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A summary of activities of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board for the period January 1, 1985 to March 31, 1985 is given. Information is given on Space Technology Research activities.
Recent advances in aeronautical technologies which could produce revolutionary changes in transport aircraft if fully implemented are delineated. Laminar flow control offers a L/D improvement from the current 18 to 22 if used with a 767 configuration. Higher aspect and thickness/chord ratios could yield more efficient structural designs and further drag reduction. High-strength, fiber-reinforced composite structures can reduce structural weight by 10-30 percent. Improved engine cooling methods, higher stage loadings and exhaust temperatures can lower the SFC by 15 percent, engine weight by 15 percent, and the parts count by 50 percent. Aft-mounted counterrotating propellers can potentially decrease the SFC an additional 15-20 percent. Supersonic transport aircraft with L/D ratios of 18 and 70 seat miles/gal fuel efficiency can now be built that weigh half as much as the Concorde and carry the same load. The new SST would have superplastic-molded Al alloy structures.
The Aerial Medical Service of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications of Venezuela was created on June 1949, and later became the Department of Aeronautical Medicine. Its functions include the medical examinations of future pilots, navigators and flight engineers. The importance of good mental and physical health in all flight and ground personnel to ensure the safety of air travel is discussed.
An introduction to the physical aspects of solar energy, incidental energy and variations in solar flux is presented, along with an explanation of the physical principles of obtaining solar energy. The history of the application of solar energy to aeronautics, including the Gossamer Penguin and the Solar Challenger is given. Finally, an analysis of the possibilities of using a reaction motor with hybrid propulsion combining solar energy with traditional fuels as well as calculations of the proposed cycle and its mode of operation are given.
This publication is a chronology of events during the year 1977 in the fields of aeronautical and space research, development, activity, and policy. It includes appendixes, an index, and illustrations. Chronological entries list sources for further inquiry.
It is shown in the design of aeronautical control systems that sampling rate variations give rise to migrations of the discrete eigenvalues for both the plant and the controllers. In general, these migrations tend to degrade simulation fidelity and the overall performance of Ultrareliable Fault Tolerant Control Systems (UFTCS). These systems consist of a redundant asynchronous network of microprocessors which use sensor information to generate the servo commands that drive actuators, thrust linkages, etc. A change in the sampling period of a single microprocessor will, in addition to causing an eigenvalue shift, alter the magnitude of the servo command issued by the controller. The influence of these changes and the effect of initial conditions and skew are considered.
The Aeronautics Graduate Research Program commenced in 1971, with the primary goal of engaging students who qualified for regular admission to the Graduate School of Engineering at Old Dominion University in a graduate engineering research and study program in collaboration with NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. The format and purposes of this program are discussed. Student selection and program statistics are summarized. Abstracts are presented in the folowing areas: aircraft design, aerodynamics, lift/drag characteristics; avionics; fluid mechanics; solid mechanics; instrumentation and measurement techniques; thermophysical properties experiments; large space structures; earth orbital dynamics; and environmental engineering.
A survey of the free world's aeronautical facilities was undertaken and an evaluation made on where the relative strengths and weaknesses exist. Special emphasis is given to NASA's own capabilities and needs. The types of facilities surveyed are: Wind Tunnels; Airbreathing Propulsion Facilities; and Flight Simulators
The Fluid Dynamics Panel of AGARD arranged a Symposium on Applications of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Aeronautics, on 7 to 10 April 1986 in Aix-en-Provence, France. The purpose of the Symposium was to provide an assessment of the status of CFD in aerodynamic design and analysis, with an emphasis on emerging applications of advanced computational techniques to complex configurations. Sessions were devoted specifically to grid generation, methods for inviscid flows, calculations of viscous-inviscid interactions, and methods for solving the Navier-Stokes equations. The 31 papers presented at the meeting are published in AGARD Conference Proceedings CP-412 and are listed in the Appendix of this report. A brief synopsis of each paper and some general conclusions and recommendations are given.
The NASA Lewis Research Center is in the process of installing a new data acquisition and display system. This new system will provide small and medium sized aeronautics test facilities with a state-of-the-art real-time data acquisition and display system. The new data system will provide for the acquisition of signals from a variety of instrumentation sources. They include analog measurements of temperatures, pressures, and other steady state voltage inputs; frequency inputs to measure speed and flow; discrete I/O for significant events, and modular instrument systems such as multiplexed pressure modules or electronic instrumentation with a IEEE 488 interface. The data system is designed to acquire data, convert it to engineering units, compute test dependent performance calculations, limit check selected channels or calculations, and display the information in alphanumeric or graphical form with a cycle time of one second for the alphanumeric data. This paper describes the system configuration, its salient features, and the expected impact on testing.
Documented is an aeronautical geometry conversion package which translates wave-drag geometry into the Langley Wireframe Geometry Standard (LaWGS) format and then into a format which is used by the Supersonic Implicit Marching Potential (SIMP) program. The programs described were developed by Computer Sciences Corporation for the Advanced Vehicles Division/Advanced Concepts Branch at NASA Langley Research Center. Included also are the input and output from a benchmark test case.
A history is presented by using the most technologically significant research programs associated with the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory from 1917 to 1958 and those programs that, after preliminary research, seemed best to illustrate how the laboratory was organized, how it works, and how it cooperated with industry and the military.
The pattern of translation activity in aeronautics and astronautics is reviewed. It is argued that the international nature of the aerospace industry and the commercialization of space have increased the need for the translation of scientific literature in the aerospace field. Various factors which can affect the quality of translations are examined. The need to translate the activities of the Soviets, Germans, and French in materials science in microgravity, of the Japanese, Germans, and French in the development of industrial ceramics, and of the Chinese in launching and communications satellites is discussed. It is noted that due to increases in multilateral and bilateral relationships in the aerospace industry, the amount of translation from non-English source material into non-English text will increase and the most important languages will be French and German, with an increasing demand for Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Italian translations.
This is the 18th in a series of annual chronologies of significant events in the fields of astronautics and aeronautics. Events covered are international as well as national and political as well as scientific and technical. This series is a reference work for historians, NASA personnel, government agencies, congressional staffs, and the media.
The 1987 Johnson Space Center (JCS) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Summer Faculty Fellowship program was conducted by Texas A and M University and JSC. The 10-week program was operated under the auspices of ASEE. The basic objectives of the program are: to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; to stimulate an exchange of ideas between participants and NASA; to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants' institutions; and to contribute to the research objective of the NASA Centers. This document is a compilation of the final reports on the research projects done by the faculty fellows during the summer of 1987.
Fatigue and fracture problems continue to occur in aeronautical gas turbine engines. Components whose useful life is limited by these failure modes include turbine hot-section blades, vanes and disks. Safety considerations dictate that catastrophic failures be avoided, while economic considerations dictate that noncatastrophic failures occur as infrequently as possible. The design decision is therefore in making the tradeoff between engine performance and durability. The NASA Lewis Research Center has contributed to the aeropropulsion industry in the areas of life prediction technology for 30 years, developing creep and fatigue life prediction methodologies for hot-section materials. Emphasis is placed on the development of methods capable of handling both thermal and mechanical fatigue under severe environments. Recent accomplishments include the development of more accurate creep-fatigue life prediction methods such as the total strain version of Lewis' Strainrange Partitioning (SRP) and the HOST-developed Cyclic Damage Accumulation (CDA) model. Other examples include the Double Damage Curve Approach (DDCA), which provides greatly improved accuracy for cumulative fatigue design rules.
The master graphics interactive console (MAGIC) software package used on the Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) of the NASA Ames Research Center is described. MAGIC is a resident real-time research tool available to flight researchers-scientists in the NASA mission control centers of the WATR at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards, California. The hardware configuration and capabilities of the real-time software package are also discussed.
Arinc, an airline industry-owned and operated company in the United States, has taken steps toward establishing a global aeronautical satellite communications system. Plans call for initiation of a thin-route data operation in 1989, upgrading to establish voice communications via shared spot-beam transponders carried on other satellites, and deploying a worldwide network using dedicated satellites by 1994.