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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 37 records · Page 2

Evaluating the Long-Term Ecological Responses to Riparian Ecosystem Restoration at the Fort Benning, Georgia Military Installation

Riparian and instream restorations are commonly implemented to improve ecosystem condition. However, very few restoration activities are monitored for multiple years to assess long-term effectiveness. At the Department of Defense’s Fort Benning Military Installation (FBMI) in west-central Georgia, two experimental restoration projects (ephemeral drainage revitalization and instream habitat augmentation [i.e., coarse woody debris (CWD) additions]) were implemented ~14 years ago with the goal of reducing environmental impacts of military training activities. A SERDP project found that instream restoration improved some aspects of ecosystem function and community structure but not others. The objective of the current study was to re-evaluate the effect of these restoration practices on stream ecosystem processes ~14 years after implementation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Near Term Urban Air Mobility Use Cases in the Dallas Fort-Worth Area

NASA is conducting research on airspace management and flight procedures concepts for Urban Air Mobility (UAM). A series of collaborative meetings between NASA and Joby, informed by FAA and DFW airport subject matter experts, spanned several years and developed five use cases for operations in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (DFW) area. This report describes how UAM aircraft could navigate between vertiports within a region with a high volume of conventional air traffic in the neighboring areas and provides recommendations for introducing UAM operations at DFW. The objective of this effort is to evaluate the extent to which UAM flights are possible in the current National Airspace System and identify whether existing approaches to expanded operations will work for UAM.

Urban Air Mobility↗

A data-driven operational model for traffic at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport

Airports are on the front line of significant innovations, allowing the movement of more people and goods faster, cheaper, and with greater convenience. As air travel continues to grow, airports will face challenges in responding to increasing passenger vehicle traffic, which leads to lower operational efficiency, poor air quality, and security concerns. This paper evaluates methods for traffic demand forecasting combined with traffic microsimulation, which will allow airport operations staff to accurately predict traffic and congestion. Using two years of detailed data describing individual vehicle arrivals and departures, aircraft movements, and weather at Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport, we evaluate multiple prediction methods including the Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) family of models, traditional machine learning models, and DeepAR, a modern recurrent neural network (RNN). We find that these algorithms are able to capture the diurnal trends in the surface traffic, and all do very well when predicting the next 30 minutes of demand. Longer forecast horizons are moderately effective, demonstrating the challenge of this problem and highlighting promising techniques as well as potential areas for improvement. Traffic demand is not the only factor that contributes to terminal congestion, because temporary changes to the road network, such as a lane closure, can make benign traffic demand highly congested. Combining a demand forecast with a traffic microsimulation framework provides a complete picture of traffic and its consequences. The result is an operational intelligence platform for exploring policy changes, as well as infrastructure expansion and disruption scenarios. To demonstrate the value of this approach, we present results from a case study at DFW Airport assessing the impact of a policy change for vehicle routing in high demand scenarios. This framework can assist airports like DFW as they tackle daily operational challenges, as well as explore the integration of emerging technology and expansion of their services into long term plans.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Urban Effect on Precipitation and Deep Convective Systems Over Dallas‐Fort Worth

A range of multi-year observational data sets are used to characterize the hydroclimate of the Dallas Fort-Worth area (DFW) and to investigate the impact of urban land cover on daily accumulated precipitation, RADAR composite reflectivity (cREF), and cloud top height (CTH) during the warm season. Analyses of observational data indicate rainfall rates (RR) in a 45° annulus sector 50–100 km downwind of the city are enhanced relative to an upwind area of comparable size. Enhancement of mean precipitation intensity in this annulus sector is not observed on days with spatially averaged RR > 6 mm/day. Under some flow directions, the probability of cREF >30 dBZ, occurrence of hail, and the probability of CTH >10,000 geopotential meters are also enhanced up to 200 km downwind of DFW. Two deep convection events that passed over DFW are simulated with the Weather Research and Forecasting model using a range of microphysical schemes and evaluated using RADAR observations. Model configurations that exhibit the highest fidelity in these control simulations are used in a series of perturbation experiments where the areal extent of the city is varied between zero (replacement with grassland) and eight times its current size. These perturbation experiments indicate a non-linear response of Mesoscale Convective System properties to the urban areal extent and a very strong sensitivity to the microphysical scheme used. The impact on precipitation from the urban area, even when it is expanded to eight-times the current extent, is much less marked for deep convection with stronger synoptic forcing.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Evaluating the performance of WRF urban schemes and PBL schemes over Dallas-Fort Worth during a dry summer and a wet summer

This study evaluated the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model sensitivity to different planetary boundary layer (PBL) schemes (the YSU and MYJ schemes) and urban schemes including the bulk scheme (BULK), single-layer urban canopy model (UCM), multi-layer building environment parameterization (BEP) model, and multi-layer building energy model (BEM). Daily reinitialization simulations were conducted over Dallas-Fort Worth during a dry summer month (July 2011) and a wet summer month (July 2015) with weaker (stronger) daytime (nocturnal) UHI in 2011 than 2015. All urban schemes overestimated the urban daytime 2m temperature in both summers, but BEP and BEM still reproduced the daytime urban cool island in dry summer. All urban schemes reproduced the nocturnal urban heat island, with BEP producing the weakest one due to its unrealistic urban cooling. BULK and UCM overestimated the urban canopy wind speed, while BEP and BEM underestimated it. The urban schemes showed prominent impact on daytime PBL profiles. UCM+MYJ showed a superior performance than other configurations. The relatively large (small) aspect ratio between building height and road width in UCM (BEM) was responsible for the overprediction (underprediction) of urban canopy temperature. The relatively low (high) building height in UCM (BEM) was responsible for the overprediction (underprediction) of urban canopy wind speed. Improving urban schemes and providing realistic urban parameters were critical for improving urban canopy simulation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Shallow Crustal Structure and Site Response at Fort Greely, Alaska

Fort Greely, Alaska is located in proximity to numerous faults capable of generating large (MW > 6.5) and damaging earthquakes. However, little knowledge exists about the noise properties, shallow crustal structure and site response of the area. We address this by examining ambient noise conditions, Rayleigh wave group wavespeed dispersion, and site response measurements using new and existing seismic data from December 2020 – April 2021 for four sites along a north-south line—stations GREN, GRES, PS09, K24K operated by the Alaska Earthquake Center. We find that ambient noise levels are relatively high on base compared to other places in Central Alaska, especially above 1 Hz, while noise levels in the microseismic band are typical of the region. Short-period (0.5 – 2Hz) Rayleigh wave group wavespeeds appear to decrease with increasing sediment thickness and increase when going southward from GREN to K24K. The predominant site frequency related to sediment thickness is lowest beneath PS09 and highest beneath K24K. We use the group velocities and site response values to propose a rough north-south layered model for the region.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Measurement of the neutral composition of the lower thermosphere above Fort Churchill by rocket-borne mass spectrometer.

Measurement of the neutral atmospheric composition above Fort Churchill, Canada (59 N, 94 W), by mass spectrometers in two rocket flights at 0835 CST on Feb. 4 and 6, 1969. A quantitative measure for the extent of agreement with static diffusive equilibrium is introduced, and substantial agreement with profiles predicted when static diffusive equilibrium was assumed is found for all constituents including helium. A sensitive search for atomic nitrogen yielded upper limits of a few per cent for one flight and of 0.2% for the other.

Hickman, D. R.↗

Study of neutral composition of lower thermosphere at Fort Churchill.

On Feb. 4 and 6, 1969, and May 11, 1970, Aerobee rockets carrying neutral mass spectrometers were flown at Fort Churchill, Canada during conditions of low geomagnetic activity. As in earlier flights at White Sands, New Mexico, each rocket carried both 'open' and 'closed' ion source instruments. Vertical profiles of N2, O2, O, Ar, and He were measured. Results obtained were essentially the same as those observed at White Sands except that for the winter flights helium appeared to be in diffusive equilibrium.

Nier, A. O.↗

Generalized Du Fort-Frankel methods for parabolic initial boundary value problems

The Du Fort-Frankel difference scheme is generalized to difference operators of arbitrary high order accuracy in space and to arbitrary order of the parabolic differential operator. Spectral methods can also be used to approximate the spatial part of the differential operator. The scheme is explicit, and it is unconditionally stable for the initial value problem. Stable boundary conditions are given for two different fourth order accurate space approximations.

Gottlieb, D.↗

Echo 2 - Observations at Fort Churchill of a 4-keV peak in low-level electron precipitation

The Echo 2 rocket flight launched from Fort Churchill, Manitoba, offered the opportunity to observe high-latitude low-level electron precipitation during quiet magnetic conditions. Although no visual aurora was evident at the time of the flight, an auroral spectrum sharply peaked at a few keV was observed to have intensities from 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower than peaked spectra typically associated with bright auroral forms. There is a growing body of evidence that relates peaked electron spectra to discrete aurora. The Echo 2 observations show that whatever the mechanism for peaking the electron spectrum in and above discrete forms, it operates over a range of precipitation intensities covering nearly 3 orders of magnitude down to subvisual or near subvisual events.

Arnoldy, R. L.↗

Generalized Du Fort-Frankel methods for parabolic initial-boundary value problems

The Du Fort-Frankel difference scheme is generalized to difference operators of arbitrary high order accuracy in space and to arbitrary order of the parabolic differential operator. Spectral methods can also be used to approximate the spatial part of the differential operator. The scheme is explicit, and it is unconditionally stable for the initial value problem. Stable boundary conditions are given for two different fourth order accurate space approximations.

Gottlieb, D.↗

FORTE antenna element and release mechanism design

The Fast On-Orbit Recording of Transient Events (FORTE) satellite being built by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has as its most prominent feature a large deployable (11 m by 5 m) log periodic antenna to monitor emissions from electrical storms on the Earth. This paper describes the antenna and the design for the long elements and explains the dynamics of their deployment and the damping system employed. It also describes the unique paraffin-actuated reusable tie-down and release mechanism employed in the system.

Rohweller, David J.↗