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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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NASA NTRS1993

Fractal image compression: A resolution independent representation for imagery

A deterministic fractal is an image which has low information content and no inherent scale. Because of their low information content, deterministic fractals can be described with small data sets. They can be displayed at high resolution since they are not bound by an inherent scale. A remarkable consequence follows. Fractal images can be encoded at very high compression ratios. This fern, for example is encoded in less than 50 bytes and yet can be displayed at resolutions with increasing levels of detail appearing. The Fractal Transform was discovered in 1988 by Michael F. Barnsley. It is the basis for a new image compression scheme which was initially developed by myself and Michael Barnsley at Iterated Systems. The Fractal Transform effectively solves the problem of finding a fractal which approximates a digital 'real world image'.

Sloan, Alan D.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Workshop on Harmonic Oscillators

Proceedings of a workshop on Harmonic Oscillators held at the College Park Campus of the University of Maryland on March 25 - 28, 1992 are presented. The harmonic oscillator formalism is playing an important role in many branches of physics. This is the simplest mathematical device which can connect the basic principle of physics with what is observed in the real world. The harmonic oscillator is the bridge between pure and applied physics.

Han, D.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Design study to simulate the development of a commercial transportation system

Seven teams of senior-level Aerospace Engineering undergraduates were given a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a design concept of a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV). The RPV designs were intended to simulate commercial transport aircraft within the model of 'Aeroworld.' The Aeroworld model was developed so that the RPV designs would be subject to many of the engineering problems and tradeoffs that dominate real-world commercial air transport designs, such as profitability, fuel efficiency, range vs. payload capabilities, and ease of production and maintenance. As part of the proposal, each team was required to construct a prototype and validate its design with a flight demonstration.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1991

Composites: A viable option

While it sounded great to be asked to talk about composites, I found it difficult to select subject areas that would be of real interest. My choice is based on saying some things about where the maturity of the composite aircraft structures is today and what that means in terms of future criteria for application. This focus was the basis for my title selection. The other issue that will be addressed was requested by NASA and focuses on composites structures cost. This fits well with the state-of-the-art interpretations I will discuss first, since the cost issue must be viewed from both the current status and future points of view. The difficulty in presenting something in these areas is not in the subjects themselves but in trying to present a real world viewpoint to an audience of composite experts. So, with recognition of the expertise of the audience, I hope you will see something in this presentation about how to view composite aircraft structure.

Mccarty, John E.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Near net shape processing: A necessity for advanced materials applications

High quality discrete parts are the backbones for successful operation of equipment used in transportation, communication, construction, manufacturing, and appliances. Traditional shapemaking for discrete parts is carried out predominantly by machining, or removing unwanted material to produce the desired shape. As the cost and complexity of modern materials escalates, coupled with the expense and environmental hazards associated with handling of scrap, it is increasingly important to develop near net shape processes for these materials. Such processes involve casting of liquid materials, consolidation of powder materials, or deformation processing of simple solid shapes into the desired shape. Frequently, several of these operations may be used in sequence to produce a finished part. The processes for near net shape forming may be applied to any type of material, including metals, polymers, ceramics, and their composites. The ability to produce shapes is the key to implementation of laboratory developments in materials science into real world applications. This seminar presents an overview of near net shapemaking processes, some application examples, current developments, and future research opportunities.

Kuhn, Howard A.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Free return trajectories for Mars missions

Free return trajectories in earth-Mars mission opportunities between 2000 and 2020 are identified and tradeoffs in mission design involving such trajectories are considered. A method of searching for trajectories containing no deterministic maneuvers is developed which is suitable for generating contours. Sample contours are presented for the trajectories and are used to show the variations in trajectory parameters found in the real world.

Wolf, Aron A.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Nondestructive evaluation of Shuttle Columbia tiles

The NDE of Orbiter Vehicle-102 tile bonds, performed in August 1991, is described. The evaluation was carried out in order to help NASA develop fast, reliable methods to diagnose problems in tile bonding other than the present 'pull' and 'wiggle' tests. The NDE did not find any indication of bond problems, and all bonds were classified as 'nominal'. The feasibility of using NDE techniques in a dynamic, real-world environment without interfering with Shuttle rework schedules is shown. The data will be useful in verifying analytical models of tile behavior developed at the University of Central Florida. The need for a tile test bed containing known tile misbonds is suggested.

Davis, Richard M.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Exocentric judgements in real environments and stereoscopic displays

Spatial direction errors during interpretation of perspective images, such as 3D map displays, may originate from misjudgment of the orientation of the viewing direction used to make the display. One source of these errors could be perceptual evidence of the display surface. Two experiments are reported in which the same judgment exocentric task was presented, but the cues to the picture surface were reduced or eliminated by presenting the task as a stereoscopic, virtual image or by a geometrically matched physical model. A theory developed to model exocentric direction errors on perspective displays has been fitted to the data from these two experiments. The parameters estimated from the fit in both experiments indicate that the subjects may be more correctly estimating the viewing direction than in ordinary perspective displays. Consequently, in some real world or stereo viewing conditions, errors in estimating the viewing direction are not likely to dominate exocentric direction errors.

Ellis, Stephen R.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Application of velocity filtering to optical-flow passive ranging

The performance of the velocity filtering method as applied to optical-flow passive ranging under real-world conditions is evaluated. The theory of the 3-D Fourier transform as applied to constant-speed moving points is reviewed, and the space-domain shift-and-add algorithm is derived from the general 3-D matched filtering formulation. The constant-speed algorithm is then modified to fit the actual speed encountered in the optical flow application, and the passband of that filter is found in terms of depth (sensor/object distance) so as to cover any given range of depths. Two algorithmic solutions for the problems associated with pixel interpolation and object expansion are developed, and experimental results are presented.

Barniv, Yair↗
NASA NTRS1992

Cerebellar neurocontroller project, for aerospace applications, in a civilian neurocomputing initiative in the 'decade of the brain'

A key question is how to utilize civilian government agencies along with an industrial consortium to successfully complement the so far primarily defense-oriented neural network research. Civilian artificial neural system projects, such as artificial cerebellar neurocontrollers aimed at duplicating nature's existing neural network solutions for adaptive sensorimotor coordination, are proposed by such a synthesis. The cerebellum provides an intelligent interface between higher possibly symbolic levels of human intelligence and repetitious demands of real world conventional controllers. The generation of such intelligent interfaces could be crucial to the economic feasibility of the human settlement of space and an improvement in telerobotics techniques to permit the cost-effective exploitation of nonterrestrial materials and planetary exploration and monitoring. The authors propose a scientific framework within which such interagency activities could effectively cooperate.

Pellionisz, Andras J.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Modeling and analysis of the Space Station Freedom Active Thermal Control System radiators using SINDA/FLUINT

Detailed SINDA/FLUINT models have been developed to assess the adequacy of the Space Station Freedom External Thermal Control System's radiator design, as well as to simulate the effects of various operational scenarios. Design margins can be deduced by quantifying such real-world effects as flow maldistribution due to line-pressure drop and uneven heat loads. The factor which most reduced the heat-rejection capacity is an uneven heat load split between the two low temperature loops.

Andish, Kambiz K.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A doubly periodic moment method solution for the analysis and design of an absorber covered wall

The periodic moment method (PMM) solution for scattering from a doubly periodic array of lossy dielectric bodies is developed in this paper. The purpose of this study is to design electromagnetic wedge and pyramidal absorber for low reflectivity so that one can improve the performance of anechoic chamber measurements. The spectral-domain formulation and the moment method volume polarization current approach are applied to obtain the expressions used to determine the scattering from a doubly periodic array of lossy dielectric bodies. Through these studies, some wedge and pyramidal absorber configurations have been designed, fabricated, and then tested in the OSU/ESL compact range measurement facility. In this paper, wedge absorber, commercial pyramidal absorber, and some low-frequency pyramidal absorber designs are presented. By considering the complexity of dealing with real-world material structures, good agreement between calculations and measurements has been obtained.

Yang, Chang-Fa↗
NASA NTRS1993

Vision based obstacle detection and grouping for helicopter guidance

Electro-optical sensors can be used to compute range to objects in the flight path of a helicopter. The computation is based on the optical flow/motion at different points in the image. The motion algorithms provide a sparse set of ranges to discrete features in the image sequence as a function of azimuth and elevation. For obstacle avoidance guidance and display purposes, these discrete set of ranges, varying from a few hundreds to several thousands, need to be grouped into sets which correspond to objects in the real world. This paper presents a new method for object segmentation based on clustering the sparse range information provided by motion algorithms together with the spatial relation provided by the static image. The range values are initially grouped into clusters based on depth. Subsequently, the clusters are modified by using the K-means algorithm in the inertial horizontal plane and the minimum spanning tree algorithms in the image plane. The object grouping allows interpolation within a group and enables the creation of dense range maps. Researchers in robotics have used densely scanned sequence of laser range images to build three-dimensional representation of the outside world. Thus, modeling techniques developed for dense range images can be extended to sparse range images. The paper presents object segmentation results for a sequence of flight images.

Sridhar, Banavar↗
NASA NTRS1985

Results of an observing system simulation experiment based on the proposed Windsat instrument

Two fraternal twin experiments were conducted as part of this study. A data impact experiment using real data (runs 1 and 2) was conducted to assess the impact that rawin wind observations have on both a 5-day assimilation and a single 5-day forecast generated at the end of each assimilation. An observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) using simulated observations (runs 3, 4, and 5) was conducted in order to first calibrate the OSSE results and second to use this calibration to estimate the 'real world' impact from the contribution of global 3-dimensional wind profiles generated from a space-based lidar system known as Windsat. Each of the three runs in the seond experiment were also 5-day assimilation runs with a 5-day forecast initialized from the last 6-hour update cycle of the assimilation. The data impact study revealed a consistent positive impact when rawin winds were added back into an otherwise complete FGGE data set. Both the 6-hour and 5-day forecasts were improved at all levels, in both hemispheres, and for both the wind and the geopotential height fields. Similar results were obtained from the two parallel simulation runs, 3 and 4. Together with the results from runs 1 and 2, calibration coefficients were generated so as to 'correct' the results determined from the addition of Windsat winds (run 5). The Windsat simulation showed a positive improvement in all cases studied. Even though only the tropics were enhanced with these wind observations, hemispheric rms errors were decreased in both the assimilation and 5-day forecast. The 6-hour forecasts of zonal wind from the assimilation run were improved by as much as 50 pct. on the average, and the single forecast showed an average improvement of near 30 pct. Even though these calibrated values are considered too optimistic, the skill of the forecast generated from this run extended the useful forecast period by 18-24 hours.

Arnold, Charles P., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Advanced data management system architectures testbed

The objective of the Architecture and Tools Testbed is to provide a working, experimental focus to the evolving automation applications for the Space Station Freedom data management system. Emphasis is on defining and refining real-world applications including the following: the validation of user needs; understanding system requirements and capabilities; and extending capabilities. The approach is to provide an open, distributed system of high performance workstations representing both the standard data processors and networks and advanced RISC-based processors and multiprocessor systems. The system provides a base from which to develop and evaluate new performance and risk management concepts and for sharing the results. Participants are given a common view of requirements and capability via: remote login to the testbed; standard, natural user interfaces to simulations and emulations; special attention to user manuals for all software tools; and E-mail communication. The testbed elements which instantiate the approach are briefly described including the workstations, the software simulation and monitoring tools, and performance and fault tolerance experiments.

Grant, Terry↗
NASA NTRS1993

Psychophysiological measures of cognitive workload in laboratory and flight

Psychophysiological data have been recorded during different levels of cognitive workload in laboratory and flight settings. Cardiac, eye blink, and brain data have shown meaningful changes as a function of the levels of mental workload. Increased cognitive workload is generally associated with increased heart rates, decreased blink rates and eye closures, and decreased evoked potential amplitudes. However, comparisons of laboratory and flight data show that direct transference of laboratory findings to the flight environment is not possible in many cases. While the laboratory data are valuable, a data base from flight is required so that 'real world' data can be properly interpreted.

Wilson, Glenn F.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Transfer of training for aerospace operations: How to measure, validate, and improve it

It has been a commonly accepted practice to train pilots and astronauts in expensive, extremely sophisticated, high fidelity simulators, with as much of the real-world feel and response as possible. High fidelity and high validity have often been assumed to be inextricably interwoven, although this assumption may not be warranted. The Project Mercury rate-damping task on the Naval Air Warfare Center's Human Centrifuge Dynamic Flight Simulator, the shuttle landing task on the NASA-ARC Vertical Motion Simulator, and the almost complete acceptance by the airline industry of full-up Boeing 767 flight simulators, are just a few examples of this approach. For obvious reasons, the classical models of transfer of training have never been adequately evaluated in aerospace operations, and there have been few, if any, scientifically valid replacements for the classical models. This paper reviews some of the earlier work involving transfer of training in aerospace operations, and discusses some of the methods by which appropriate criteria for assessing the validity of training may be established.

Cohen, Malcolm M.↗
NASA NTRS1992

View generated database

This document represents the final report for the View Generated Database (VGD) project, NAS7-1066. It documents the work done on the project up to the point at which all project work was terminated due to lack of project funds. The VGD was to provide the capability to accurately represent any real-world object or scene as a computer model. Such models include both an accurate spatial/geometric representation of surfaces of the object or scene, as well as any surface detail present on the object. Applications of such models are numerous, including acquisition and maintenance of work models for tele-autonomous systems, generation of accurate 3-D geometric/photometric models for various 3-D vision systems, and graphical models for realistic rendering of 3-D scenes via computer graphics.

Downward, James G.↗