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At least 37 records · Page 2

Mechanisms leading to net drag reduction in manipulated turbulent boundary layers

Turbulent boundary layers have been manipulated successfully using passive devices called BLADES (boundary-layer alteration devices) leading to net drag reduction. Measurements of various turbulence quantities including intermittency have led to the identification of some of the mechanisms involved in skin-friction reduction. Velocity and vorticity fluctuations associated with oncoming large scales are inhibited significantly by the manipulator blades and the vorticity shed in their wake. The manipulated boundary layers exhibit a reduced intermittency in the outer part of the layer. The effects of manipulation relax with downstream distance and the boundary layer returns toward normal conditions after 100 or 150 boundary-layer thicknesses.

Guezennec, Y. G.↗

RApid Blade and Blade-Vortex InTeraction (RABBIT) Reimagined: Algorithm Improvement and User-Friendly Interface Implementation

Rotorcraft noise source identification and reduction is crucial to the emergence of the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market. One key rotor noise source is Blade Vortex Interaction (BVI), caused by the rotor blades interacting with the rotor wake. The low-fidelity RApid Blade and Blade-Vortex InTeraction (RABBIT) tool was created to predict the location and characteristics of BVI noise. RABBIT enables engineers to quickly design and simulate UAM configurations and understand BVI occurrences for a desired flight condition. Furthermore, RABBIT can also identify the time and location of blade overlap for coaxial rotors. RABBIT is not a general acoustic prediction tool, but instead utilizes vortex and wake parameters to visualize and predict BVI aerodynamics. RABBIT algorithm has been further developed including reduction of computational time, accounting for BVI source time arrival, improved vortex strength modeling, and BVI impulse factor. A user-friendly app is presented with the intent of bringing RABBIT to the masses to allow engineers from various educational backgrounds to design and begin to understand BVI. Furthermore, RABBIT capabilities are highlighted by a parameter study highlighting key parameters that impact BVIalong with highlighting RABBIT’s ability to identify BVI occurrences from other rotors.

RApid↗

Field Study for Remote Sensing: An instructor's manual

The need for and value of field work (surface truthing) in the verification of image identification from high atitude infrared and multispectral space sensor images are discussed in this handbook which presents guidelines for developing instructional and research procedures in remote sensing of the environment.

Wake, W. H.↗

Imaging the wakes of jets with energy-energy-energy correlators

As the partons in a high energy jet propagate through the droplet of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in a heavy-ion collision they lose energy to, kick, and are kicked by the medium. The resulting modifications to the parton shower encode information about the microscopic nature of QGP. A direct consequence, however, is that the momentum and energy lost by the parton shower are gained by the medium and, since QGP is a strongly coupled liquid, this means that the jet excites a wake in the droplet of QGP. After freezeout, this wake becomes soft hadrons with net momentum in the jet direction meaning that what an experimentalist later reconstructs as a jet includes hadrons originating from both the modified parton shower and its wake. This has made it challenging to find experimental observables that provide an unambiguous view of the dynamical response of a droplet of QGP to a jet shooting through it. Recent years have seen significant substantial advances in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the substructure of jets, in particular, using correlation functions, $\langle$ ($\vec{n}$ 1 )•••$\mathcal{E}$($\vec{n}$ k ) $\rangle$, of the energy flux operator in proton-proton collisions and, recently, in heavy-ion collisions. So far, such studies have focused primarily on the two-point correlator, which allows for the identification of the angular scale of the underlying dynamics. Higher-point correlators hold the promise of mapping out the dynamics themselves. In this paper we perform the first study of the shape-dependent three-point energy-energy-energy correlator in heavy-ion collisions. Using the Hybrid Model to simulate the interactions of high energy jets with the QGP medium, we show that the three-point correlator presents us with a striking new opportunity. We find that hadrons originating from wakes are the dominant contribution to the three-point correlator in the kinematic regime in which the three points are well-separated in angle, forming a roughly equilateral triangle. This equilateral region of the correlator is far from the region populated by collinear vacuum emissions, making it a canvas on which jet wakes are laid out, where experimentalists can map their shapes. Our work provides a key step towards the systematic use of energy correlators to image and unravel the dynamical response of a droplet of QGP that has been probed by a passing jet, and motivates numerous experimental and theoretical studies.

Jets and Jet Substructure↗

Characteristics of future aircraft impacting aircraft and airport compatibility

Results are reported of an opinion survey of selected individuals at the decision-making level within the five major manufacturers of transport aircraft in the United States and Europe. Opinions were obtained concerning both possible and probable existence of over 50 compatibility-related characteristics of transport aircraft in use in the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. The maximum size of aircraft is expected to increase, at a roughly uniform rate, to the year 2010 by 85 percent in passengers, 55 percent in airfreighter payload, and 35 percent in gross weight weight. Companion to the expected growth in payloads and gross weight was the identification of probable increases in aircraft geometrical dimensions and component capability, and use of fully double-decked passenger compartments. Wing span will increase considerably more than normally expected to provide wings of higher aspect ratio. New aircraft features coming into probable use include large turboprops, synthetic jet-A fuel, winglets, wake-vortex-reducing devices and laminar flow control. New operational concepts considered probable include steep approaches, high-speed turnoffs, and taxiway towing for the aircraft, plus passenger bypass of the terminal building, expedited handling of belly cargo and an intermodal cargo container for the payloads.

Conner, D. W.↗

Simplified unsteady aerodynamic concepts, with application to parameter estimation

A simplified aerodynamic force model based on the physical principle of Prandtl's lifting line theory and trailing vortex concept has been developed to account for unsteadiness in the aircraft dynamics. The wake is assumed to be compressed to a single shed vortex element of appropriate strength moving downstream at a speed sufficient to approximate the Wagner function. Results are presented illustrating the ability of the simplified theory to duplicate exact solutions in unsteady aerodynamics. Further, consideration is given to the utility of the model in a parameter identification application.

Wells, W. R.↗

Identification of Climatological Representative Days in the Mid-Atlantic for High-Fidelity Offshore Wind Energy Modeling

The goal of reaching 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 becomes more realistic with the continued approval of offshore wind energy areas by the Biden Administration. In the Mid-Atlantic, where wind energy projects are in the most advanced stages of development, there is increased research focus on the eventual interaction of these wind farms. These interactions, in the form of wakes and cluster wakes, or wakes from multiple wind farms, could have detrimental effects on power production and forecastability for downwind wind farms (Pryor et al. 2022, Golbazi et al. 2022, Rosencrans et al. 2023). To help alleviate these issues, numerical simulations in the form of numerical weather prediction (NWP) and large eddy simulations (LES) can provide insight into when cluster wake situations may occur, but running such simulations can be expensive and difficult to run for multiple years. In this study, we leverage and build upon existing techniques in the literature (Fischereit et al. 2022) to identify climatologically representative days for wind energy areas in the Mid-Atlantic where conditions would promote cluster wake situations. We select meteorological variables (wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric stability, boundary-layer height, TKE) critical to understanding wind energy production and wake propagation. We then consider two different NWP datasets of varying spatial and temporal resolution: ERA5 provides data at hourly intervals from 1940 to present at 0.25 deg (31 km) spatial resolution (Hersbach et al. 2020), and the NOW-23 dataset provides data at 5-minute resolution for 21 years at 2-km spatial resolution (Bodini et al. 2020). Our first step is to compare these two datasets for an overlapping 21-year time period. Initial results show that the required number of days to represent the long-term climate increases with each additional variable considered. In their study of the German Bight, Fischereit et al. (2022) found that they could represent the long-term wind and wave climate in a "near-perfect" way with -180 days, by reaching a Perkins Skill Score (PSS) of 0.9; our investigation of the mid-Atlantic wind resource region with ERA5 and NOW-23 data suggests that we will need -100 days to reach a PSS of 0.9. As we expand our parameter space to include multiple variables, the number of required days will likely grow. These results will ultimately be used to select case studies to best represent cluster wake conditions that apply to this region for the lifetime of likely wind farms in this mid-Atlantic region.

clusterwakes↗

Evidence for the acceleration of ionospheric O/+/ in the magnetosheath of Venus

Plasma spectra from 12 orbits of the Pioneer-Venus Orbiter are reported which suggest the presence of ionospheric material in the magnetosheath plasma near and sunward of the terminator plane. Each spectrum shows a high E/q peak, consistent with O(+) moving at a speed lower than or comparable to that of the ambient magnetosheath plasma. It is pointed out that even though the data set is limited, the most intense heavy-ion fluxes clearly occur at altitudes less than a few thousand km. With the identification of the energetic component at O(+), the data reveal a trend for the speed of O(+) near the planet to be lower than the local magnetosheath speed, whereas the two speeds are comparable at altitudes above a few thousand km. These data, in combination with related observations that indicate O(+) moving at ambient speed in the distant wake, suggest that ionospheric material is swept up by the magnetosheath, accelerated to ambient speed within a few thousand km, and carried back through the wake region.

Mihalov, J. D.↗

Atmospheric Boundary Layer Wind Data During the Period January 1, 1998 Through January 21, 1999 at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport: Data and Processing - Volume 2

The NASA Langley Research Center's Aircraft Vortex Spacing System (AVOSS) requires accurate winds and turbulence to determine aircraft wake vortex behavior near the ground. Volume 1 described the wind input and quality analysis process. This volume documents the data available during the period January 1998 through January 1999 and the partitioning and concatenation of files for time of day, turbulence, non duplication, cross wind profile quality and ceiling and visibility. It provides the resultant filtered files for the first three partitions as well as identification of ceiling/visibility conditions when they were below 5000 feet and 5 miles respectively. It also includes the wind profile quality flags to permit automatic selection of files for AVOSS application using selected ceiling/visibility and wind profile quality values and flags (or no flags).

Zak, J. Allen↗

RABBIT: A Rapid Low Fidelity BVI Prediction Tool—Comparison and Validation using the NASA RVLT Toolchain

Rotorcraft noise source identification is at the forefront of civil rotorcraft applications with the emergence of the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market. Blade Vortex Interaction (BVI) has been identified as one key source of noise produced by a rotor. To predict BVI occurrences for various Urban Air Mobility (UAM) configurations, the RApid Blade and Blade-Vortex InTeraction (RABBIT) tool was developed and utilized. The tool is built from a Beddoes Wake Model, and computes variables such as miss distance and BVI angle to calculate an impulse factor, which is able to visualize BVI for a given vehicle and flight condition. A complete checkout of this tool and comparison with CAMRADII and ANOPP2/AARON, is performed. A wake comparison between RABBIT and CAMRADII is presented, and BVI is compared with ANOPP2/AARON’s acoustic pressure time history to verify the tools effectiveness and accuracy. Three NASA Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT) concept vehicles were analyzed with increasing geometric and aerodynamic complexity, including the Quiet Single Main Rotor (QSMR), Side-by-Side, and Quadrotor. An analysis of the results concludes that RABBIT presents a low-fidelity tool that accurately predicts BVI location and intensity for multiple vehicle configurations and various flight conditions.

RABBIT↗

An application of parameter identification to the oscillatory motion of an airplane at high C(L)

This paper presents an application of a stepwise regression incorporating polynomial splines to oscillatory flight data from a light research airplane operating at near stall angles of attack. It is shown that data from several experiments can be combined into a large data set for analysis and that hysteresis phenomena can be observed in this large data set. Finally, it is postulated from the analysis of the flight data and theoretical calculations that the observed oscillatory motion is the result of a combination of wing stall and wing wake position at the tail.

Batterson, J. G.↗

Static and Forced Oscillation Wind Tunnel Tests of A Tandem Propeller Configuration

A series of static and forced oscillation tests were conducted using a tandem propeller configuration in the NASA Langley 12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel. The primary objectives were to quantify the effect of aerodynamic interactions on propeller thrust and identify conditions where the effect is most significant. A secondary objective was to obtain a preliminary data set from dynamic testing to assess the impact of angular rate on thrust performance. This paper presents analysis of the experimental data, which includes propeller performance measurements and qualitative flow visualization. The static results show that the rear propeller in the tandem configuration can experience thrust degradations greater than 30%. The extent of the wake interaction is a function of the hub separation distance and the advance ratio of the front propeller. Forced oscillation results showed that the front propeller exhibited primarily linear behavior across the conditions tested, whereas the rear propeller exhibited dynamic nonlinearity in the region of significant thrust degradation. These results are intended to support high-fidelity modeling research, particularly for flight dynamics simulation development to aid trajectory prediction, control design, and identification of hazardous conditions for multirotor vehicles.

Aerodynamic Interactions↗

Optimization of a Multi-Stage ATR System for Small Target Identification

An Automated Target Recognition system (ATR) was developed to locate and target small object in images and videos. The data is preprocessed and sent to a grayscale optical correlator (GOC) filter to identify possible regionsof- interest (ROIs). Next, features are extracted from ROIs based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and sent to neural network (NN) to be classified. The features are analyzed by the NN classifier indicating if each ROI contains the desired target or not. The ATR system was found useful in identifying small boats in open sea. However, due to "noisy background," such as weather conditions, background buildings, or water wakes, some false targets are mis-classified. Feedforward backpropagation and Radial Basis neural networks are optimized for generalization of representative features to reduce false-alarm rate. The neural networks are compared for their performance in classification accuracy, classifying time, and training time.

false alarm rate↗

Exploration of Terminal Procedures Enabled by NASA Wake VAS Technologies

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) tasked The MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) to investigate potential air traffic control (ATC) procedures that could benefit from technology used or developed in NASA's Wake Vortex Advisory System (WakeVAS). The task also required developing an estimate of the potential benefits of the candidate procedures. The main thrust of the investigation was to evaluate opportunities for improved capacity and efficiency in airport arrival and departure operations. Other procedures that would provide safety enhancements were also considered. The purpose of this investigation was to provide input to the WakeVAS program office regarding the most promising areas of development for the program. A two-fold perspective was desired: First, identification of benefits from possible procedures enabled by both incremental components and the mature state of WakeVAS technology; second identification of procedures that could be expected to evolve from the current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) procedures. The evolution of procedures should provide meaningful increments of benefit and a low risk implementation of the WakeVAS technologies.

Lunsford, Clark R.↗

Helicopter main-rotor noise: Determination of source contributions using scaled model data

Acoustic data from a test of a 40 percent model MBB BO-105 helicopter main rotor are scaled to equivalent full-scale flyover cases. The test was conducted in the anechoic open test section of the German-Dutch Windtunnel (DNW). The measured data are in the form of acoustic pressure time histories and spectra from two out-of-flow microphones underneath and foward of the model. These are scaled to correspond to measurements made at locations 150 m below the flight path of a full-scale rotor. For the scaled data, a detailed analysis is given for the identification in the data of the noise contributions from different rotor noise sources. Key results include a component breakdown of the noise contributions, in terms of noise criteria calculations of a weighted sound pressure level (dBA) and perceived noise level (PNL), as functions of rotor advance ratio and descent angle. It is shown for the scaled rotor that, during descent, impulsive blade-vortex interaction (BVI) noise is the dominant contributor to the noise. In level flight and mild climb, broadband blade-turbulent wake interaction (BWI) noise is dominant due to the absence of BVI activity. At high climb angles, BWI is reduced and self-noise from blade boundary-layer turbulence becomes the most prominent.

Brooks, Thomas F.↗

Detection of severe storms by satellites

Ideas are presented for severe storm identification based on satellite data. The tops of huge thunderstorms in satellite pictures often appear as vast areas of extensive cirrus cloud; they consist of clusters of anvil clouds, each generated by vigorous thunderstorm circulation. The overshooting tops observed in satellite pictures are located where the subanvil updrafts are the strongest. Learjet experiment results show that an overshooting top varies either quickly or slowly, depending on the characteristics of individual clouds. When an overshooting top collapses, a small segment of the anvil cirrus jumps upward in the wake of the overshooting top. Also discussed is the monitoring of vertical motions from satellites and tornado-producing thunderstorms from geostationary altitude. A very high-resolution imagery of both infrared and visual spectral bands makes it possible to infer vertical motions beneath the anvil top. A combination of cloud velocity and anvil expansion rate will permit, in the future, determining the location of severe storms within the vast areas of anvil clouds.

Fujita, T. T.↗

Measurements by the plasma diagnostics package on STS-3

A comprehensive set of measurements about the orbiter environment are provided by the plasma diagnostics package (PDP). Ion and electron particle densities, energies, and spatial distribution functions; ion mass for identification of particular molecular ion species; and magnetic fields, electric fields and electromagnetic waves over a broad frequency range are studied. Shuttle environmental measurements will be made both on the pallet and, by use of the remote manipulator system (RMS), the PDP will be maneuvered in and external to the bay area to continue environmental measurements and to carry on a joint plasma experiment with the Utah State University fast-pulsed electron generator. Results of orbiter environment EMI measurements and S-band field strengths as well as preliminary results from wake search operations indicating wake boundary identifiers are reported.

Shawhan, S. D.↗

X-ray emission possibly coincident with the radio tail of PKS 0301 - 123

X-ray, radio, and optical observations are reported for a very poor cluster of galaxies containing the radio source PKS 0301 - 123. A long, 100,000 second X-ray observation using the Einstein Observatory's IPC resulted in the serendipitous discovery of a peculiar extended X-ray morphology associated with the poor cluster. The X-ray emission is extended in the same direction and is approximately the same length as the radio-tailed source, PKS 0301 - 123, which was mapped at 6 and 20 cm with the VLA. Optical redshift observations with the KPNO IIDS on the 2.1 m telescope confirm the identification of the X-ray and radio emission with the poor cluster at z = 0.1. It is argued that the X-ray extension is unlikely to be a chance coincidence of a background source projected onto the foreground cluster. Therefore, four possible mechanisms which might physically link the X-ray and radio emission are considered: thermal bremsstrahlung from a cluster with a flattened potential well; inverse Compton scattering of the relativistic electrons in the radio source, X-ray synchrotron radiation; and heating the cluster gas by the turbulent wake of the radio galaxy. The prospects for future observations of such X-ray/radio coincidences are briefly discussed.

Burns, J. O.↗