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At least 37 records · Page 2

Improved Earth Sensor Performance Using a Sequentially Correlated Noise Model

Spacecraft attitude estimation by means of an extended Kalman filter requires a reasonably true model of the inherent noise of each sensor. For some sensors, the largest uncorrected noise comes not from the sensor itself, but from errors in the model for the predicted observations. This is certainly the case for Earth horizon sensors. The Earth horizon as seen from low Earth orbit is nearly a circle whose radius depends primarily on altitude. A straightforward latitude-dependent correction is added to this to account for the oblateness of the Earth. There also are both seasonal and stochastic variations in the horizon height. The seasonal variations can be predicted to some limited degree based on models derived from historical data. The stochastic component characteristically shows variations that are correlated both in time and space but which are unpredictable over long time spans. This work investigates whether Earth horizon sensor performance can be improved by solving for its systematic error as an augmentation of an attitude Kalman filter. It is found that using only Earth and Sun sensors, the augmented state is not fully observable. Even when magnetometer data is included, only the pitch axis component of the error can be improved; the roll component is unobservable.

Sedlak, J.↗

Assessment of RANS-based Transition Models based on Experimental Data of the Common Research Model with Natural Laminar Flow

Transition models based on auxiliary transport equations augmenting the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) framework often rely upon transition correlations that were derived from a limited number of low-speed experiments and these models often fail to account for all of the relevant transition mechanisms and/or the variation in those mechanisms with respect to changes in the significant flow parameters. Available data from a recent experiment on the Common Research Model with Natural Laminar Flow (CRM-NLF) in the National Transonic Facility at the NASA Langley Research Center are used to assess the current transition modeling capability in NASA's OVERFLOW 2.3b solver for a swept wing configuration with nonzero taper and transonic cruise conditions. Specifically, the OVERFLOW solutions are used to evaluate the accuracy and robustness of the transport-equation-based transition models. Results highlight that the Spalart-Allmaras-based amplification factor transport (AFT-2017b) equation model and Menter’s shear-stress transport equation (SST2003)-based Langtry-Menter transition models (either with or without the modeling of crossflow transition) significantly underpredict the reported extent of laminar flow region over the entire span of the wing, irrespective of which instability mechanism(s) is expected to dominate the onset of the transition process. We show that the transition correlations underlying these models fail to account for the stabilizing effect of compressibility on the Tollmien-Schlichting transition, which is likely to be a major contributor to the underprediction of the laminar flow region on the CRM-NLF. The SST-2003-based Langtry-Menter model also appears to inaccurately predict the chordwise pressure variation along the majority of the wing span at all the flow conditions studied herein, due to how the turbulence intensity levels were enforced in the computations and how that was interfering with the functioning of the underlying turbulence model within the boundary layer. The AFT and Langtry-Menter models appear to be sensitive to the level of the freestream turbulence intensity, but the degree of sensitivity varies across the models.

CFD modeling↗

Aerodynamic characteristics of a large-scale hybrid upper surface blown flap model having four engines

Data are presented from an investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics of large-scale wind tunnel aircraft model that utilized a hybrid-upper surface blown flap to augment lift. The hybrid concept of this investigation used a portion of the turbofan exhaust air for blowing over the trailing edge flap to provide boundary layer control. The model, tested in the Ames 40- by 80-foot Wind Tunnel, had a 27.5 deg swept wing of aspect ratio 8 and 4 turbofan engines mounted on the upper surface of the wing. The lift of the model was augmented by turbofan exhaust impingement on the wind upper-surface and flap system. Results were obtained for three flap deflections, for some variation of engine nozzle configuration and for jet thrust coefficients from 0 to 3.0. Six-component longitudinal and lateral data are presented with four engine operation and with the critical engine out. In addition, a limited number of cross-plots of the data are presented. All of the tests were made with a downwash rake installed instead of a horizontal tail. Some of these downwash data are also presented.

Carros, R. J.↗

The TOPSAR interferometric radar topographic mapping instrument

The NASA DC-8 AIRSAR instrument has been augmented with a pair of C-band antennas displaced across track to form an interferometer sensitive to topographic variations of the earth's surface. During the 1991 DC-8 flight campaign, data were acquired over several sites in the U.S. and Europe, and topographic maps were produced from several of these flight lines. Analysis of the results indicate that statistical errors are in the 2-4 m range, while systematic effects due to aircraft motion are in the 10-20 m range. Initial results from development of a second generation processor at JPL show that aircraft motion compensation algorithms reduce the systematic variations to 2 m, while the statistical errors are reduced to 2-3 m.

Zebker, Howard A.↗

Arctic contribution to upper-ocean variability in the North Atlantic

The potential climatic leverage of salinity and temperature anomalies in the high-latitude North Atlantic is large. Substantial variations of sea ice have accompanied North Atlantic salinity and temperature anomalies. Atmospheric pressure data are used here to show that the local forcing of high-latitude North Atlantic Ocean fluctuations is augmented by antecedent atmospheric circulation anomalies over the central Arctic. These circulation anomalies are consistent with enhanced wind-forcing of thicker older ice into the Transpolar Drift Stream and an enhanced export of sea ice (fresh water) from the Arctic into the Greenland Sea prior to major episodes of ice severity in the Greenland and Iceland seas.

Walsh, John E.↗

Downscaling MODIS Land Surface Temperature for Urban Public Health Applications

This study is part of a project funded by the NASA Applied Sciences Public Health Program, which focuses on Earth science applications of remote sensing data for enhancing public health decision-making. Heat related death is currently the number one weather-related killer in the United States. Mortality from these events is expected to increase as a function of climate change. This activity sought to augment current Heat Watch/Warning Systems (HWWS) with NASA remotely sensed data, and models used in conjunction with socioeconomic and heatrelated mortality data. The current HWWS do not take into account intra-urban spatial variation in risk assessment. The purpose of this effort is to evaluate a potential method to improve spatial delineation of risk from extreme heat events in urban environments by integrating sociodemographic risk factors with estimates of land surface temperature (LST) derived from thermal remote sensing data. In order to further improve the consideration of intra-urban variations in risk from extreme heat, we also developed and evaluated a number of spatial statistical techniques for downscaling the 1-km daily MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST data to 60 m using Landsat-derived LST data, which have finer spatial but coarser temporal resolution than MODIS. In this paper, we will present these techniques, which have been demonstrated and validated for Phoenix, AZ using data from the summers of 2000-2006.

Al-Hamdan, Mohammad↗

Downscaling MODIS Land Surface Temperature for Urban Public Health Applications

This study is part of a project funded by the NASA Applied Sciences Public Health Program, which focuses on Earth science applications of remote sensing data for enhancing public health decision-making. Heat related death is currently the number one weather-related killer in the United States. Mortality from these events is expected to increase as a function of climate change. This activity sought to augment current Heat Watch/Warning Systems (HWWS) with NASA remotely sensed data, and models used in conjunction with socioeconomic and heatrelated mortality data. The current HWWS do not take into account intra-urban spatial variation in risk assessment. The purpose of this effort is to evaluate a potential method to improve spatial delineation of risk from extreme heat events in urban environments by integrating sociodemographic risk factors with estimates of land surface temperature (LST) derived from thermal remote sensing data. In order to further improve the consideration of intra-urban variations in risk from extreme heat, we also developed and evaluated a number of spatial statistical techniques for downscaling the 1-km daily MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST data to 60 m using Landsat-derived LST data, which have finer spatial but coarser temporal resolution than MODIS. In this paper, we will present these techniques, which have been demonstrated and validated for Phoenix, AZ using data from the summers of 2000-2006.

Al-Hamdan, Mohammad↗

Low and High-Power Inductive Pulsed Plasma Thruster Development Testing at NASA-MSFC

The inductive pulsed plasma thruster (IPPT) is an electromagnetic plasma accelerator that has been identified in NASA roadmaps as an enabling propulsion technology for some niche low-power missions and for high-power in-space propulsion needs. The IPPT is an electrodeless space propulsion device where a capacitor is charged to an initial voltage and then discharged producing a high current pulse through a coil. The field produced by this pulse ionizes propellant, inductively driving current in a plasma located near the face of the coil. Once the plasma is formed it can be accelerated and expelled at a high exhaust velocity by the electromagnetic Lorentz body force arising from the interaction of the induced plasma current and the magnetic field produced by the current in the coil. Thrusters of this type possess many demonstrated and potential benefits that make them worthy of continued investigation. The electrodeless nature of these thrusters eliminates the lifetime and contamination issues associated with electrode erosion in conventional electric thrusters. Also, a wider variety of propellants are accessible when compatibility with metallic electrodes in no longer an issue. IPPTs have been successfully operated using propellants like ammonia, hydrazine, and CO2, and there is no fundamental reason why they would not operate on other in situ propellants like H2O. It is well-known that pulsed accelerators can maintain constant specific impulse (I(sub sp)) and thrust efficiency (eta(sub t)) over a wide range of input power levels by adjusting the pulse rate to hold the discharge energy per pulse constant. It has also been demonstrated that an inductive pulsed plasma thruster can operate in a regime where eta(sub t) is relatively constant over a wide range of I(sub sp) values (3000-8000 s). Finally, thrusters in this class have operated in single-pulse mode at high energy per pulse, and by increasing the pulse rate they offer the potential to process very high levels of power using a single thruster. There has been significant previous research on IPPTs designed around a planar-coil (flat-plate) geometry. The most notable of these was the Pulsed Inductive Thruster (PIT), with the PIT MkV presently representing the state-of- the-art in pulsed high-power IPPT technological development. In this paper, we focus on two planar-geometry devices that operate at significantly different power levels. Most work performed at NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has, to date, focused on lower power thruster operation (approx. = 10s to 100s of J/pulse, up to 2-2.5 kW average power throughput) and previously described. The most recent work aimed to assemble a device that could be tested in cyclic mode on a thrust-stand, and which could augment the existing data set for IPPTs. In addition, the thruster was designed to serve as a test-bed for solid state switching circuitry and pulsed gas valves, with the modular design of the device allowing for variation in or upgrades to test configuration. Recently, MSFC obtained on loan from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) the PIT MkVI, successor to the PIT MkV. The MkV and MkVI are similar in design with much of the hardware from the former, specifically the capacitors and spark-gap switches, being reused in the latter. The coil is similar in geometry but has bent copper rods used in the latest iteration in place of the Litz wire windings found in the MkV. The MkVI master switch for the spark gaps is located in the vacuum chamber contained within a sealed, pressurized vessel fastened to the back of the thruster. This is different from the MkV where many capacitor charging lines and spark gap-triggering delay lines ran to the thruster from a master trigger located outside the vacuum chamber. The MkVI was damaged during testing soon after its fabrication was completed. The thruster arrived at MSFC still-damaged and mostly disassembled into many individual pieces. The device has been repaired, with a few additional design changes implemented after discussions with the late Prof. Lovberg regarding the initial testing results and issues encountered. In the present work, we present results from testing of both the small IPPT and the larger MkVI thruster. The smaller device (Fig. 1) is tested on a thrust stand on multiple gases to demonstrate its capability to operate in a repetition-rate mode and serve as a IPPT technology-development testbed. The larger MkVI (Fig. 2) is operated for the first time in its newly reconstituted state, demonstrating full-power pulsed operation and, for the first time, repetition-rate operation of a high-power IPPT. The additional upgrades required for synchronous operation of all the pulsed systems in single-pulse and repetition-rate mode are described in detail.

Polzin, Kurt A.↗

Inductive Pulsed Plasma Thruster Development Testing at NASA-MSFC

The inductive pulsed plasma thruster (IPPT) is an electromagnetic plasma accelerator that has been identified in NASA roadmaps as an enabling propulsion technology for some niche low-power missions and for high-power in-space propulsion needs. The IPPT is an electrodeless space propulsion device where a capacitor is charged to an initial voltage and then discharged producing a high current pulse through a coil. The field produced by this pulse ionizes propellant, inductively driving current in a plasma located near the face of the coil. Once the plasma is formed it can be accelerated and expelled at a high exhaust velocity by the electromagnetic Lorentz body force arising from the interaction of the induced plasma current and the magnetic field produced by the current in the coil. Thrusters of this type possess many demonstrated and potential benefits that make them worthy of continued investigation. The electrodeless nature of these thrusters eliminates the lifetime and contamination issues associated with electrode erosion in conventional electric thrusters. Also, a wider variety of propellants are accessible when compatibility with metallic electrodes in no longer an issue. IPPTs have been successfully operated using propellants like ammonia, hydrazine, and CO2, and there is no fundamental reason why they would not operate on other in situ propellants like H2O. It is well-known that pulsed accelerators can maintain constant specific impulse (I(sub sp)) and thrust efficiency (η(sub t)) over a wide range of input power levels by adjusting the pulse rate to hold the discharge energy per pulse constant. It has also been demonstrated that an inductive pulsed plasma thruster can operate in a regime where η(sub t) is relatively constant over a wide range of I(sub sp) values (3000-8000 s). Finally, thrusters in this class have operated in single-pulse mode at high energy per pulse, and by increasing the pulse rate they offer the potential to process very high levels of power using a single thruster. There has been significant previous research on IPPTs designed around a planar-coil (flat-plate) geometry. The most notable of these was the Pulsed Inductive Thruster (PIT), with the PIT MkV presently representing the state of- the-art in pulsed high-power IPPT technological development. In this paper, we focus on two planar-geometry devices that operate at significantly different power levels. Most work performed at NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has, to date, focused on lower power thruster operation (≈ 10s to 100s of J/pulse, up to 2-2.5 kW average power throughput) and previously described in Refs. [5,6]. The most recent work aimed to assemble a device that could be tested in cyclic mode on a thrust-stand, and which could augment the existing data set for IPPTs. In addition, the thruster was designed to serve as a test-bed for solid state switching circuitry and pulsed gas valves, with the modular design of the device allowing for variation in or upgrades to test configuration. Recently, MSFC obtained on loan from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) the PIT MkVI, successor to the PIT MkV. The MkV and MkVI are similar in design with much of the hardware from the former, specifically the capacitors and spark-gap switches, being reused in the latter. The coil is simliar in geometry but has bent copper rods used in the latest iteration in place of the Litz wire windings found in the MkV. The MkVI master switch for the spark gaps is located in the vacuum chamber contained within a sealed, pressurized vessel fastened to the back of the thruster. This is different from the MkV where many capacitor charging lines and spark gap-triggering delay lines ran to the thruster from a master trigger located outside the vacuum chamber. The MkVI was damaged during testing soon after its fabrication was completed. The thruster arrived at MSFC still-damaged and mostly disassembled into many individual pieces. The device has been repaired, with a few additional design changes implemented after discussions with the late Prof. Lovberg regarding the initial testing results and issues encountered.

Polzin, Kurt A.↗

Data efficiency assessment of generative adversarial networks in energy applications

This study investigates the data requirements of generative artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative adversarial networks (GANs), for reliable data augmentation in energy applications. Generative AI, though seen as a solution to data limitations, requires substantial data to learn meaningful distributions—a challenge often overlooked. This study addresses the challenge through synthetic data generation for critical heat flux (CHF) and power grid demand, focusing on renewable and nuclear energy. Two variants of GAN employed are conditional GAN (cGAN) and Wasserstein GAN (wGAN). Our findings include the strong dependency of GAN on data size, with performance declining on smaller datasets and varying performance when generalizing to unseen experiments. Mass flux and heated length significantly influence CHF predictions. wGAN is more robust to feature exclusion, making it suitable for constrained synthetic data generation. In energy demand forecasting, wGAN performed well for solar, wind, and load predictions. Longer lookback hours and larger datasets improved predictions, especially for load power. Seasonal variations posed challenges, with wGAN achieving a relatively high error of Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 0.32 for load power prediction, compared to RMSE of 0.07 under same-season conditions. Feature exclusions impacted cGAN the most, while wGAN showed greater robustness. This study concludes that, while generative AI is effective for data augmentation, it requires substantial data and careful training to generate realistic synthetic data and generalize to new experiments in engineering applications.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

A Comparison of Pre‐Construction and Operational Wake Loss Estimates for Land‐Based Wind Plants

The overall bias between pre‐construction energy yield assessment (EYA) estimates of wind plant energy production and the achieved operational production is improving in the wind industry, but uncertainty remains high for individual wind plants. Wake effects within wind plants are one of the largest sources of energy loss considered in the EYA process, and previous work shows wake loss estimates to be a major source of disagreement among wind energy consultants who perform EYAs. To better understand the accuracy of wake loss predictions, we compare overall operational wake loss estimates based on supervisory control and data acquisition data to pre‐construction estimates provided by six wind energy consultants for five land‐based wind plants in North America. By augmenting existing approaches for quantifying operational wake losses, we estimate wake losses during the period of record for which operational data are available as well as the expected long‐term wake losses, based on historical reanalysis weather data, to which the EYA estimates are compared. To account for power variations at different turbine locations caused by terrain‐induced wind resource heterogeneity, we correct the operational wake loss estimates using predicted freestream wind speed variations from the Wind Systems Engineering Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) tool. We identify long‐term corrected operational wake losses between 1.9% and 6.4% for the five plants, with a mean loss of 4%. For the project deemed most acceptable for operational wake loss assessment, which is located in the simplest terrain and isolated from neighboring plants, the mean EYA wake loss estimate is within 0.7 percentage points of the operational value of 6.4%. For most of the remaining plants, results suggest that wake losses are generally overpredicted by 2.6–6.3 percentage points. However, operational wake losses may be underestimated for many of these projects because of spatial wind resource variations not captured by the RANS model, external wake effects that are unaccounted for in the estimation process, and wind plant blockage effects. To better understand factors that contribute to the observed wake losses, we investigate operational wake losses as a function of wind direction and wind speed. As expected, wake losses are generally concentrated near wind directions that are aligned with rows of closely spaced turbines and at below‐rated wind speeds; however, for some projects, the energy produced by the wind plant exceeds the estimated potential energy of the plant without wake interactions for certain wind directions and wind speeds, suggesting inaccurate assumptions in the wake loss estimation method for those plants. Lastly, we compare predicted and operational wake losses for individual wind turbines, finding that even when overall wake losses are predicted accurately, large uncertainty exists at the turbine level.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

A principled approach to the measurement of situation awareness in commercial aviation

The issue of how to support situation awareness among crews of modern commercial aircraft is becoming especially important with the introduction of automation in the form of sophisticated flight management computers and expert systems designed to assist the crew. In this paper, cognitive theories are discussed that have relevance for the definition and measurement of situation awareness. These theories suggest that comprehension of the flow of events is an active process that is limited by the modularity of attention and memory constraints, but can be enhanced by expert knowledge and strategies. Three implications of this perspective for assessing and improving situation awareness are considered: (1) Scenario variations are proposed that tax awareness by placing demands on attention; (2) Experimental tasks and probes are described for assessing the cognitive processes that underlie situation awareness; and (3) The use of computer-based human performance models to augment the measures of situation awareness derived from performance data is explored. Finally, two potential example applications of the proposed assessment techniques are described, one concerning spatial awareness using wide field of view displays and the other emphasizing fault management in aircraft systems.

Tenney, Yvette J.↗

Resimulation-based self-supervised learning for pretraining physics foundation models

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is at the core of training modern large machine learning models, providing a scheme for learning powerful representations that can be used in a variety of downstream tasks. However, SSL strategies must be adapted to the type of training data and downstream tasks required. We propose resimulation-based self-supervised representation learning (RS3L), a novel simulation-based SSL strategy that employs a method of resimulation to drive data augmentation for contrastive learning in the physical sciences, particularly, in fields that rely on stochastic simulators. By intervening in the middle of the simulation process and rerunning simulation components downstream of the intervention, we generate multiple realizations of an event, thus producing a set of augmentations covering all physics-driven variations available in the simulator. Using experiments from high-energy physics, we explore how this strategy may enable the development of a foundation model; we show how RS3L pretraining enables powerful performance in downstream tasks such as discrimination of a variety of objects and uncertainty mitigation. In addition to our results, we make the RS3L dataset publicly available for further studies on how to improve SSL strategies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

SHADOZ (Southern Hemisphere ADditional OZonesondes): An Ozonesonde Network for Satellite Validation, Climatology and Modeling

In the past 5 years, new tropical ozone data products have been developed from TOMS and other satellites, During this period, global chemical-transport models have been used for ozone assessment studies. However, there has been a lack of independent ozone profiles in the tropics for evaluation of the data sets and models. In 1998, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Wallops Flight Facility and NOAA's CMDL (Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Lab), began a 2-year project to collect a consistent data set by augmenting ozonesonde launches at southern hemisphere tropical sites The measurements are available to the scientific community at a single electronic location - the SHADOZ website at NASA/Goddard: http://code9l6.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data services/Shadoz/shadoz hmpg2.html. Stations in SHADOZ include four islands in the Pacific: Fiji, Tahiti, San Cristobal (Galapagos) and American Samoa. Two sites are at and in the Atlantic: Natal (Brazil) and Ascension Island. Three other sites span Africa (Nairobi and Irene, South Africa) and the Indian Ocean (Reunion Island and Watukosek in Java, Indonesia). All SHADOZ sites are using ECC-type sondes, with the conversion from JMD sondes at Java in 1999, but there are variations in sonde preparation technique and data processing. During the 1998-1999 period, more than 550 sondes were incorporated into the SHADOZ data base. Examples from these measurements illustrate the tropical wave-one pattern in total ozone which is easily detectable by satellite. They also show that the wave-one pattern appears to be in the troposphere, as assumed in creating the modified-residual tropospheric ozone data product from TOMS. SHADOZ will add data from intensive field campaigns from time to time. Recent contributions to the SHADOZ archive are from the INDOEX (Indian Ocean Experiment January-March 1999)sondes at the Maldives (5N, 73E) and 27 sondes on the US NOAA oceanographic vessel, the FIN Ronald H Brown between Virginia (US) and Mauritius via CapeTown, during a cruise in January and February 1999. In 2000, as part of the SAFARI-2000 experiment and a validation project called Southern African Validation for EOS (SAVE), enhancement of ozonesonde launches at Irene (South Africa) will extend the data set from this site beyond the 1998-1999 period.

Thompson, Anne M.↗

Long-Term Time Variability in the X-Ray Pulse Shape of the Crab Nebula Pulsar

This is the final performance report for our grant 'Long-Term Time Variability in the X-Ray Pulse Shape of the Crab Nebula Pulsar.' In the first year of this grant, we received the 50,000-second ROSAT (German acronym for X-ray satellite) High Resolution Images (HRI) observation of the Crab Nebula pulsar. We used the data to create a 65-ms-resolution pulse profile and compared it to a similar pulse profile obtained in 1991. No statistically significant differences were found. These results were presented at the January 1998 meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Since then, we have performed more sensitive analyses to search for potential changes in the pulse profile shape between the two data sets. Again, no significant variability was found. In order to augment this long (six-year) baseline data set, we have analyzed archival observations of the Crab Nebula pulsar with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). While these observations have shorter time baselines than the ROSAT data set, their higher signal-to-noise offers similar sensitivity to long-term variability. Again, no significant variations have been found, confirming our ROSAT results. This work was done in collaboration with Prof. Stephen Eikenberry, Cornell University. These analyses will be included in Cornell University graduate student Dae-Sik Moon's doctoral thesis.

Fazio, Giovanni G.↗

Part-scale microstructure prediction for laser powder bed fusion Ti-6Al-4V using a hybrid mechanistic and machine learning model

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) Ti-6Al-4V is widely studied for use in structural applications in aerospace and medical industries, but mechanical anisotropy and microstructural inhomogeneity prohibits its wider adoption. Although successful microstructure prediction models have been developed, a remaining challenge is their limited integration across length/time scales and validation by experimental studies. Here, this work proposes a physics-augmented machine learning surrogate model to unite predictions of LPBF temperature, β phase morphology and texture, and α/α’ formation into a single framework that is calibrated and validated with experiments. First, a phase field (PF) model of the martensitic β→α’ transformation is developed and calibrated using data from in-situ synchrotron cyclic heating/cooling studies quantifying the variation of α phase fraction with time. In parallel, an established finite difference-Monte Carlo (FDMC) model predicts the part-scale temperature profile and β grain formation during solidification. A dataset is developed using LPBF cyclic temperature descriptors from the FDMC model as inputs and corresponding α/α’ phase fraction and width from the PF model as outputs. Five machine learning (ML) regression models are tested and optimized, having mean absolute error in testing ≤ 4 %, and the k-nearest neighbors (KNN) model is selected as the best performing. The KNN model is called at the nodal level during post-processing of the FDMC model to replace and downscale the response of the PF model. The combined agility and accuracy of the hybrid FDMC-ML model enables part-scale microstructure predictions that can be further used for property predictions to accelerate AM process optimization.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Prediction and measurement of turbulent aerodynamic trailing edge flows

A viscous-inviscid interaction algorithm is developed for prediction of two-dimensional mean and fluctuating velocity distributions in the wake immediately downstream of an airfoil trailing edge. A composite pressure field is defined, and a Poisson equation solved for transverse pressure variations. A parabolized form of the time-averaged steady Navier-Stokes equations are solved in conjunction with a viscous-augmented two-dimensional inviscid potential flow analysis. A tensor constitutive equation is employed to predict Reynolds stress distributions from solutions of a turbulence kinetic energy two equation closure model. Numerical predictions compared favorably with detailed experimental data for mean and fluctuating velocities, and Reynolds shear stress distributions, in the trailing edge region of a NACA 63-012 airfoil.

Baker, A. J.↗

The TOPSAR interferometric radar topographic mapping instrument

The NASA DC-8 AIRSAR instrument was augmented with a pair of C-band antennas displaced across track to form an interferometer sensitive to topographic variations of the Earth's surface. The antennas were developed by the Italian consortium Co.Ri.S.T.A., under contract to the Italian Space Agency (ASI), while the AIRSAR instrument and modifications to it supporting TOPSAR were sponsored by NASA. A new data processor was developed at JPL for producing the topographic maps, and a second processor was developed at Co.Ri.S.T.A. All the results presented below were processed at JPL. During the 1991 DC-8 flight campaign, data were acquired over several sites in the United States and Europe, and topographic maps were produced from several of these flight lines. Analysis of the results indicate that statistical errors are in the 2-3 m range for flat terrain and in the 4-5 m range for mountainous areas.

Zebker, Howard A.↗