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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 469 records · Page 26
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1972

Some contributions to energetics by the Lewis Research Center and a review of their potential non-aerospace applications

The primary technology areas are aerospace propulsion, power and materials. As examples in these technologies, the programs in the fields of cryogenics and liquid metals are reviewed and potential non-aerospace applications for the results of these programs are discussed. These include such possibilities as: hydrogen as a non-polluting industrial fuel; more efficient central power stations; and powerplants for advanced ground transportation.

Graham, R. W.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Computational technology for high-temperature aerospace structures

The status and some recent developments of computational technology for high-temperature aerospace structures are summarized. Discussion focuses on a number of aspects including: goals of computational technology for high-temperature structures; computational material modeling; life prediction methodology; computational modeling of high-temperature composites; error estimation and adaptive improvement strategies; strategies for solution of fluid flow/thermal/structural problems; and probabilistic methods and stochastic modeling approaches, integrated analysis and design. Recent trends in high-performance computing environment are described and the research areas which have high potential for meeting future technological needs are identified.

Noor, A. K.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Aerospace Applications of Magnetic Suspension Technology, part 1

Papers presented at the conference on aerospace applications of magnetic suspension technology are compiled. The following subject areas are covered: pointing and isolation systems; microgravity and vibration isolation; bearing applications; wind tunnel model suspension systems; large gap magnetic suspension systems; control systems; rotating machinery; science and application of superconductivity; and sensors.

Groom, Nelson J.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Future technology aim of the National Aerospace Plane Program

Technical areas where hypersonic technology programs outside NASP might offer assistance and participate in the NASP program are considered. These specific areas include airframe, technology opportunities for providing better performance and reduced weight, the NDV application of NASP technology, and engine propellant systems and subsystems.

Anderson, Charles W.↗
NASA NTRS1993

NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. XXVI - The relationship between technology policy and scientific and technical information within the U.S. and Japanese aerospace industries

Government technology policy has nurtured the growth of the aerospace industry, which is vital to both the U.S. and Japanese economies. Japanese technology policy differs significantly from U.S. technology policy, however, particularly with respect to the production, transfer, and use of scientific and technical information (STI). In this paper, we discuss the unique position of the aerospace industry in the U.S. and Japan, U.S. and Japanese aerospace policy, and the role of STI in the process of aerospace innovation. The information-seeking behaviors of U.S. and Japanese aerospace engineers and scientists are compared. The authors advocate the development of innovation-adoption technology and STI policy goals for U.S. aerospace and the inclusion of an aerospace knowledge diffusion transfer system with an 'active' component for scanning and acquiring foreign aerospace technology and STI.

Pinelli, Thomas E.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Rapid Cycle Amine (RCA) 3.0 System Development

The Rapid Cycle Amine (RCA) 3.0 system is currently under development by NASA, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in conjunction with United Technologies Corporation Aerospace Systems (UTAS). The RCA technology is a new carbon dioxide (CO2) and humidity removal system that has been baselined for the Advanced Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AEMU) Portable Life Support System. The evolution of the RCA development has progressed through several iterations of technology readiness levels including RCA 1.0, RCA 2.0, and RCA 3.0 test articles. The RCA is an advancement over currently technologies due to its unique regeneration capability. The RCA is capable of simultaneously removing CO2 and humidity from an influent air steam and subsequent regeneration when exposed to a vacuum source. The RCA technology uses two solid amine sorbent beds in an alternating fashion to adsorb CO2 and water (uptake mode) and desorb CO2 and water (regeneration mode) at the same time. The two beds operate in an efficient manner so that while one bed is in the uptake mode, the other is in the regeneration mode, thus continuously providing an on-service sorbent bed by which CO2 and humidity may be removed. The RCA 2.0 and 3.0 test articles were designed with a novel valve assembly which allows for switching between uptake and regeneration modes with only one moving part while minimizing gas volume losses to the vacuum source by means of an internal pressure equalization step during actuation. The RCA technology also is low power, small, and has performed extremely well in all development testing thus far. A final design was selected for the RCA 3.0, fabricated, assembled, and performance tested in 2014 with delivery to NASAJSC in January 2015. This paper will provide an overview on the RCA 3.0 system design and results of pre-delivery testing with references to the development of RCA 1.0 and RCA 2.0.

Chullen, Cinda↗
NASA NTRS2012

A Briefing on Metrics and Risks for Autonomous Decision-Making in Aerospace Applications

Significant technology advances will enable future aerospace systems to safely and reliably make decisions autonomously, or without human interaction. The decision-making may result in actions that enable an aircraft or spacecraft in an off-nominal state or with slightly degraded components to achieve mission performance and safety goals while reducing or avoiding damage to the aircraft or spacecraft. Some key technology enablers for autonomous decision-making include: a continuous state awareness through the maturation of the prognostics health management field, novel sensor development, and the considerable gains made in computation power and data processing bandwidth versus system size. Sophisticated algorithms and physics based models coupled with these technological advances allow reliable assessment of a system, subsystem, or components. Decisions that balance mission objectives and constraints with remaining useful life predictions can be made autonomously to maintain safety requirements, optimal performance, and ensure mission objectives. This autonomous approach to decision-making will come with new risks and benefits, some of which will be examined in this paper. To start, an account of previous work to categorize or quantify autonomy in aerospace systems will be presented. In addition, a survey of perceived risks in autonomous decision-making in the context of piloted aircraft and remotely piloted or completely autonomous unmanned autonomous systems (UAS) will be presented based on interviews that were conducted with individuals from industry, academia, and government.

Frost, Susan↗
NASA NTRS1993

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 26: The relationship between technology policy and scientific and technical information within the US and Japanese aerospace industries

Government technology policy has nurtured the growth of the aerospace industry which is vital to both the U.S. and Japanese economies. Japanese technology policy differs significantly from U.S. technology policy, however, particularly with respect to the production, transfer, and use of scientific and technical information (STI). In this paper, we discuss the unique position of the aerospace industry in the U.S. and Japan, U.S. and Japanese aerospace policy, and the role of STI in the process of aerospace innovation. The information-seeking behaviors of U.S. and Japanese aerospace engineers and scientists are compared. The authors advocate the development of innovation-adoption technology and STI policy goals for U.S. aerospace and the inclusion of an aerospace knowledge diffusion transfer system with an 'active' component for scanning and acquiring foreign aerospace technology and STI.

Pinelli, Thomas E.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Development of first generation aerospace NiMH cells

Gates Aerospace Batteries in conjunction with Gates Energy Products (GEP) has been developing NiMH technology for aerospace use since 1990. GEP undertook the development of NiMH technology for commercial cell applications in 1987. This program focused on wound cell technology for replacement of current NiCd technology. As an off shoot of this program small, wound cells were used to evaluate initial design options for aerospace prismatic cell designs. Early in 1991, the first aerospace prismatic cell designs were built in a 6 Ah cell configuration. These cells were used to initially characterize performance in prismatic configurations and begin early life cycle testing. Soon after the 6 Ah cells were on test, several 22 Ah cells were built to test other options. The results of testing of these cells were used to identify potential problem areas for long lived cells and develop solutions to those problems. Following these two cell builds, a set of 7 Ah cells was built to evaluate improvements to the technology. To date results from these tests are very promising. Cycle lives in excess of 2,200 LEO cycles at 50 percent DoD were achieved with cells continuing on test. Results from these cell tests are discussed and data presented to demonstrate feasibility of this technology for aerospace programs.

Tinker, Lawrence↗
NASA NTRS1991

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 21: Technological innovation and technical communications: Their place in aerospace engineering curricula. A survey of European, Japanese, and US Aerospace Engineers and Scientists

Aerospace engineers and scientists from Western Europe, Japan, and the United States were surveyed as part of the NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Questionnaires were used to solicit their opinions regarding the following: (1) the importance of technical communications to their profession; (2) the use and production of technical communications; and (3) their views about the appropriate content of an undergraduate course in technical communications. The ability to communicate technical information effectively was very important to the aerospace engineers and scientists who participated in the study. A considerable portion of their working week is devoted to using and producing technical information. The types of technical communications used and produced varied within and among the three groups. The type of technical communication product used and produced appears to be related to respondents' professional duties. Respondents from the three groups made similar recommendations regarding the principles, mechanics, and on-the-job communications to be included in an undergraduate technical communications course for aerospace majors.

Pinelli, Thomas E.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Computer sciences

The Computer Science Program provides advanced concepts, techniques, system architectures, algorithms, and software for both space and aeronautics information sciences and computer systems. The overall goal is to provide the technical foundation within NASA for the advancement of computing technology in aerospace applications. The research program is improving the state of knowledge of fundamental aerospace computing principles and advancing computing technology in space applications such as software engineering and information extraction from data collected by scientific instruments in space. The program includes the development of special algorithms and techniques to exploit the computing power provided by high performance parallel processors and special purpose architectures. Research is being conducted in the fundamentals of data base logic and improvement techniques for producing reliable computing systems.

Smith, Paul H.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Optical Measurements for Intelligent Aerospace Propulsion

There is growing interest in applying intelligent technologies to aerospace propulsion systems to reap expected benefits in cost, performance, and environmental compliance. Cost benefits span the engine life cycle from development, operations, and maintenance. Performance gains are anticipated in reduced fuel consumption, increased thrust-toweight ratios, and operability. Environmental benefits include generating fewer pollutants and less noise. Critical enabling technologies to realize these potential benefits include sensors, actuators, logic, electronics, materials, and structures. For propulsion applications, the challenge is to increase the robustness of these technologies so that they can withstand harsh temperatures, vibrations, and grime while providing extremely reliable performance. This paper addresses the role that optical metrology is playing in providing solutions to these challenges. Optics for ground-based testing (development cycle), flight sensing (operations), and inspection (maintenance) are described. Opportunities for future work are presented.

Mercer, Carolyn R.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Development of Face Gear Technology for Industrial and Aerospace Power Transmission

Tests of a 250 horsepower proof-of-concept (POC) split torque face gear transmission were completed by The Boeing Company in Mesa, Arizona, while working under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP) This report provides a summary of these cooperative tests, which were jointly funded by Boeing and DARPA Design, manufacture and testing of the scaled-power TRP split torque gearbox followed preliminary evaluations of the concept performed early in the program The testing demonstrated the theory of operation for the concentric, tapered face gear assembly The results showed that the use of floating pinions in a concentric face gear arrangement produces a nearly even torque split The POC split torque tests determined that, with some improvements, face gears can be applied effectively in a split torque configuration which yields significant weight, cost and reliability improvements over conventional designs.

Heath, Gregory F.↗
NASA NTRS1972

A pilot demonstration project of technology application from the aerospace industry to city management (four cities program)

The Four Cities Program has completed the first year of the planned two-year program. At the beginning of the first year, a variety of program initiation activities were accomplished. Contracts were negotiated; science and technology advisors were interviewed, selected and assigned; general indoctrination and integration of the advisors into city affairs occurred; technical needs were identified and related projects pursued; pilot projects for the second year were identified; inter-city coordination on technical problems began to emerge; and the general soundness of the four cities program seems to have been established. Above all, the inter-personal relationships between the advisors and their interfaces in city government appear to be functioning smoothly. The establishment of such mutual respect, trusts, and confidences are believed essential to the success of the program.

Ervin, G. F.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Avionics System Architecture for the NASA Orion Vehicle

It has been 30 years since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) last developed a crewed spacecraft capable of launch, on-orbit operations, and landing. During that time, aerospace avionics technologies have greatly advanced in capability, and these technologies have enabled integrated avionics architectures for aerospace applications. The inception of NASA s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) spacecraft offers the opportunity to leverage the latest integrated avionics technologies into crewed space vehicle architecture. The outstanding question is to what extent to implement these advances in avionics while still meeting the unique crewed spaceflight requirements for safety, reliability and maintainability. Historically, aircraft and spacecraft have very similar avionics requirements. Both aircraft and spacecraft must have high reliability. They also must have as much computing power as possible and provide low latency between user control and effecter response while minimizing weight, volume, and power. However, there are several key differences between aircraft and spacecraft avionics. Typically, the overall spacecraft operational time is much shorter than aircraft operation time, but the typical mission time (and hence, the time between preventive maintenance) is longer for a spacecraft than an aircraft. Also, the radiation environment is typically more severe for spacecraft than aircraft. A "loss of mission" scenario (i.e. - the mission is not a success, but there are no casualties) arguably has a greater impact on a multi-million dollar spaceflight mission than a typical commercial flight. Such differences need to be weighted when determining if an aircraft-like integrated modular avionics (IMA) system is suitable for a crewed spacecraft. This paper will explore the preliminary design process of the Orion vehicle avionics system by first identifying the Orion driving requirements and the difference between Orion requirements and those of other previous crewed spacecraft avionics systems. Common systems engineering methods will be used to evaluate the value propositions, or the factors that weight most heavily in design consideration, of Orion and other aerospace systems. Then, the current Orion avionics architecture will be presented and evaluated.

Baggerman, Clint↗
NASA NTRS2014

Novel Catalysts and Processing Technologies for Production of Aerospace Fuels from Non-Petroleum Raw Materials

Transportation fuels production (including aerospace propellants) from non-traditional sources (gases, waste materials, and biomass) has been an active area of research and development for decades. Reducing terrestrial waste streams simultaneous with energy conversion, plentiful biomass, new low-cost methane sources, and/or extra-terrestrial resource harvesting and utilization present significant technological and business opportunities being realized by a new generation of visionary entrepreneurs. We examine several new approaches to catalyst fabrication and new processing technologies to enable utilization of these nontraditional raw materials. Two basic processing architectures are considered: a single-stage pyrolysis approach that seeks to basically re-cycle hydrocarbons with minimal net chemistry or a two-step paradigm that involves production of supply or synthesis gas (mainly carbon oxides and H2) followed by production of fuel(s) via Sabatier or methanation reactions and/or Fischer-Tröpsch synthesis. Optimizing the fraction of product stream relevant to targeted aerospace (and other transportation) fuels via modeling, catalyst fabrication and novel reactor design are described. Energy utilization is a concern for production of fuels for either terrestrial or space operations; renewable sources based on solar energy and/or energy efficient processes may be mission enabling. Another important issue is minimizing impurities in the product stream(s), especially those potentially posing risks to personnel or operations through (catalyst) poisoning or (equipment) damage. Technologies being developed to remove (and/or recycle) heteroatom impurities are briefly discussed as well as the development of chemically robust catalysts whose activities are not diminished during operation. The potential impacts on future missions by such new approaches as well as balance of system issues are addressed.

space processing↗