Rectangular-wind-tunnel blocking corrections using the velocity-ratio method
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
SEARCH · Search NASA
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
A fourth order box method is presented for calculating numerical solutions to parabolic, partial differential equations in two variables or ordinary differential equations. The method, which is the natural extension of the second order box scheme to fourth order, was demonstrated with application to the incompressible, laminar and turbulent, boundary layer equations. The efficiency of the present method is compared with two point and three point higher order methods, namely, the Keller box scheme with Richardson extrapolation, the method of deferred corrections, a three point spline method, and a modified finite element method. For equivalent accuracy, numerical results show the present method to be more efficient than higher order methods for both laminar and turbulent flows.
Radiative transfer theory (RT) for an atmosphere with a nonuniform surface is the basis for understanding and correcting for the atmospheric effect on remote sensing of surface properties. In the present work the theory is generalized and tested successfully against laboratory and field measurements. There is still a need to generalize the RT approximation for off-nadir directions and to take into account anisotropic reflectance at the surface. The reflectance at the surface. The adjacency effect results in a significant modification of spectral signatures of the surface, and therefore results in modification of classifications, of separability of field classes, and of spatial resolution. For example, the 30 m resolution of the Thematic Mapper is reduced to 100 m by a hazy atmosphere. The adjacency effect depends on several optical parameters of aerosols: optical thickness, depth of aerosol layer, scattering phase function, and absorption. Remote sensing in general depends on these parameter, not just adjacency effects, but they are not known well enough for making accurate atmospheric corrections. It is important to establish methods for estimating these parameters in order to develop correction methods for atmospheric effects. Such estimations can be based on climatological data, which are not available yet, correlations between the optical parameters and meteorological data, and the same satellite measurements of radiances that are used for estimating surface properties. Knowledge about the atmospheric parameters important for remote sensing is being enlarged with current measurements of them.
A computational technique has been developed to obtain final air data quantities for a sharp-nosed hypersonic vehicle. Pressure measurements from five flush pressure ports are the only input needed. Four of the ports are installed around the forebody circumference and the fifth is on the nose. The pressure model is based on Lees-modified Newtonian method and corrected by pressure data from computational fluid dynamics analysis. Although this approach is similar to that used for the blunt-nosed space shuttle, it is designed specifically for a sharp-nosed aircraft. The potential of this method has been demonstrated, especially in obtaining values for dynamic pressure and angle of attack.
While the frequency-dependent finite-difference time-domain, or (FD)2TD, method can correctly calculate EM propagation through media whose dielectric properties are frequency-dependent, more elaborate applications lead to greater (FD)2TD complexity. Z-transform theory is presently used to develop the mathematical bases of the (FD)2TD method, simultaneously obtaining a clearer formulation and allowing researchers to draw on the existing literature of systems analysis and signal-processing.
A measurement of the 20-micron thermal flux from Hyperion is reported, and the radius and surface geometric albedo of this outer satellite of Saturn are computed by the photometric/radiometric method. A corrected and normalized 20-micron thermal flux of 0.033 + or - 0.012 Jy is determined. A radius of 112 + or - 15 km and a surface geometric albedo of 0.47 + or - 0.11 are obtained by assuming values of unity for the phase integral, emissivity, and bolometric/visual geometric-albedo ratio. The sensitivity of the photometric/radiometric method to the assumed values of the parameters involved is discussed, and the results are compared with similar studies of Triton. It is concluded that neither Hyperion nor Triton appears to have a geometric albedo in the lower end of the distribution of small bodies in the solar system.
The present state of development of the experimental technique regarding the flow through cascades and several points to be specially observed in the design of cascade wind tunnels were discussed. The equations required for the evaluation of the momentum measurements in two dimensional flow through cascades were developed. Regarding the effect of the jet contraction due to the boundary layer along the side walls a simple method for correction was also given in order to obtain two dimensional flow characteristics. Also given were the equations for the evaluation of the pressure distribution measurements. Another contribution was made regarding the presentation of the test results in the form of nondimensional quantities. The results of systematic measurements of cascades with symmetrical aerofoil were reported, and the above suggested method was applied for the evaluation of the measurements.
A method for correcting measured coherence spectra for the effect of incoherent instrument noise has been developed and demonstrated. Coherence measurements are widely used in engineering and science to determine the extent to which two signals are alike. The signals may come from two different sources or from the same source at different times. The coherence of time-lagged signals from a single source is an excellent indication of the effective lifetime of the signal components as a function of their frequency. Unfortunately, incoherent instrument noise will bias the measurement to lower values and may lead the user of the data to false conclusions about the longevity of significant features. The new method may be used whenever both the signal and noise power spectra are known and the noise is incoherent both with the signal and with itself at the applicable time delays. It provides a corrected coherence spectrum given the measured coherence and power spectra. For powerlaw signal spectra and instrumental white noise, the correction formula takes a particularly simple and explicit form. Since many geophysical signals exhibit powerlaw behavior and most instrument noise spectra approach white noise, the simplified form should be widely applicable in meteorology, oceanography, geology, and planetary geophysics.
The initial roll-up of a tip vortex trailing from a model-scale, hovering rotor was measured using particle image velocimetry. The unique feature of the measurements was that a microscope was attached to the camera to allow much higher spatial resolution than hitherto possible. This also posed some unique challenges. In particular, the existing methodologies to correct for aperiodicity in the tip vortex locations could not be easily extended to the present measurements. The difficulty stemmed from the inability to accurately determine the vortex center, which is a prerequisite for the correction procedure. A new method is proposed for determining the vortex center, as well as the vortex core properties, using a least-squares fit approach. This approach has the obvious advantage that the properties are derived from not just a few points near the vortex core, but from a much larger area of flow measurements. Results clearly demonstrate the advantage in the form of reduced variation in the estimated core properties, and also the self-consistent results obtained using three different aperiodicity correction methods.
Data assimilation is being increasingly used to merge remotely sensed land surface variables such as soil moisture, snow and skin temperature with estimates from land models. Its success, however, depends on unbiased model predictions and unbiased observations. Here, a suite of continental-scale, synthetic soil moisture assimilation experiments is used to compare two approaches that address typical biases in soil moisture prior to data assimilation: (i) parameter estimation to calibrate the land model to the climatology of the soil moisture observations, and (ii) scaling of the observations to the model s soil moisture climatology. To enable this research, an optimization infrastructure was added to the NASA Land Information System (LIS) that includes gradient-based optimization methods and global, heuristic search algorithms. The land model calibration eliminates the bias but does not necessarily result in more realistic model parameters. Nevertheless, the experiments confirm that model calibration yields assimilation estimates of surface and root zone soil moisture that are as skillful as those obtained through scaling of the observations to the model s climatology. Analysis of innovation diagnostics underlines the importance of addressing bias in soil moisture assimilation and confirms that both approaches adequately address the issue.
The PI of this project was Jeff Scargle of NASA/Ames. Co-I's were Alma Connors of Eureka Scientific/Wellesley, and myself. Part of the work was subcontracted to Eureka Scientific via SAO, with Vinay Kashyap as PI. This project was originally assigned grant number NCC2-1206, and was later changed to NCC2-1350 for administrative reasons. The goal of the project was to obtain, derive, and develop statistical and data analysis tools that would be of use in the analyses of high-resolution, high-sensitivity data that are becoming available with new instruments. This is envisioned as a cross-disciplinary effort with a number of "collaborators" including some at SA0 (Aneta Siemiginowska, Peter Freeman) and at the Harvard Statistics department (David van Dyk, Rostislav Protassov, Xiao-li Meng, Epaminondas Sourlas, et al). We have developed a new tool to reliably measure the metallicities of thermal plasma. It is unfeasible to obtain high-resolution grating spectra for most stars, and one must make the best possible determination based on lower-resolution, CCD-type spectra. It has been noticed that most analyses of such spectra have resulted in measured metallicities that were significantly lower than when compared with analyses of high- resolution grating data where available (see, e.g., Brickhouse et al., 2000, ApJ 530,387). Such results have led to the proposal of the existence of so-called Metal Abundance Deficient, or "MAD" stars (e.g., Drake, J.J., 1996, Cool Stars 9, ASP Conf.Ser. 109, 203). We however find that much of these analyses may be systematically underestimating the metallicities, and using a newly developed method to correctly treat the low-counts regime at the high-energy tail of the stellar spectra (van Dyk et al. 2001, ApJ 548,224), have found that the metallicities of these stars are generally comparable to their photospheric values. The results were reported at the AAS (Sourlas, Yu, van Dyk, Kashyap, and Drake, 2000, BAAS 196, v32, #54.02), and at the conference on Statistical Challenges in Modem Astronomy (Sourlas, van Dyk, Kashyap, Drake, and Pease, 2003, SCMA 111, Eds. E.D.Feigelson, G.J.Babu, New York:Springer, p489-490). We also described the limitations of one of the most egregiously misused and misapplied statistical tests in astrophysical literature, the F-test for verifying model components (Protassov, van Dyk, Connors, Kashyap, and Siemiginowska, 2002, ApJ, 571,545). Indeed, a search through the ApJ archives turned up 170 papers in the 5 previous years that used the F-test explicitly in some form or the other, and with the vast majority of them not using it correctly! Indeed, looking at just 4 issues of the ApJ in 2001, we found 13 instances of its use, of which nine were demonstrably incorrect. Clearly, it is difficult to understate the importance of this issue. We also worked on speeding up Bayes Blocks and Sparse Bayes Blocks algorithms to make them more tractable for large searches. We also supported staistics students and postdocs in both explicit physics- model-based (spectra with tens of thousands of atomic lines) and "model-free" -- i.e. non-parametric or semi-parametric -- algorithms. Work on using more of the latter is just beginning; while using multi-scale methods for Poisson imaging has come to hition. In fact, "An Image Restoration Technique with Error Estimates", by D. Esch, A. Connors, M. Karovska, and D. van Dyk, was published by ApJ (Esch et a1.2004, ApJ, 610, 1213). The code has been delivered to M. Karovska for CXC; and is available for beta-testing upon request. The other large project we worked on was on the self-consistent modeling of logN-logs curves in the Poisson limit. logN-logs curves are a fundamental tool in the study of source populations, luminosity functions, and cosmological parameters. However, their determination is hampered by statistical effects such as the Eddington bias, incompleteness due to detection efficiency, faint source flux fluctuations, etc. We have develed a new and powerful method using the full Poisson machinery that allows us to model the logN-logs distribution of X-ray sources in a self-consistent manner. Because we properly account for all the above statistical effects, our modeling is valid over the full range of the data, and not just for strong sources, as is normally done. Using a Bayesian approach and modeling the fluxes with known functional forms such as simple or broken power-laws, and conditioning the expected photon counts on the fluxes, the background contamination, effective area, detector vignetting, and detection probability, we can delve deeply into the low counts regime and extend the usefulness of medium sensitivity surveys such as ChAMP by orders of magnitude. The built-in flexibility of the algorithm also allows a simultaneous analysis of multiple datasets. We have applied this analysis to a set a Chandra observations (Sourlas, Kashyap, Zezas, van Dyk, 2004, HEAD #8, #16.32)
In many applications, piezoelectric transducers are driven at AC voltage levels well beyond the level for which the material was nominally characterized. In this paper we describe an experimental setup that allows for the determination of the main transducer or resonator properties under large AC drive. A sinusoidal voltage from a waveform generator is amplified and applied across the transducer/resonator in series with a known high power resistor. The amplitude of applied voltage and the amplitude and the relative phase of the current through the resistor are monitored on a digital scope. The frequency of the applied signal is swept through resonance and the voltage/current signals are recorded. After corrections for the series resistance and parasitic elements the technique allows for the determination of the complex impedance spectra of the sample as a function of frequency. In addition, access to the current signal allows for the direct investigation of non-linear effects through the application of Fourier transform techniques on the current signal. Our results indicate that care is required when interpreting impedance data at high drive level due to the frequency dependence of the dissipated power. Although the transducer/resonator at a single frequency and after many cycles may reach thermal equilibrium, the spectra as a whole cannot be considered an isothermal measurement due to the temperature change with frequency. Methods to correct for this effect will be discussed. Results determined from resonators of both soft and hard PZT and a ultrasonic horn transducer are presented.
Using the N2-N2 interaction potential of van der Avoird et al. (1986) rotationally inelastic collision cross sections have been computed within the infinite order sudden (IOS) approximation, assuming the molecules are distinguishable. Methods for enforcing detailed balance and correcting for effects of inelasticity, which are ignored in the IOS approximation, are considered, including the energy corrected sudden (ECS) method. Suitably averaged cross sections are compared with experimental Raman Q-branch linewidths for temperatures from 295 to 1500 K and with recently measured room temperature state-to-state rates. Agreement is rather good, especially if ECS corrections are applied.
A computer method for obtaining a rational function representation of an acoustic spectrum and for correcting reflection effects is introduced. The functional representation provides a means of compact storage of data and the nucleus of the data analysis method. The method is applied to noise from a full-scale externally blown flap system with a quiet 6:1 bypass ratio turbofan engine and a three-flap wing section designed to simulate the take-off condition of a conceptual STOL aircraft.
Two degree of freedom spacecraft antenna pointing system evaluation based on geometry, attitude drift errors, and sensor error signal methods of correcting antenna position for attitude drift
Empirical method of correcting azimuthal orientation of Explorer 35 in lunar shadow
Method of correcting azimuthal orientation of Explorer 35 spacecraft while in lunar shadow
Coulomb interference corrections in pion-He scattering, discussing three specific formalisms