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All members of the Theoretical (T) Division Community, students, staff members, group leaders, division management and other interested individuals are invited to come and support the following student(s) during their Lightning Talk presentation. The Lightning Talk Series is a forum for T Division students to present information about their current projects.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Southern Methodist University Geothermal Laboratory (SMU), Eastman Chemical (Longview, TX), and TAS (Houston, TX) evaluated the feasibility of using geothermal heat to improve the performance of a natural-gas power plant in East Texas. The area of interest is the Eastman Chemical plant in Longview, Texas, which is on the northwestern margin of a geologic region known as the Sabine Uplift. The feasibility study focused on determining the potential for accessing a subsurface hot-water geothermal resource within a 10-km radius of the site to provide thermal energy for absorption chillers. Wells within a 20-km radius are included for broader geological comparison to determine the heat flow, temperature-at-depth, field porosity and permeability. The lithologies of most interest are the Lower Cretaceous Trinity Group and Upper Jurassic Cotton Valley Group. The deeper Cotton Valley formations are hotter (averaging 117 to 130°C), yet permeability and porosity are low. The shallower Trinity Group contains more variability in permeability and porosity and lower temperatures averaging about 98 to 117°C. The shallower formations are considered despite the lower temperature because of increased ability to produce larger volumes of water and extract enough heat before reinjection. The complete SMU analysis is available in the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS). Tapping such deep geothermal sources for direct heating (as opposed to power generation) is known as geothermal deep direct use (DDU). Geothermal DDU has potential across a wide swath of the United States but is underutilized due to challenging project economics associated with developing a deep geothermal resource for what are typically small-scale, variable-demand projects. This project examines the feasibility of geothermal energy integration in a natural-gas combined cycle power station in East Texas. The DDU resource is tapped to drive absorption chillers (24/7) for production of chilled water at 5-10°C (41-50°F). This chilled water is stored until needed, which allows for continuous operation with a relatively small-capacity geothermal/absorption chiller system. When conditions are favorable, the chilled water is dispatched to cool the air entering the compressor stage of a gas combustion turbine. This process, known as turbine inlet cooling (TIC), boosts power production during periods of high temperature and high-power demand. Such systems can enhance grid reliability and reduce the cost for peak-demand power. A simulation model of the power plant was developed in IPSEpro software and validated against operational data from the plant. This model allowed the team to estimate the additional power that could be produced by applying TIC under different operating and ambient conditions. Absorption chiller performance was estimated from vendor sources to determine the production rate of chilled water from the geothermal resource. Geothermal drilling and development costs were estimated using NREL's GEOPHIRES 2.0. The expected lower drilling costs in this region led to an estimated cost of geothermal heat of about $4/MMBtu (1.4 cents/kWh t ). The estimated cost for the absorption chillers and TIC hardware were obtained from literature sources and project partners. Hourly data were obtained for weather, natural gas and electricity prices, and plant operating state for 2017, which served as a representative year. NREL estimated the capital cost, operating cost, and additional electricity production and revenue for different combinations of geothermal capacity, chiller capacity, and water storage-tank size. The analysis drove toward smaller geothermal and chiller systems to reduce equipment cost. A relatively low-cost water storage tank accumulated the near-continuous chilled water output for later use when TIC was most valued.
All members of the Theoretical Division Community, students, staff members, group leaders, division management and other interested individuals are invited to come and support the various Lightning Talk presentations.
The production of recombinant spider silk proteins continues to be a key area of interest for a number of research groups. Several key obstacles exist in their production as well as in their formulation into useable products. The original reported method to solubilize recombinant spider silk proteins (rSSp) in an aqueous solution involved using microwaves to quickly generate heat and pressure inside of a sealed vial containing rSSp and water. Fibers produced from this system are remarkable in their mechanical ability and demonstrate the ability to be stretched and recover 100 times. The microwave method dissolves the rSSPs with dissolution time increasing with higher molecular weight constructs, increasing concentration of rSSPs, protein type, and salt concentration. It has proven successful in solvating a number of different rSSPs including native-like sequences (MaSp1, MaSp2, piriform, and aggregate) as well as chimeric sequences (FlAS) in varied concentrations that have been spun into fibers and formed into films, foams, sponges, gels, coatings, macro and micro spheres and adhesives. The system is effective but inherently unpredictable and difficult to control. Provided that the materials that can be generated from this method of dissolution are impressive, an alternative means of applying heat and pressure that is controllable and predictable has been developed. Results indicate that there are combinations of heat and pressure (135 °C and 140 psi) that result in maximal dissolution without degrading the recombinant MaSp2 protein tested, and that heat and pressure are the key elements to the method of dissolution.
Some current fracture theories are reviewed and a group of mechanics problems of practical interest relating to the elastic interaction between cracks and inclusions are identified and results summarized.
The Sirius Group is a mixed sequence of interbedded diamictite and mudstone of Pliocene age found at scattered locations along the length of the Transantarctic Mountains. Sirius Group rocks are usually considered tillites, but contain some very "un-tillite" elements. Within section and from site to site, Sirius Group rocks vary considerably in terms of texture and relative abundance of clast lithologies, recording a history that includes shifting influences of glacial, lacustrine, fluvial and wetland processes. The colorful heritage of the Sirius Group has generated a lot of interest due to its potential as a record of changes in the behavior of the East Antarctic icesheet during a climatologically interesting period.
The Jet Propulsion Laboraytory (JPL), Californian Institute of Technology, is challenged with no only providing an environment where engineers and scientists can exchange informaiton quickly and accurately, but also providing the public with the fruits of its exploration in a way that is both interesting and understandable to all age groups and professional arenas.
This presentation gives an overview of the work being done under the Airport Noise Technical Challenge portion of the Supersonics Project in the Fundamental Aeronautics Program. The objective of the Challenge is to provide technology (e.g. low noise nozzle concepts) and engineering tools required for a viable supersonic aircraft. To accomplish this we have activities divided into Prediction, Diagnostics, and Engineering elements. Each of the tasks reviewed here have potential applications to work being done at other flight regimes and other aircraft and are of interest to the Acoustics Technical Working Group.
Just 150 miles above us, the International Space Station (ISS) is orbiting. Each day, the astronauts on board perform a variety of activities from exercise, science experiments, and maintenance. Yet, many on the ground do not know about these daily activities. National Aeronautics Space Agency/ Johnson Space Center (NASA/JSC) innovation creation ISSLive! - an education project - is working to bridge this knowledge gap with traditional education channels such as schools, but also non-traditional channels with the non-technical everyday public. ISSLive! provides a website that seamlessly integrates planning and telemetry data, video feeds, 3D models, and iOS and android applications. Through the site, users are able to view astronauts daily schedules, in plain English alongside the original data. As an example, when an astronaut is working with a science experiment, a user will be able to read about the activity and for more detailed activities follow provided links to view more information all integrated into the same site. Live telemetry data from a predefined set can also be provided alongside the activities. For users to learn more, 3D models of the external and internal parts of the ISS are available, allowing users to explore the station and even select sensors, such as temperature, and view a real-time chart of the data. Even ground operations are modeled with a 3D mission control center, providing users information on the various flight control disciplines and showing live data that they would be monitoring. Some unique activities are also highlighted and have dedicated spaces to explore in more detail. Education is the focus of ISSLive!, even from the beginning when university students participated in the development process as part of their master s projects. Focus groups at a Houston school showed interest in the project and excitement towards including ISSLive! in their classroom. Through this inclusion, students' knowledge can be assessed with projects, oral presentations, and other assignments. For the public citizens outside of the traditional education system, ISSLive! provides a single, interactive, and engaging experience to learn about the ISS and its role in space exploration, international collaboration, and science. While traditional students are using ISSLive! in the classroom, their parents, grandparents, and friends are using it at home. ISSLive! truly brings the daily operations of the ISS into the daily lives of the public from every generation.
Just 200 miles above us, the International Space Station (ISS) is orbiting. Each day, the astronauts on board perform a variety of activities from exercise, science experiments, and maintenance. Yet, many on the ground don?t know about these daily activities. ISSLive! - an education project - is working to bridge this knowledge gap with traditional education channels such as schools, but also non-traditional channels with the non-technical everyday public. ISSLive! provides a website that seamlessly integrates planning and telemetry data, video feeds, 3D models, and iOS and android applications. Through the site, users are able to view astronauts? daily schedules, in plain English alongside the original data. As an example, when an astronaut is working with a science experiment, a user will be able to read about the activity and for more detailed activities follow provided links to view more information -- all integrated into the same site. Live telemetry data from a predefined set can also be provided alongside the activities. For users to learn more, 3D models of the external and internal parts of the ISS are available, allowing users to explore the station and even select sensors, such as temperature, and view a real-time chart of the data. Even ground operations are modelled with a 3D mission control center, providing users information on the various flight control disciplines and showing live data that they would be monitoring. Some unique activities are also highlighted, and have dedicated spaces to explore in more detail. Education is the focus of ISSLive!, even from the beginning when university students participated in the development process as part of their master?s projects. Focus groups at a Houston school showed interest in the project, and excitement towards including ISSLive! in their classroom. Through this inclusion, student?s knowledge can be assessed with projects, oral presentations, and other assignments. For the public citizens outside of the traditional education system, ISSLive! provides a single, interactive, and engaging experience to learn about the ISS and its role in space exploration, international collaboration, and science. While traditional students are using ISSLive! in the classroom, their parents, grandparents, and friends are using it at home. ISSLive! truly brings the daily operations of the ISS into the daily lives of the public from every generation.
Following the approval of the ESA ISS Exploitation Declaration for the ISS lifetime at the ESA Council Meeting in March 2011, ESA decided to partially offset the European obligations deriving from the extension of the ISS Programme until end 2020 with different means than ATVs, following the ATV-5 mission foreseen in mid 2014. The envisioned approach is based on a barter element(s) that would generate cost avoidance on the NASA side. NASA and ESA considered a number of Barter options, and concluded that the provision by ESA of the Service Module for the NASA Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was the barter with the most interest. A joint ESA - NASA working group was established to assess the feasibility of Europe developing this Module based on ATV heritage. The working group was supported by European and US industry namely Astrium, TAS-I and Lockheed-Martin. This paper gives an overview of the results of the on-going study as well as its perspective utilisation for the global space exploration endeavour.
In March 2011, NASA and ESA made a decision to partially offset the European obligations deriving from the extension of the ISS Program until the end of 2020 with different means than ATVs, following the ATV-5 mission foreseen in mid-2014. NASA and ESA considered a number of barter options, and concluded that the provision by ESA of the Service Module and Spacecraft Adaptor for the NASA Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was the barter element with the most interest. A joint ESA - NASA working group was established to assess the feasibility of Europe developing this Module based on ATV heritage. The working group was supported by European and US industry namely Astrium, TAS-I and Lockheed-Martin. This paper gives an overview of the results of the on-going study as well as its projected utilization for the global space exploration endeavour.
Experience has shown that the determination of the take-off and. landing characteristics of airplanes requires specialized, equipment of a high degree of precision and reliability and demands great care in the evaluation and interpretation of data. It is believed, therefore, that a description of the apparatus and methods that have been developed by the NACA for these measurements might be of considerable interest, particularly to flight-test groups that have had little experience with landing and. take-off measurements. The basic principles and essential details of the Committee's equipment are described, the methods of utilizing the apparatus and of reducing the data are explained, and sample test results are presented.
Xenolithic clasts are often found in a wide variety of meteorite groups. Some ordinary chondrite clasts are interesting since these clasts might have originated from Ceres which shares crossing orbits with a possible ordinary chondrite parent body, Hebe. The Zag meteorite contains a dark clast dominated by saponite, serpentine, carbonates, sulfides, magnetite, minor olivine and pyroxene, which is consistent with formation on a large, carbonaceous, aqueously active body, e.g., Ceres. Abundant large C-rich grains up to 20 microns were found in the Zag clast as well. Such large C-rich grains are unique among any other meteorites in our knowledge, and will provide important clues to decipher the origin of the clast and accretion history. C-rich grains were selected in the Zag dark clast using SEM and approximately 100 nm-thick sections were prepared using a focused ion beam (FIB) at NASA-JSC. The sections were analyzed using the scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM) on beamline 5.3.2.2 at Advanced Light Source, LBNL, and BL-13A at the Photon Factory, KEK. Subsequently, the FIB section was analyzed for H, C and N isotopic compositions using a CAMECA NanoSIMS 50L ion microprobe at Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research, JAMSTEC
A methodology is presented for 'black box' nuclear data uncertainty propagation in a lattice physics code using stochastic sampling. The methodology has 4 components: i) processing nuclear data variance/covariance matrices including converting the native group structure to a group structure 'compatible' with the lattice physics code, ii) generating (relative) random samples of nuclear data, iii) perturbing the lattice physics code nuclear data according to the random samples, and iv) analyzing the distribution of outputs to estimate the uncertainty. The scheme is described as implemented at PSI, in a modified version of the lattice physics code CASMO-5M, including all relevant practical details. Uncertainty results are presented for a BWR pin-cell at hot zero power conditions and a PWR assembly at hot full power conditions with depletion. Results are presented for uncertainties in eigenvalue, 1-group microscopic cross sections, 2-group macroscopic cross sections, and isotopics. Interesting behavior is observed with burnup, including a minimum uncertainty due to the presence of fertile U-238 and a global effect described as 'synergy', observed when comparing the uncertainty resulting from simultaneous and one-at-a-time variations of nuclear data. (authors)
Background: In patients with right dominant coronary circulation, the right ventricular (RV) myocardium and the inferior region of the left ventricular (LV) myocardium share a common source of blood flow. We hypothesized that stress/rest SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) could detect reversible perfusion defects in the RV in some patients with LV inferior wall perfusion abnormalities. Material and Methods: We identified 2 groups of patients with LV inferior wall perfusion defects (with or without defects in other regions of LV myocardium) from our database. Patients in group 1 (n = 17) had reversible perfusion defects in the RV free wall by visual analysis, while patients in group 2 (n = 17) did not. The images were processed with filtered back projection and, separately, with iterative reconstruction. The images were then re-processed using an automated quantitative software that is specifically designed to include the RV in the region of interest. Results: There were 76% men in group 1 and 94% in group 2 (P <0.05). The mean age was 65±20 in group 1 vs. 63±18 years in group 2 (P < 0.05). The stress type was exercise in 30% in group 1 and 35% in group 2, with the remaining patients studied with pharmacological stress testing (P = NS). The presence of RV reversible perfusion defects using filtered back projection was more evident in 13 patients (75%), while it was better seen with iterative reconstruction in 4 patients (25%). By automated analysis, the RV reversible perfusion defect size was 19 ± 14% of RV myocardium. Conclusion: This proof-of-principle study demonstrates that reversible RV perfusion defects suggestive of ischemia can be detected by SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging in some patients with LV inferior ischemia by visual analysis and can be quantitated by automated programs. Further studies on the diagnostic and prognostic relevance of assessing RV ischemia on SPECT MPI are needed.
Abstract not provided.
Reynolds number effects are a key development risk for blended wing body aircraft, particularly at high lift take-off and landing conditions. The full scale aerodynamics of these configurations are thought not to be well represented in industry standard low Reynolds number test facilities and the capability to predict Reynolds number effects using computational fluid dynamics or otherwise is not proven. The NATO AVT-298 research task group was established to investigate these issues and this paper sets out the background, motivations and the collaborative approach as well as the development of a new research configuration to serve as a focus for the research. The ‘SWiFT’ configuration, was developed to exhibit flow physics of interest to the AVT-298 research task group and to be suitable for an experimental campaign. The group collaboratively developed the research configuration to be relevant for related blended-wing-body aircraft programmes using computational fluid dynamics and wing design methods and considering the practicalities of testing. This research targets an improvement in our capability to design, optimise and mature future blended wing body aircraft.