end, these preliminary results were useful in identifying some topics for additional study.

Everett, R. A., Jr.↗

Fourth Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 90)

The papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications and Research (SOAR) Symposium, hosted by the Air Force Space Technology Center and held at Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 26-28, 1990, are documented in these proceedings. Over 150 technical papers were presented at the Symposium, which was jointly sponsored by the Air Force and NASA Johnson Space Center. the technical areas included were: Automation and Robotics, Environmental Interactions, Human Factors, Intelligent Systems, and Life Sciences. NASA and Air Force programmatic overviews and panel sessions were also held in each technical area. These proceedings, along with the comments by technical area coordinators and session chairmen, will be used by the Space Operation Technology Subcommittee (SOTS) of the Air Force Systems Command and NASA Space Technology Interdependency Group (STIG) to assess the status of the technology, as well as the joint projects/activities in various technical areas. The Symposium proceedings include papers presented by experts from NASA, the Air Force, universities, and industries in various disciplines.

Life Sciences↗

Gear noise, vibration, and diagnostic studies at NASA Lewis Research Center

The NASA Lewis Research Center and the U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command are involved in a joint research program to advance the technology of rotorcraft transmissions. This program consists of analytical as well as experimental efforts to achieve the overall goals of reducing weight, noise, and vibration, while increasing life and reliability. Recent analytical activities are highlighted in the areas of gear noise, vibration, and diagnostics performed in-house and through NASA and U.S. Army sponsored grants and contracts. These activities include studies of gear tooth profiles to reduce transmission error and vibration as well as gear housing and rotordynamic modeling to reduce structural vibration and transmission and noise radiation, and basic research into current gear failure diagnostic methodologies. Results of these activities are presented along with an overview of near-term research plans in the gear noise, vibration, and diagnostics area.

Zakrajsek, J. J.↗

Linear quadratic servo control of a reusable rocket engine

A design method for a servo compensator is developed in the frequency domain using singular values. The method is applied to a reusable rocket engine. An intelligent control system for reusable rocket engines was proposed which includes a diagnostic system, a control system, and an intelligent coordinator which determines engine control strategies based on the identified failure modes. The method provides a means of generating various linear multivariable controllers capable of meeting performance and robustness specifications and accommodating failure modes identified by the diagnostic system. Command following with set point control is necessary for engine operation. A Kalman filter reconstructs the state while loop transfer recovery recovers the required degree of robustness while maintaining satisfactory rejection of sensor noise from the command error. The approach is applied to the design of a controller for a rocket engine satisfying performance constraints in the frequency domain. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the linear design on a nonlinear engine model over all power levels during mainstage operation.

Musgrave, Jeffrey L.↗

STS-41 Space Shuttle mission report

The STS-41 Space Shuttle Program Mission Report contains a summary of the vehicle subsystem activities on this thirty-sixth flight of the Space Shuttle and the eleventh flight of the Orbiter vehicle, Discovery (OV-103). In addition to the Discovery vehicle, the flight vehicle consisted of an External Tank (ET) (designated as ET-39/LWT-32), three Space Shuttle main engines (SSME's) (serial numbers 2011, 2031, and 2107), and two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB's), designated as BI-040. The primary objective of the STS-41 mission was to successfully deploy the Ulysses/inertial upper stage (IUS)/payload assist module (PAM-S) spacecraft. The secondary objectives were to perform all operations necessary to support the requirements of the Shuttle Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) Spectrometer, Solid Surface Combustion Experiment (SSCE), Space Life Sciences Training Program Chromosome and Plant Cell Division in Space (CHROMEX), Voice Command System (VCS), Physiological Systems Experiment (PSE), Radiation Monitoring Experiment - 3 (RME-3), Investigations into Polymer Membrane Processing (IPMP), Air Force Maui Optical Calibration Test (AMOS), and Intelsat Solar Array Coupon (ISAC) payloads. The sequence of events for this mission is shown in tabular form. Summarized are the significant problems that occurred in the Orbiter subsystems during the mission. The official problem tracking list is presented. In addition, each Orbiter problem is cited in the subsystem discussion.

Camp, David W.↗

An analytical and experimental investigation of flutter suppression via piezoelectric actuation

The objective of this research was to analytically and experimentally study the capabilities of adaptive material plate actuators for suppressing flutter. Piezoelectrics are materials which are characterized by their ability to produce voltage when subjected to a mechanical strain. The converse piezoelectric effect can be utilized to actuate a structure by applying a voltage. For this investigation, a two degree of freedom wind-tunnel model was designed, analyzed, and tested. The model consisted of a rigid wing and a flexible mount system which permitted translational and rotational degrees of freedom. Actuators, made of piezoelectric material were affixed to leaf springs on the mount system. Command signals, applied to the piezoelectric actuators, exerted control over the closed-loop damping and stiffness properties. A mathematical aeroservoelastic model was constructed using finite element and stiffness properties. A mathematical aeroservoelastic model was constructed using finite element methods, laminated plate theory, and aeroelastic analysis tools. A flutter suppression control law was designed, implemented on a digital control computer, and tested to conditions 20 percent above the passive flutter speed of the model. The experimental results represent the first time that adaptive materials have been used to actively suppress flutter. It demonstrates that small, carefully-placed actuating plates can be used effectively to control aeroelastic response.

Heeg, Jennifer↗