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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

The evolution of Ertel's potential vorticity during stratospheric sudden warmings

In the winter stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere, the disruption of the westerly vortex and associated warming of polar latitudes is a well known phenomenon. It has become apparent that some important dynamical processes in the stratosphere are highly nonlinear and are best thought of locally rather than in terms of the interaction between the zonal-mean flow and harmonic waves around latitude circles. The importance of nonlinear processes was suggested by McIntyre and Palmer (1983, 1984) who used isentropic maps of Ertel's Potential Vorticity to show that during disturbed episodes material lines may become strongly and irreversibly deformed in certain places. They adopted the term planetary wave breaking to describe this process. Isentropic maps of Q are used to follow the evolution of a Canadian warming in November - December 1981 and a particularly strong warming in January 1982. The advection of Q over large distances on isentropic surfaces was a striking feature of the flow during each event. This could be identified because of our ability to follow the movement of material lines due to the approximate conservation of Q over several days. The advection of Q was a nonlinear process because its changing distribution affected the advecting wind field. The Canadian warming did not lead to a permanent change in the structure of the westerly vortex, as defined by the coarse-grain field of Q, whereas the January event was accompanied by a substantial loss of resolved Q which was never fully recovered.

Fairlie, T. D. A.↗

Fuzzy self-learning control for magnetic servo system

It is known that an effective control system is the key condition for successful implementation of high-performance magnetic servo systems. Major issues to design such control systems are nonlinearity; unmodeled dynamics, such as secondary effects for copper resistance, stray fields, and saturation; and that disturbance rejection for the load effect reacts directly on the servo system without transmission elements. One typical approach to design control systems under these conditions is a special type of nonlinear feedback called gain scheduling. It accommodates linear regulators whose parameters are changed as a function of operating conditions in a preprogrammed way. In this paper, an on-line learning fuzzy control strategy is proposed. To inherit the wealth of linear control design, the relations between linear feedback and fuzzy logic controllers have been established. The exercise of engineering axioms of linear control design is thus transformed into tuning of appropriate fuzzy parameters. Furthermore, fuzzy logic control brings the domain of candidate control laws from linear into nonlinear, and brings new prospects into design of the local controllers. On the other hand, a self-learning scheme is utilized to automatically tune the fuzzy rule base. It is based on network learning infrastructure; statistical approximation to assign credit; animal learning method to update the reinforcement map with a fast learning rate; and temporal difference predictive scheme to optimize the control laws. Different from supervised and statistical unsupervised learning schemes, the proposed method learns on-line from past experience and information from the process and forms a rule base of an FLC system from randomly assigned initial control rules.

Tarn, J. H.↗

Functional expansion representations of artificial neural networks

In the past few years, significant interest has developed in using artificial neural networks to model and control nonlinear dynamical systems. While there exists many proposed schemes for accomplishing this and a wealth of supporting empirical results, most approaches to date tend to be ad hoc in nature and rely mainly on heuristic justifications. The purpose of this project was to further develop some analytical tools for representing nonlinear discrete-time input-output systems, which when applied to neural networks would give insight on architecture selection, pruning strategies, and learning algorithms. A long term goal is to determine in what sense, if any, a neural network can be used as a universal approximator for nonliner input-output maps with memory (i.e., realized by a dynamical system). This property is well known for the case of static or memoryless input-output maps. The general architecture under consideration in this project was a single-input, single-output recurrent feedforward network.

Gray, W. Steven↗

On Lipschitz continuity of nonlinear differential operators

In connection with approximations for nonlinear evolution equations, it is standard to assume that nonlinear terms are at least locally Lipschitz continuous. However, it is shown here that f = f(X,del sub u(X)) is Lipschitz continuous from the subspace W sup 1, infinity is a subset of L sub 2 into W sup 1,2, and maps W sup 2, infinity into W sup 1, infinity, if and only if f is affine with W sup 1, infinity coefficients. In fact, a local version of this claim is proved.

Keeling, Stephen L.↗

A conjugate gradients/trust regions algorithms for training multilayer perceptrons for nonlinear mapping

This paper addresses the issue of applying a globally convergent optimization algorithm to the training of multilayer perceptrons, a class of Artificial Neural Networks. The multilayer perceptrons are trained towards the solution of two highly nonlinear problems: (1) signal detection in a multi-user communication network, and (2) solving the inverse kinematics for a robotic manipulator. The research is motivated by the fact that a multilayer perceptron is theoretically capable of approximating any nonlinear function to within a specified accuracy. The algorithm that has been employed in this study combines the merits of two well known optimization algorithms, the Conjugate Gradients and the Trust Regions Algorithms. The performance is compared to a widely used algorithm, the Backpropagation Algorithm, that is basically a gradient-based algorithm, and hence, slow in converging. The performances of the two algorithms are compared with the convergence rate. Furthermore, in the case of the signal detection problem, performances are also benchmarked by the decision boundaries drawn as well as the probability of error obtained in either case.

Madyastha, Raghavendra K.↗

Construction of solutions for some nonlinear two-point boundary value problems

Constructive existence and uniqueness results for boundary value problems associated with some simple special cases of the second order equation y'' = f(x,y,y') 0 or = x or = 1, are sought. The approach considered is to convert the differential equation and boundary conditions to an integral equation via Green's functions, and then to apply fixed point and contraction map principles to a sequence of successive approximations. The approach is tested on several applied problems. Difficulties in trying to prove general theorems are discussed.

Pennline, J. A.↗

Inversion of passive microwave remote sensing data from satellites

Global passive microwave observations from earth-orbiting satellites have mapped humidity and liquid water over ocean, temperature profiles, ice and snow, and other geophysical parameters. In most applications, the inversion problem is adequately approximated as linear with jointly Gaussian statistics, and, thus, a linear retrieval performs well. In some cases, the problem is typically factored into a decision process followed by appropriate linear or quasilinear processes. Certain problems, however, require more powerful nonlinear or nonstationary procedures, such as Kalman filtering.

Staelin, D. H.↗

Multi-Wavelength, Multi-Beam, and Polarization-Sensitive Laser Transmitter for Surface Mapping

A multi-beam, multi-color, polarized laser transmitter has been developed for mapping applications. It uses commercial off-the-shelf components for a lowcost approach for a ruggedized laser suitable for field deployment. The laser transmitter design is capable of delivering dual wavelengths, multiple beams on each wavelength with equal (or variable) intensities per beam, and a welldefined state of polarization. This laser transmitter has been flown on several airborne campaigns for the Slope Imaging Multi-Polarization Photon Counting Lidar (SIMPL) instrument, and at the time of this reporting is at a technology readiness level of between 5 and 6. The laser is a 1,064-nm microchip high-repetition-rate laser emitting energy of about 8 microjoules per pulse. The beam was frequency-doubled to 532 nm using a KTP (KTiOPO4) nonlinear crystal [other nonlinear crystals such as LBO (LiB3O5) or periodically poled lithium niobiate can be used as well, depending on the conversion efficiency requirements], and the conversion efficiency was approximately 30 percent. The KTP was under temperature control using a thermoelectric cooler and a feedback monitoring thermistor. The dual-wavelength beams were then spectrally separated and each color went through its own optical path, which consisted of a beam-shaping lens, quarterwave plate (QWP), and a birefringent crystal (in this case, a calcite crystal, but others such as vanadate can be used). The QWP and calcite crystal set was used to convert the laser beams from a linearly polarized state to circularly polarized light, which when injected into a calcite crystal, will spatially separate the circularly polarized light into the two linear polarized components. The spatial separation of the two linearly polarized components is determined by the length of the crystal. A second set of QWP and calcite then further separated the two beams into four. Additional sets of QWP and calcite can be used to further split the beams into multiple orders of two. The spatially separated beams had alternating linearly polarization states; a half-wave plate (HWP) array was then made to rotate the alternating states of A multi-beam, multi-color, polarized laser transmitter has been developed for mapping applications. It uses commercial off-the-shelf components for a lowcost approach for a ruggedized laser suitable for field deployment. The laser transmitter design is capable of delivering dual wavelengths, multiple beams on each wavelength with equal (or variable) intensities per beam, and a welldefined state of polarization. This laser transmitter has been flown on several airborne campaigns for the Slope Imaging Multi-Polarization Photon Counting Lidar (SIMPL) instrument, and at the time of this reporting is at a technology readiness level of between 5 and 6. The laser is a 1,064-nm microchip high-repetition-rate laser emitting energy of about 8 microjoules per pulse. The beam was frequency-doubled to 532 nm using a KTP (KTiOPO4) nonlinear crystal [other nonlinear crystals such as LBO (LiB3O5) or periodically poled lithium niobiate can be used as well, depending on the conversion efficiency requirements], and the conversion efficiency was approximately 30 percent. The KTP was under temperature control using a thermoelectric cooler and a feedback monitoring thermistor. The dual-wavelength beams were then spectrally separated and each color went through its own optical path, which consisted of a beam-shaping lens, quarterwave plate (QWP), and a birefringent crystal (in this case, a calcite crystal, but others such as vanadate can be used). The QWP and calcite crystal set was used to convert the laser beams from a linearly polarized state to circularly polarized light, which when injected into a calcite crystal, will spatially separate the circularly polarized light into the two linear polarized components. The spatial separation of the two linearly polarized components is determined by the length of the crystal. A cond set of QWP and calcite then further separated the two beams into four. Additional sets of QWP and calcite can be used to further split the beams into multiple orders of two. The spatially separated beams had alternating linearly polarization states; a half-wave plate (HWP) array was then made to rotate the alternating states of

Yu, Anthony W.↗

Non-Gaussian statistical models of surface wave fields for remote sensing applications

Based on the complete Stokes wave model with the bias term and using a simple mapping approach and an iteration solution method, we established a formula for the joint probability density function of the surface slope elevation of a nonlinear random wave field. The formula requires three parameters to define the whole density function: the rms surface elevation and slope values and the significant slope. This model represents the dynamics of the wave in a more direct way than the Gram-Charlier approximation. Based on this new statistical model and laboratory experiments, formula and numerical values of EM bias and dynamics bias are derived. The results indicate that various biases should be considered seriously if accuracy of the altimeter measurement is required in centimeter range.

Huang, N. E.↗

Numerical solution of Euler's equation by perturbed functionals

A perturbed functional iteration has been developed to solve nonlinear systems. It adds at each iteration level, unique perturbation parameters to nonlinear Gauss-Seidel iterates which enhances its convergence properties. As convergence is approached these parameters are damped out. Local linearization along the diagonal has been used to compute these parameters. The method requires no computation of Jacobian or factorization of matrices. Analysis of convergence depends on properties of certain contraction-type mappings, known as D-mappings. In this article, application of this method to solve an implicit finite difference approximation of Euler's equation is studied. Some representative results for the well known shock tube problem and compressible flows in a nozzle are given.

Dey, S. K.↗

Application of Space Shuttle photography to studies of upper ocean dynamics

Three studies have been conducted using space shuttle imagery to explain the dynamics behavior of internal waves in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and to derive tide-related parameters for Delaware Bay. By interpreting space shuttle photographs taken during mission STS-40, a total of 34 internal wave packets on the continental shelf of the Middle Atlantic Bight have been recognized. Using the finite-depth theory we derived that the maximum amplitude of solitons is 5.6 m, the phase speed 0.42 m/s, and the period 23.8 min. Deep-ocean internal waves in the western equatorial Indian Ocean on photographs taken during mission STS-44 were also interpreted and analyzed. The internal waves occurred in the form of a multisoliton packet in which there are about a dozen solitons. The average wavelength of the solitons is 1.8 +/- 0.5 km. The crest lines are mostly straight and reach as long as 100 km. The distance between two adjacent packets is about 66 km. Using the deepwater soliton theory, we derived that the mean amplitude of the solitons is 25 m, the nonlinear phase speed 1.7 m/s, and the average period 18 min. For both cases, the semidiural tides are the principal generating mechanism. The tide-related parameters of Delaware Bay were derived from space shuttle time-series photographs taken during mission STS-40. The water area in the bay were measured from interpretation maps of the photographs. The corresponding tidal levels were calculated using the exposure time. From these data, an approximate function relating the water area to the tidal level at a reference point was determined. Then, the water areas of the Delaware Bay at mean high water (MHW) and mean low water (MLW), below 0 m, for the tidal zone, and the tidal flux were inferred. All parameters derived were reasonable and compared well with results of previous investigations.

Zheng, Quanan↗

Transformation of two and three-dimensional regions by elliptic systems

A reliable linear system is presented for grid generation in 2-D and 3-D. The method is robust in the sense that convergence is guaranteed but is not as reliable as other nonlinear elliptic methods in generating nonfolding grids. The construction of nonfolding grids depends on having reasonable approximations of cell aspect ratios and an appropriate distribution of grid points on the boundary of the region. Some guidelines are included on approximating the aspect ratios, but little help is offered on setting up the boundary grid other than to say that in 2-D the boundary correspondence should be close to that generated by a conformal mapping. It is assumed that the functions which control the grid distribution depend only on the computational variables and not on the physical variables. Whether this is actually the case depends on how the grid is constructed. In a dynamic adaptive procedure where the grid is constructed in the process of solving a fluid flow problem, the grid is usually updated at fixed iteration counts using the current value of the control function. Since the control function is not being updated during the iteration of the grid equations, the grid construction is a linear procedure. However, in the case of a static adaptive procedure where a trial solution is computed and used to construct an adaptive grid, the control functions may be recomputed at every step of the grid iteration.

Mastin, C. Wayne↗

Guidance of Nonlinear Systems

The paper describes a method for guiding a dynamic system through a given set of points. The paradigm is a fully automatic aircraft subject to air traffic control (ATC). The ATC provides a sequence of way points through which the aircraft trajectory must pass. The way points typically specify time, position, and velocity. The guidance problem is to synthesize a system state trajectory which satisfies both the ATC and aircraft constraints. Complications arise because the controlled process is multi-dimensional, multi-axis, nonlinear, highly coupled, and the state space is not flat. In addition, there is a multitude of possible operating modes, which may number in the hundreds. Each such mode defines a distinct state space model of the process by specifying the state space coordination, the partition of the controls into active controls and configuration controls, and the output map. Furthermore, mode transitions must be smooth. The guidance algorithm is based on the inversion of the pure feedback approximations, which is followed by iterative corrections for the effects of zero dynamics. The paper describes the structure and modules of the algorithm, and the performance is illustrated by several example aircraft maneuvers.

Meyer, George↗

Guidance of Nonlinear Systems

The paper describes a method for guiding a dynamic system through a given set of points. The paradigm is a fully automatic aircraft subject to air traffic control (ATC). The ATC provides a sequence of way points through which the aircraft trajectory must pass. The way points typically specify time, position, and velocity. The guidance problem is to synthesize a system state trajectory which satisfies both the ATC and aircraft constraints. Complications arise because the controlled process is multi-dimensional, multi-axis, nonlinear, highly coupled, and the state space is not flat. In addition, there is a multitude of possible operating modes, which may number in the hundreds. Each such mode defines a distinct state space model of the process by specifying the state space coordinatization, the partition of the controls into active controls and configuration controls, and the output map. Furthermore, mode transitions must be smooth. The guidance algorithm is based on the inversion of the pure feedback approximations, which is followed by iterative corrections for the effects of zero dynamics. The paper describes the structure and modules of the algorithm, and the performance is illustrated by several example aircraft maneuvers.

Meyer, George↗

Generalized mathematical models in design optimization

The theory of optimality conditions of extremal problems can be extended to problems continuously deformed by an input vector. The connection between the sensitivity, well-posedness, stability and approximation of optimization problems is steadily emerging. The authors believe that the important realization here is that the underlying basis of all such work is still the study of point-to-set maps and of small perturbations, yet what has been identified previously as being just related to solution procedures is now being extended to study modeling itself in its own right. Many important studies related to the theoretical issues of parametric programming and large deformation in nonlinear programming have been reported in the last few years, and the challenge now seems to be in devising effective computational tools for solving these generalized design optimization models.

Papalambros, Panos Y.↗

Dynamic Forms: Application to Aircraft Guidance - Part 2

The paper describes a method for guiding a dynamic system through a given set of points. The paradigm is a fully automatic aircraft subject to air traffic control (ATC). The ATC provides a sequence of waypoints through which the aircraft trajectory must pass. The waypoints typically specify time, position, and velocity. The guidance problem is to synthesize a system state trajectory that satisfies both the ATC and aircraft constraints. Complications arise because the controlled process is multidimensional, multiaxis, nonlinear, highly coupled, and the state space is not flat. In addition, there is a multitude of operating modes, which may number in the hundreds. Each such mode defines a distinct state space model of the process by specifying the state space coordinatization, the partition of the controls into active controls and configuration controls, and the output map. Furthermore, mode transitions are required to be smooth. The proposed guidance algorithm is based on the inversion of the pure feedback approximation, followed by correction for the effects of zero dynamics. The paper describes the structure and major modules of the algorithm, and the performance is illustrated by several example aircraft maneuvers.

Meyer, George↗

The dynamical regime of fluid flow at the core surface

An alternative method for determining the fluid motion immediately beneath the core-mantle boundary is presented which is based on solving the full nonlinear core motions problem. This method is used to examine three dynamical hypotheses about the flow: (1) the steady motions hypothesis; (2) the geostrophic hypothesis; and (3) the toroidal flow hypothesis. Better fits to the field are obtained with the toroidal flows than with geostrophic flows, casting considerable doubt on the validity of the geostrophic hypothesis. Additionally, some indication is found that failure of the frozen-flux approximation, a concomitant assumption, may be a serious obstacle to obtaining reliable maps of the core fluid flow.

Bloxham, Jeremy↗

An improved version of NCOREL: A computer program for 3-D nonlinear supersonic potential flow computations

A computer code called NCOREL (for Nonconical Relaxation) has been developed to solve for supersonic full potential flows over complex geometries. The method first solves for the conical at the apex and then marches downstream in a spherical coordinate system. Implicit relaxation techniques are used to numerically solve the full potential equation at each subsequent crossflow plane. Many improvements have been made to the original code including more reliable numerics for computing wing-body flows with multiple embedded shocks, inlet flow through simulation, wake model and entropy corrections. Line relaxation or approximate factorization schemes are optionally available. Improved internal grid generation using analytic conformal mappings, supported by a simple geometric Harris wave drag input that was originally developed for panel methods and internal geometry package are some of the new features.

Siclari, Michael J.↗