SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “multiple scale”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 379 records · Page 21

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS2015

Space Launch System Scale Model Acoustic Test Ignition Overpressure Testing

The overpressure phenomenon is a transient fluid dynamic event occurring during rocket propulsion system ignition. This phenomenon results from fluid compression of the accelerating plume gas, subsequent rarefaction, and subsequent propagation from the exhaust trench and duct holes. The high-amplitude unsteady fluid-dynamic perturbations can adversely affect the vehicle and surrounding structure. Commonly known as ignition overpressure (IOP), this is an important design-to environment for the Space Launch System (SLS) that NASA is currently developing. Subscale testing is useful in validating and verifying the IOP environment. This was one of the objectives of the Scale Model Acoustic Test (SMAT), conducted at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The test data quantifies the effectiveness of the SLS IOP suppression system and improves the analytical models used to predict the SLS IOP environments. The reduction and analysis of the data gathered during the SMAT IOP test series requires identification and characterization of multiple dynamic events and scaling of the event waveforms to provide the most accurate comparisons to determine the effectiveness of the IOP suppression systems. The identification and characterization of the overpressure events, the waveform scaling, the computation of the IOP suppression system knockdown factors, and preliminary comparisons to the analytical models are discussed.

Nance, Donald K.↗

NASA NTRS1976

Vibration ride comfort criteria

Results are presented for an experimental study directed to derive equal vibration discomfort curves, to determine the influence of vibration masking in order to account for the total discomfort of any random vibration, and to develop a scale of total vibration discomfort in the case of human response to whole-body vertical vibration. Discomfort is referred to as a subjective discomfort associated with the acceleration level of a particular frequency band. It is shown that passenger discomfort to whole-body vibration increases linearly with acceleration level for each frequency. Empirical data provide a mechanism for determining the degree of masking (or summation) of the discomfort of multiple frequency vibration. A scale for the prediction of passenger discomfort is developed.

Dempsey, T. K.↗

NASA NTRS2017

A Comparison of System Architectures for a Mechanically Pumped Two-Phase Thermal Control System

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a mechanically pumped two-phase fluid loop thermal control system to enable novel mission designs and greater science return. Pumped two-phase fluid loops have the potential to provide robust and effective thermal control that combine the best aspects of passive two-phase systems (heat pipes) and mechanically pumped single-phase fluid loops. The current program requirements include the development of a system with multiple 1 sq.m evaporators, each of which is capable of remaining spatially and temporally isothermal while accommodating heat loads of up to 500 W and local fluxes of up to 5 W/sq.cm. The goal is to attain this using less than 5 W of power. Such a system would be able to accommodate the next generation of payload and bus electronics while using minimal resources. This paper compares two different mechanically pumped two-phase fluid loop architectures in the context of these requirements. A mixed flow and separated flow architecture are compared on a theoretical and experimental basis. Test data from sub-scale, single evaporator/single condenser, mixed flow and separated flow testbeds are presented. In addition, a model is introduced to better understand separated flow systems and some expressions for the theoretical performance limits of such systems are developed. To date, the investigation suggests that a separated flow architecture is better suited to the program requirements. Separated flow systems have the potential to accommodate an isothermalizing two-phase evaporator while using lower levels of power than would be required for a mixed flow system. In addition, it is argued that separated flow systems are more robust and amenable to analysis than mixed flow systems, since they significantly reduce the occurrence of two-phase flow by separating phases in the evaporator. Future work will include developing a full-scale testbed that includes multiple evaporators and condensers in a representative flight configuration.

Furst, Benjamin↗

NASA NTRS1984

Structure and evolution of the large scale solar and heliospheric magnetic fields

Structure and evolution of large scale photospheric and coronal magnetic fields in the interval 1976-1983 were studied using observations from the Stanford Solar Observatory and a potential field model. The solar wind in the heliosphere is organized into large regions in which the magnetic field has a componenet either toward or away from the sun. The model predicts the location of the current sheet separating these regions. Near solar minimum, in 1976, the current sheet lay within a few degrees of the solar equator having two extensions north and south of the equator. Soon after minimum the latitudinal extent began to increase. The sheet reached to at least 50 deg from 1978 through 1983. The complex structure near maximum occasionally included multiple current sheets. Large scale structures persist for up to two years during the entire interval. To minimize errors in determining the structure of the heliospheric field particular attention was paid to decreasing the distorting effects of rapid field evolution, finding the optimum source surface radius, determining the correction to the sun's polar field, and handling missing data. The predicted structure agrees with direct interplanetary field measurements taken near the ecliptic and with coronameter and interplanetary scintillation measurements which infer the three dimensional interplanetary magnetic structure. During most of the solar cycle the heliospheric field cannot be adequately described as a dipole.

Hoeksema, J. T.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Flowfield And Download Measurements And Computation of a Tiltrotor Aircraft In Hover

A multipart study of the V-22 hover flowfield was conducted. Testing involved a 0.15-scale semispan model with multiple independent force balance systems. The velocity flowfield surrounding the airframe was measured using a robotic positioning system and anemometer. Both time averaged and cycle-averaged results are reported. It is shown that the fuselage download in hover can be significantly reduced using a small download reduction device. Measurements indicate that the success of the device is attributed to the substantial elimination of tiltrotor fountain flow. As part of.the study, an unsteady CFD prediction is time-averaged, and shown to have excellent agreement in predicting the baseline configuration fountain flow. Some discrepancies at the outboard edge of the rotor are discussed. An &&sessment of an advanced tip shape rotor comp"'Ietes the study. Derived from a nonrotating study, the advanced tip shape rotor was developed and tested on the Bell 0.15 scale semi-span V-22 model. The tip shape was intended to diffuse the tip vortex and reduce BVI noise. Rotor wake vorticity is extracted from the measured velocity dam to show that the advanced tip shape produces a tip vortex that is only slightly more diffuse than the baseline tip blade. The results indicate that nonrotating tests may overpredict the amount of tip vortex diffusion achieved by tip shape design in a rotating environment.

Brand, Albert G.↗

NASA NTRS2021

Combining Satellite Data and Spatial Analysis to Assess the UHI Amplitude and Structure within Urban Areas: The Case of Moroccan Cities

Landsat-8 surface temperature and the European Space Agency land cover are used to assess the impact of land cover on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) and Urban Heat Sink (UHS). We analyzed five Moroccan cities selected for their different local climate, size, and typology during summer at three different spatial scales. The results show multiple causes defining the different forms and amplitudes of the UHI, namely: the ambient climate, the proximity to the sea, the presence of landscaped areas, and the color of building roofs and walls. Contrary to what was expected, the vegetation was not systematically an island of coolness, either because of its typology or its irrigation status. In the coastal cities of Tangier and Casablanca, UHIs around 20°C are observed on the seaside, whereas a UHS of up to 11°C is observed between the city center and the southern periphery of Casablanca. A moderate amplitude UHI of 7°C is formed in the mountainous city of Ifrane. For cities built in desert-like environments, well-defined UHSs between 9°C and 12°C are observed in Smara and Marrakech, respectively. At a finer scale, towns recorded lower temperatures than their immediate surroundings, which are attributed to evaporation from irrigated plants.

Laila El Ghazouani↗

NASA NTRS2003

Optical-Quality Thin Polymer Membranes

A method of fabricating both curved and flat thin polymer membranes of optical quality has been developed. The method was originally intended to enable the fabrication of lightweight membrane imaging and interferometric optics, possibly with apertures multiple meters wide, for use in scientific instruments that would operate in outer space. The method may also be applicable to the fabrication of lightweight membrane optics for terrestrial use. The method involves flow-casting of a soluble polymer with mechanical and environmental controls that provide nearly ideal conditions for the formation of a membrane. The preferred environmental conditions and other details of the process depend on the choice of polymer and substrate material and on the shape and size of the membrane to be cast. Once the polymer has dried to a membrane, it is cured with convective heating, then released. Membranes with root-mean-square surface roughnesses of less than 10.5 can be produced routinely by this method. Variations in the thicknesses of the membranes have ranged from 1/3 wavelength down to as little as 1/20 wavelength (at a wavelength of 633 nm). Membranes fabricated thus far have had diameters up to 0.5 m, and there appears to be no major obstacle to scaling up to multiple-meter diameters.

Moore, James↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Alternative Setup for Long-Duration Low-Duty-Cycle 600°C Ambient Testing of SiC Integrated Circuits

A scalable, compact oven testbed system for simultaneously evaluating a multitude of high temperature integrated circuits (ICs) for prolonged operating times of up to 600 °C has been prototyped. The new testbed system enables long-duration high temperature testing in sufficient statistical quantities consistent with standard aerospace electronics engineering standards. This setup is comprised of multiple compact ovens housing chips or packages mounted to ceramic circuit boards. Each oven is a compact 15.2 cm length by 15.2 cm width by 12.7 cm depth with a maximum 400 Watts of heating power. The custom-made silicon oxide ceramic heating block inside each oven is based on a 3D printed design adapted for the easy insertion of the IC device under test (DUT). This innovative design provides the quick insertion of ICs with or without a ceramic package into a 600 °C environment by utilizing a movable 11.43 cm long ceramic substrate with electrical traces extending from the oven hot zone to external standard plastic-based board connectors. Another key oven design feature is the minimization of the DUT exposure to electromagnetic interference (EMI) by utilizing a filtered DC power source to reduce heating element noise. Additionally, the ovens can be configured in a parallel arrangement allowing global data monitoring over a single industrial RS422 serial port. This feature is important for scaling up to test multiple ICs semi-simultaneously. A USB serial port is provided to independently control the operating parameters of each oven such as the oven target temperature and oven ramp rate. The oven temperature can reach up to 600 °C with a confirmed +/- 4 °C maximum deviation across the test zone region. The ramp rate can be programmed from 1 °C/minute up to 10 °C/minute. Furthermore, a programmable switchboard is used to interface with the DUT. This switchboard comprises a National Instruments Peripheral Component Interconnect eXtension for Instrumentation (NI PXI) system and a breakout board to send and receive power, analog or digital test signals. By using this unique oven testbed system, a variety of ICs can now be tested in parallel using the same test components configured for a diverse set of requirements.

DC Powered Oven↗

NASA NTRS2010

Bird Migration Under Climate Change - A Mechanistic Approach Using Remote Sensing

The broad-scale reductions and shifts that may be expected under climate change in the availability and quality of stopover habitat for long-distance migrants is an area of increasing concern for conservation biologists. Researchers generally have taken two broad approaches to the modeling of migration behaviour to understand the impact of these changes on migratory bird populations. These include models based on causal processes and their response to environmental stimulation, "mechanistic models", or models that primarily are based on observed animal distribution patterns and the correlation of these patterns with environmental variables, i.e. "data driven" models. Investigators have applied the latter technique to forecast changes in migration patterns with changes in the environment, for example, as might be expected under climate change, by forecasting how the underlying environmental data layers upon which the relationships are built will change over time. The learned geostatstical correlations are then applied to the modified data layers.. However, this is problematic. Even if the projections of how the underlying data layers will change are correct, it is not evident that the statistical relationships will remain the same, i.e. that the animal organism may not adapt its' behaviour to the changing conditions. Mechanistic models that explicitly take into account the physical, biological, and behaviour responses of an organism as well as the underlying changes in the landscape offer an alternative to address these shortcomings. The availability of satellite remote sensing observations at multiple spatial and temporal scales, coupled with advances in climate modeling and information technologies enable the application of the mechanistic models to predict how continental bird migration patterns may change in response to environmental change. In earlier work, we simulated the impact of effects of wetland loss and inter-annual variability on the fitness of migratory shorebirds in the central fly ways of North America. We demonstrated the phenotypic plasticity of a migratory population of Pectoral sandpipers consisting of an ensemble of 10,000 individual birds in response to changes in stopover locations using an individual based migration model driven by remotely sensed land surface data, climate data and biological field data. With the advent of new computing capabilities enabled hy recent GPU-GP computing paradigms and commodity hardware, it now is possible to simulate both larger ensemble populations and to incorporate more realistic mechanistic factors into migration models. Here, we take our first steps use these tools to study the impact of long-term drought variability on shorebird survival.

Smith, James A.↗

NASA NTRS2023

Climate Variability and Simultaneous Breadbasket Yield Shocks as Observed in Long-Term Yield Records

That climate variability and change can potentially force multiple simultaneous breadbasket crop yield shocks has been established. But research quantifying the mechanisms behind such simultaneous shocks has been constrained by short records of crop yields. Here we compile a dataset of subnational crop yields in 25 countries dating back to 1900 to study the frequency and trends in multiple breadbasket yield shocks and how large-scale climate anomalies on interannual timescales have affected multiple breadbasket yield shocks over the last century. We find that major simultaneous breadbasket yield shocks have occurred in at least three, four, or five of nine breadbaskets 10.3%, 2.3% and 1.1% of the time for maize and 18.4%, 4.6% and 2.3% of the time for wheat. Furthermore, we find that multiple breadbasket yield shocks decreased in frequency even as those breadbaskets experience increasingly frequent climate-related shocks. For both maize and wheat breadbaskets, there were fewer simultaneous yield shocks during the 1975–2017 time period as compared to 1931–1975. Finally, we find that interannual modes of climate variability - such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) - have all affected the relative probability of simultaneous yield shocks in pairs of breadbaskets by up to 20–40% in both maize and wheat breadbaskets. While past literature has focused on the effects of ENSO, we find that at the global scale the NAO affects the overall number of wheat yield shocks most strongly despite only affecting northern hemisphere breadbaskets.

agriculture↗

NASA NTRS1975

Dense plasma focus production in a hypocycloidal pinch

A type of high-power pinch apparatus consisting of disk electrodes was developed, and diagnostic measurements to study its mechanism of dense plasma production were made. The collapse fronts of the current sheets are well organized, and dense plasma focuses are produced on the axis with radial stability in excess of 5 microns. A plasma density greater than 10 to the 18th power/cubic cm was determined with Stark broadening and CO2 laser absorption. A plasma temperature of approximately 1 keV was measured with differential transmission of soft X-rays through thin foils. Essentially complete absorption of a high-energy CO2 laser beam was observed. The advantages of this apparatus over the coaxial plasma focus are in (1) the plasma volume, (2) the stability, (3) the containment time, (4) the easy access to additional heating by laser or electron beams, and (5) the possibility of scaling up to a multiple array for high-power operation.

Lee, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS1977

X-ray emission from high temperature plasmas

The physical processes occurring in plasma focus devices were investigated with particular emphasis on X-ray emission. Topics discussed include: trajectories of high energy electrons; detection of ion trajectories; spatial distribution of neutron emission; space and time resolved emission of hard X-rays from a plasma focus; the staged plasma focus as a variation of the hypocloidal pinch; formation of current sheets in a staged plasma focus; and X-ray and neutron emission from a staged plasma focus. The possibility of operating dense plasma-focus type devices in multiple arrays beyond the scaling law for a single gun is discussed.

Harries, W. L.↗

NASA NTRS1977

Production of dense plasmas in a hypocycloidal pinch apparatus

A high-power pinch apparatus consisting of disk electrodes was developed, and diagnostic measurements to study its mechanism of dense plasma production have been made. The collapse fronts of the current sheets are well organized, and dense plasma foci are produced on the axis with radial stability in excess of 5 microsec. A plasma density greater than 10 to the 18th power per cu cm is determined with Stark broadening and CO2 laser absorption. Essentially complete absorption of a high-energy CO2 laser beam has been observed. A plasma temperature of approximately 1 keV is measured with differential transmission of soft X-rays through thin foils. The advantages of this apparatus over the coaxial plasma focus are improvements in (1) plasma volume, (2) stability, (3) containment time, (4) access to additional heating by laser or electron beams, and (5) the possibility of scaling up to a multiple array for high-power operation.

Lee, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Some characteristic cosmic ray events and an attempt at their explanation

Some cosmic ray events with very large multiplicities and very high transverse momenta have recently been reported in balloon-borne emulsion chamber experiments. The explanation for these events by the standard approaches has become a bit problematical. An attempt has been made in this paper to understand and interpret them in the light of a dynamical model of multihadron production phenomena with power-law nature of average multiplicity and automatic scale-breaking derived in the model.

Bhattacharyya, S.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Atlas of Comet Halley 1910 II

With the impending return of Halley's Comet in 1986, a major effort began to collect the material obtained at its last appearance in 1910. This material displays the evolving coma and tail phenomena, and is useful for comparison with the present quantitative studies of spectroscopic and structural phenomena. Images in the atlas are arranged in chronological order by day. Days that have multiple images with varying scale are arranged in two sequences. Photographs showing tail phenomena are first, followed by photographs obtained with longer focus instruments showing the head or near-nuclear region. Drawings of Comet Halley, made from visual observations in 1835 and 1910, also are included.

Bertram Donn↗

NASA NTRS1990

Development of multiple source data processing for structural analysis at a regional scale

Various image processing techniques developed for enhancement and extraction of linear features, of interest to the structural geologist, from digital remote sensing, geologic, and gravity data, are presented. These techniques include: (1) automatic detection of linear features and construction of rose diagrams from Landsat MSS data; (2) enhancement of principal structural directions using selective filters on Landsat MSS, Spacelab panchromatic, and HCMM NIR data; (3) directional filtering of Spacelab panchromatic data using Fast Fourier Transform; (4) detection of linear/elongated zones of high thermal gradient from thermal infrared data; and (5) extraction of strong gravimetric gradients from digitized Bouguer anomaly maps. Processing results can be compared to each other through the use of a geocoded database to evaluate the structural importance of each lineament according to its depth: superficial structures in the sedimentary cover, or deeper ones affecting the basement. These image processing techniques were successfully applied to achieve a better understanding of the transition between Provence and the Pyrenees structural blocks, in southeastern France, for an improved structural interpretation of the Mediterranean region.

Carrere, Veronique↗

NASA NTRS1991

Modular VLSI Reed-Solomon Decoder

Proposed Reed-Solomon decoder contains multiple very-large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuit chips of same type. Each chip contains sets of logic cells and subcells performing functions from all stages of decoding process. Full decoder assembled by concatenating chips, with selective utilization of cells in particular chips. Cost of development reduced by factor of 5. In addition, decoder programmable in field and switched between 8-bit and 10-bit symbol sizes.

Hsu, In-Shek↗

NASA NTRS1993

Boundary conditions and the simulation of low Mach number flows

The problem of accurately computing low Mach number flows, with the specific intent of studying the interaction of sound waves with incompressible flow structures, such as concentrations of vorticity is considered. This is a multiple time (and/or space) scales problem, leading to various difficulties in the design of numerical methods. Concentration is on one of these difficulties - the development of boundary conditions at artificial boundaries which allow sound waves and vortices to radiate to the far field. Nonlinear model equations are derived based on assumptions about the scaling of the variables. Then these are linearized about a uniform flow and exact boundary conditions are systematically derived using transform methods. Finally, useful approximations to the exact conditions which are valid for small Mach number and small viscosity are computed.

Hagstrom, Thomas↗