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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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At least 415 records · Page 23

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NASA NTRS1987

Summary of studies to reduce wing-mounted propfan installation drag on an M = 0.8 transport

Powerplant installation losses for an advanced, high-speed, turboprop transport have been investigated in the Ames Research Center Transonic Wind Tunnels as a part of the NASA Advanced Turboprop Program (ATP). Force and pressure tests have been completed at Mach numbers from 0.6 to 0.82 on baseline and modified powered-model configurations to determine the magnitude of the losses and to what extent current design tools could be used to optimize the installed performance of turboprop propulsion systems designed to cruise at M = 0.8. Results of the tests indicate a large reduction in installed drag for the modified configuration. The wing-mounted power plant caused destabilizing pitching moments and a negative shift in the zero-lift pitching moment.

Smith, Ronald C.↗

NASA NTRS1997

Logic Design Pathology and Space Flight Electronics

Logic design errors have been observed in space flight missions and the final stages of ground test. The technologies used by designers and their design/analysis methodologies will be analyzed. This will give insight to the root causes of the failures. These technologies include discrete integrated circuit based systems, systems based on field and mask programmable logic, and the use computer aided engineering (CAE) systems. State-of-the-art (SOTA) design tools and methodologies will be analyzed with respect to high-reliability spacecraft design and potential pitfalls are discussed. Case studies of faults from large expensive programs to "smaller, faster, cheaper" missions will be used to explore the fundamental reasons for logic design problems.

Katz, Richard↗

NASA NTRS2017

Computational Assessment of a 3-Stage Axial Compressor Which Provides Airflow to the NASA 11- by 11-Foot Transonic Wind Tunnel, Including Design Changes for Increased Performance

A 24 foot diameter 3-stage axial compressor powered by variable-speed induction motors provides the airflow in the closed-return 11- by 11-Foot Transonic Wind Tunnel (11-Foot TWT) Facility at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. The facility is part of the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel, which was completed in 1955. Since then, upgrades made to the 11-Foot TWT such as flow conditioning devices and instrumentation have increased blockage and pressure loss in the tunnel, somewhat reducing the peak Mach number capability of the test section. Due to erosion effects on the existing aluminum alloy rotor blades, fabrication of new steel rotor blades is planned. This presents an opportunity to increase the Mach number capability of the tunnel by redesigning the compressor for increased pressure ratio. Challenging design constraints exist for any proposed design, demanding the use of the existing driveline, rotor disks, stator vanes, and hub and casing flow paths, so as to minimize cost and installation time. The current effort was undertaken to characterize the performance of the existing compressor design using available design tools and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes and subsequently recommend a new compressor design to achieve higher pressure ratio, which directly correlates with increased test section Mach number. The constant cross-sectional area of the compressor leads to highly diffusion factors, which presents a challenge in simulating the existing design. The CFD code APNASA was used to simulate the aerodynamic performance of the existing compressor. The simulations were compared to performance predictions from the HT0300 turbomachinery design and analysis code, and to compressor performance data taken during a 1997 facility test. It was found that the CFD simulations were sensitive to endwall leakages associated with stator buttons, and to a lesser degree, under-stator-platform flow recirculation at the hub. When stator button leakages were modeled, pumping capability increased by over 20 of pressure rise at design point due to a large reduction in aerodynamic blockage at the hub. Incorporating the stator button leakages was crucial to matching test data. Under-stator-platform flow recirculation was thought to be large due to a lack of seals. The effect of this recirculation was assessed with APNASA simulations recirculating 0.5, 1, and 2 of inlet flow about stators 1 and 2, modeled as axisymmetric mass flux boundary conditions on the hub before and after the vanes. The injection of flow ahead of the stators tended to re-energize the boundary layer and reduce hub separations, resulting in about 3 increased stall margin per 1 of inlet flow recirculated. In order to assess the value of the flow recirculation, a mixing plane simulation of the compressor which gridded the under-stator cavities was generated using the ADPAC CFD code. This simulation indicated that about 0.65 of the inlet flow is recirculated around each shrouded stator. This collective information was applied during the redesign of the compressor. A potential design was identified using HT0300 which improved overall pressure ratio by removing pre-swirl into rotor 1, replacing existing NASA 65 series rotors with double circular arc sections, and re-staggering rotors and the existing stators. The performance of the new design predicted by APNASA and HT0300 is compared to the existing design.

Turbomachinery↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Application of the CATNLF Design Method to a Transonic Transport Empennage Using CDISC

A novel Crossflow Attenuated Natural Laminar Flow (CATNLF) design method has been developed to achieve laminar flow on aircraft empennage at transonic flight conditions. This approach has been applied to the design of a nonlifting vertical tail using CDISC, a knowledgebased aerodynamic design tool developed at the NASA Langley Research Center. A horizontal tail was also designed using an enhanced CATNLF design approach for low-lift components. CDISC was coupled with USM3D-ME, a Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics solver. Stability and transition software was used to determine the laminar extent on the surfaces. Results indicate laminar flow can be sustained at midcruise conditions to about x/c=0.40 on the vertical tail and as much as x/c=0.65 on the horizontal tail lower surface. Transonic longitudinal off-design analysis indicates minimal change in the laminar extent. However, nonzero sideslip angles at transonic conditions can cause premature transition relative to the midcruise condition.

Brent W. Pomeroy↗

NASA NTRS1966

Report on explosive sizing of 70-inch diameter welded aluminum preforms from 5086, 2014 T4 and 2014 T6 material Final report, 5 Dec. 1961 - 30 Mar. 1962

Explosive sizing of 70-inch diameter welded aluminum preforms and tool design of explosive form die

ALUMINUM↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Improving Quantification of Medical Evacuation Risk for Human Spaceflight in the IMPACT Model

Traditionally, mission planners have used a heuristic and qualitative approach to design medical systems based on prior experience however this approach may result in high variability and implicit bias to design and could put missions and crewmembers at risk. The Informing Mission Planning through Analysis of Complex Tradespaces (IMPACT) tool is a probabilistic risk assessment tool designed by NASA to model medical risk in long duration missions outside of low earth orbit (LEO). This tool can quantify risk metrics such as risk of crewmember death, loss of crew task time, and the need for medical evacuation to better inform and augment the more traditional approach to medical system design. The risk metric of Return to Definitive Care (RTDC) represents the likelihood of requiring medical evacuation and has been difficult to quantify in a reliable and standardized manner. Initial development of the RTDC metric was constrained due to the complexity of a medical evacuation decision and the lack of prior spaceflight data and this presentation will discuss the review and improvement process used to increase model accuracy and fidelity.

Prashant Parmar↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

GlennICE 2.2 Capabilities and Results

GlennICE (Glenn Icing Computational Environment) is a computational tool designed to calculate ice growth on complex three-dimensional geometries using the input from a user-supplied computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for the geometry of interest. The NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is developing this tool to aid those evaluating, designing and certifying aircraft, engines, and aircraft components for flight in icing conditions. This domestically available software is being developed to enable the introduction of new icing physics into a computational environment in a manner that is open for evaluation and eventual use by industry, academia, and other government organizations. This paper will document the current capabilities for version 2.1 of this software and provide example cases with comparison to available experimental data.

Icing↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

GlennICE 2.2 Capabilities and Results

Icing↗

NASA NTRS2024

GlennICE Manual 4.1.0

Icing↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Improvements to GlennICE Collection Efficiency Algorithm

GlennICE (Glenn Icing Computational Environment) is a computational tool designed to calculate ice growth on complex three-dimensional geometries using the input from a user-supplied computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for the geometry of interest. The NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is developing this tool to aid those evaluating, designing and certifying aircraft, engines, and aircraft components for flight in icing conditions. This domestically available software is being developed to enable the introduction of new icing physics into a computational environment in a manner that is open for evaluation and eventual use by industry, academia, and other government organizations. This paper will document recent improvements that reduce the number of trajectories needed to converge on collection efficiency. These improvements are documented using example cases with complex geometries.

Aircraft Icing↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Improvements to GlennICE Collection Efficiency Algorithm

GlennICE (Glenn Icing Computational Environment) is a computational tool designed to calculate ice growth on complex three-dimensional geometries using the input from a user-supplied computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for the geometry of interest. The NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is developing this tool to aid those evaluating, designing and certifying aircraft, engines, and aircraft components for flight in icing conditions. This domestically available software is being developed to enable the introduction of new icing physics into a computational environment in a manner that is open for evaluation and eventual use by industry, academia, and other government organizations. This paper will document recent improvements that reduce the number of trajectories needed to converge on collection efficiency. These improvements are documented using example cases with complex geometries.

Aircraft Icing↗

NASA NTRS1996

Integrated Design Systems -Capturing, Reusing and Optimizing Design Methods in New Millenium

An important goal of New Millenium is to research new methods of performing spacecraft and mission design. We have completed the first phase of our effort on how to make design tools such as analysis programs more available. We are now embarking with Stanford University on discovering methods to allow more project history and knowledge to be automatically captured and reused with Ames Research Center on how to use virtual reality to enhance the visualization of new missions before any hardware exists.

New↗

NASA NTRS2012

Development of a Robust and Efficient Parallel Solver for Unsteady Turbomachinery Flows

The traditional design and analysis practice for advanced propulsion systems relies heavily on expensive full-scale prototype development and testing. Over the past decade, use of high-fidelity analysis and design tools such as CFD early in the product development cycle has been identified as one way to alleviate testing costs and to develop these devices better, faster and cheaper. In the design of advanced propulsion systems, CFD plays a major role in defining the required performance over the entire flight regime, as well as in testing the sensitivity of the design to the different modes of operation. Increased emphasis is being placed on developing and applying CFD models to simulate the flow field environments and performance of advanced propulsion systems. This necessitates the development of next generation computational tools which can be used effectively and reliably in a design environment. The turbomachinery simulation capability presented here is being developed in a computational tool called Loci-STREAM [1]. It integrates proven numerical methods for generalized grids and state-of-the-art physical models in a novel rule-based programming framework called Loci [2] which allows: (a) seamless integration of multidisciplinary physics in a unified manner, and (b) automatic handling of massively parallel computing. The objective is to be able to routinely simulate problems involving complex geometries requiring large unstructured grids and complex multidisciplinary physics. An immediate application of interest is simulation of unsteady flows in rocket turbopumps, particularly in cryogenic liquid rocket engines. The key components of the overall methodology presented in this paper are the following: (a) high fidelity unsteady simulation capability based on Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) in conjunction with second-order temporal discretization, (b) compliance with Geometric Conservation Law (GCL) in order to maintain conservative property on moving meshes for second-order time-stepping scheme, (c) a novel cloud-of-points interpolation method (based on a fast parallel kd-tree search algorithm) for interfaces between turbomachinery components in relative motion which is demonstrated to be highly scalable, and (d) demonstrated accuracy and parallel scalability on large grids (approx 250 million cells) in full turbomachinery geometries.

West, Jeff↗

NASA NTRS2018

Biocene 2018 - Welcome to the Period of New Life

Biocene is the period of new life. When our descendants look back at this period in time, they will see evidence, in the geologic and electronic record, of anthropic climate change, growing population, and scarcity of resources. But they will also see the rebirth of human ingenuity as we overcame the challenges that faced us through nature-inspired exploration. The Periodic Table of Life (PeTaL) is a proposed tool and open source framework that uses artificial intelligence to aid in the systematic inquiry of biology for its application to human systems. This presentation defines the PeTaL concept and workflow. Biomimicry, biophysics, biomimetics, bionics and numerous other terms refer to the use of biology and biological principles to inform practices in other disciplines. For the most part, the domain of inquiry in these fields have been confined to extant biological models with the proponents of biomimicry often citing the evolutionary success of extant organisms relative to extinct ones. The primary objective of this paper is to expand the domain of inquiry for human processes that seek to model those that are, were or could be found in nature with examples that relate to the field of aerospace and to spur development of tools that can work together to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in problem solving. Specifically specialized fields such as paleomimesis, anthropomimesis and physioteleology are proposed in conjunction with artificial evolution. Blockchain technology may be vital in allowing open source design tools such as PeTaL to democratize design and yet protect intellectual property. The overarching philosophy outlined here can be thought of as physiomimetics, a holistic and systematic way of learning from natural history. The backbone of PeTaL integrates an unstructured database with an ontological model consisting of function, morphology, environment, state of matter and ecosystem. Tools include text classification, thesaurus, data visualization, and analysis. Applications of PeTaL include guiding human space exploration, understanding human and geological history, and discovering new or extinct life.

Biocene↗

NASA NTRS1983

An application of nonlinear programming to the design of regulators of a linear-quadratic formulation

A design technique is proposed for linear regulators in which a feedback controller of fixed structure is chosen to minimize an integral quadratic objective function subject to the satisfaction of integral quadratic constraint functions. Application of a nonlinear programming algorithm to this mathematically tractable formulation results in an efficient and useful computer aided design tool. Particular attention is paid to computational efficiency and various recommendations are made. Two design examples illustrate the flexibility of the approach and highlight the special insight afforded to the designer. One concerns helicopter longitudinal dynamics and the other the flight dynamics of an aerodynamically unstable aircraft.

Fleming, P.↗

NASA NTRS1985

A non-linear programming approach to the computer-aided design of regulators using a linear-quadratic formulation

A design technique is proposed for linear regulators in which a feedback controller of fixed structure is chosen to minimize an integral quadratic objective function subject to the satisfaction of integral quadratic constraint functions. Application of a non-linear programming algorithm to this mathematically tractable formulation results in an efficient and useful computer-aided design tool. Particular attention is paid to computational efficiency and various recommendations are made. Two design examples illustrate the flexibility of the approach and highlight the special insight afforded to the designer.

Fleming, P.↗

NASA NTRS1992

SP-100 space reactor power system for lunar, Mars, and robotic exploration

The SP-100 power system is described which was developed for three missions, namely, Pluto Orbiter with nuclear electric propulsion; human-rated surface reactor power system for lunar and Mars exploration; and earth surveillance with an integrated nuclear electric propulsion system. The reactor power systems technology is being developed to meet these requirements so that the technical database, design tools, and specifications will be applicable to these missions. The SP-100 power system design includes the following subsystems: reactor, reactor instrumentation and control, shield, heat transport, converter, heat rejection, power conditioning control and distribution, and mechanical/structural. Particular attention is given to a demonstration mission aimed at validating technology readiness for robotic, lunar, and Mars operational missions.

Mondt, Jack F.↗

NASA NTRS1993

LOX/hydrocarbon rocket engine analytical design methodology development and validation. Volume 1: Executive summary and technical narrative

During the past three decades, an enormous amount of resources were expended in the design and development of Liquid Oxygen/Hydrocarbon and Hydrogen (LOX/HC and LOX/H2) rocket engines. A significant portion of these resources were used to develop and demonstrate the performance and combustion stability for each new engine. During these efforts, many analytical and empirical models were developed that characterize design parameters and combustion processes that influence performance and stability. Many of these models are suitable as design tools, but they have not been assembled into an industry-wide usable analytical design methodology. The objective of this program was to assemble existing performance and combustion stability models into a usable methodology capable of producing high performing and stable LOX/hydrocarbon and LOX/hydrogen propellant booster engines.

Pieper, Jerry L.↗