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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 NTRS2004

Certification of CFD heat transfer software for turbine blade analysis

Accurate modeling of heat transfer effects is a critical component of the Turbine Branch of the Turbomachinery and Propulsion Systems Division. Being able to adequately predict and model heat flux, coolant flows, and peak temperatures are necessary for the analysis of high pressure turbine blades. To that end, the primary goal of my internship this summer will be to certify the reliability of the CFD program GlennHT for the purpose of turbine blade heat transfer analysis. GlennHT is currently in use by the engineers in the Turbine Branch who use the FORTRAN 77 version of the code for analysis. The program, however, has been updated to a FORTRAN 90 version which is more robust than the older code. In order for the new code to be distributed for use, its reliability must first be certified. Over the course of my internship I will create and run test cases using the FORTRAN 90 version of GlennHT and compare the results to older cases which are known to be accurate, If the results of the new code match those of the sample cases then the newer version will be one step closer to certification for distribution. In order to complete these it will first be necessary to become familiar with operating a number of other programs. Among them are GridPro, which is used to create a grid mesh around a blade geometry, and FieldView, whose purpose is to graphically display the results from the GlennHT program. Once enough familiarity is established with these programs to render them useful, then the work of creating and running test scenarios will begin. The work is additionally complicated by a transition in computer hardware. Most of the working computers in the Turbine Branch are Silicon Graphics machines, which will soon be replaced by LINUX PC's. My project is one of the first to make use the new PC's. The change in system architecture however, has created several software related issues which have greatly increased the time and effort investments required by the project.Although complications with the project continue to arise, it is expected that the goal of my internship can still be achieved within the remaining time period. Critical steps have been achieved and test scenarios can now be designed and run. At the completion of my internship, the FORTRAN 90 version of GlennHT should be well on its way to certification.

Jordan, William A.↗

NASA NTRS1976

Computer-aided design and computer science technology

A description is presented of computer-aided design requirements and the resulting computer science advances needed to support aerospace design. The aerospace design environment is examined, taking into account problems of data handling and aspects of computer hardware and software. The interactive terminal is normally the primary interface between the computer system and the engineering designer. Attention is given to user aids, interactive design, interactive computations, the characteristics of design information, data management requirements, hardware advancements, and computer science developments.

Fulton, R. E.↗

NASA NTRS1992

DSS-13 26-meter antenna upgraded radiometer system

The Deep Space Station (DSS)-13 26-m antenna radiometer system was upgraded with an IBM-compatible computer-controlled configuration with improved supporting hardware and software. Software was generated to analyze results and correct for antenna mispointing, tropospheric loss, and other observing errors. This total power radiometer configuration provides a prototype for the new DSS-13 34-m antenna. The radiometer system is described in terms of the theory, instrumentation hardware, computer configuration, and operational features and performance. The system is used to obtain antenna efficiency and pointing model data and is useful for radio source calibrations required for radio astronomy. Some recent results are given.

Stelzried, C. T.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Development of Collaborative Research Initiatives to Advance the Aerospace Sciences-via the Communications, Electronics, Information Systems Focus Group

The primary goal of the Adaptive Vision Laboratory Research project was to develop advanced computer vision systems for automatic target recognition. The approach used in this effort combined several machine learning paradigms including evolutionary learning algorithms, neural networks, and adaptive clustering techniques to develop the E-MOR.PH system. This system is capable of generating pattern recognition systems to solve a wide variety of complex recognition tasks. A series of simulation experiments were conducted using E-MORPH to solve problems in OCR, military target recognition, industrial inspection, and medical image analysis. The bulk of the funds provided through this grant were used to purchase computer hardware and software to support these computationally intensive simulations. The payoff from this effort is the reduced need for human involvement in the design and implementation of recognition systems. We have shown that the techniques used in E-MORPH are generic and readily transition to other problem domains. Specifically, E-MORPH is multi-phase evolutionary leaming system that evolves cooperative sets of features detectors and combines their response using an adaptive classifier to form a complete pattern recognition system. The system can operate on binary or grayscale images. In our most recent experiments, we used multi-resolution images that are formed by applying a Gabor wavelet transform to a set of grayscale input images. To begin the leaming process, candidate chips are extracted from the multi-resolution images to form a training set and a test set. A population of detector sets is randomly initialized to start the evolutionary process. Using a combination of evolutionary programming and genetic algorithms, the feature detectors are enhanced to solve a recognition problem. The design of E-MORPH and recognition results for a complex problem in medical image analysis are described at the end of this report. The specific task involves the identification of vertebrae in x-ray images of human spinal columns. This problem is extremely challenging because the individual vertebra exhibit variation in shape, scale, orientation, and contrast. E-MORPH generated several accurate recognition systems to solve this task. This dual use of this ATR technology clearly demonstrates the flexibility and power of our approach.

Knasel, T. Michael↗

NASA NTRS1982

The implementation and use of Ada on distributed systems with high reliability requirements

The use and implementation of Ada in distributed environments in which the hardware components are assumed to be unreliable is investigated. The possibility that a distributed system can be programmed entirely in Ada so that the individual tasks of the system are unconcerned with which processor they are executing on, and that failures can occur in the underlying hardware is considered. The reduced cost of computer hardware and the advantages of distributed processing (for example, increased reliability through redundancy and greater flexibility) indicate that many aerospace computer systems can be distributed. The use of Ada and distributed systems is a good combination for aerospace embedded systems.

Knight, J. C.↗

NASA NTRS2018

NASA Blazes a Different Path to Energy-Efficient Supercomputing

For years, NASA had a very straightforward process for replacing high-performance computing hardware: over a three-year period, when it became more expensive to operate an older suite of hardware than it did to replace it with new products that could accomplish the same work, we simply replaced the old hardware. For NASA’s High-End Computing Capability (HECC) Project, that process changed when we reached the limits of our facility’s power, cooling, and floor-loading capacity, becoming a strategy of decommissioning the least productive hardware and replacing it with more capable counterparts. The impact was that we provided our users with less supercomputing capability than we would have without the limitations. Additionally, with 25% of our total power consumption going to cool our systems and 50,000 gallons of water per day being evaporated, we wanted a solution that would expand our compute facility while being sensitive to the impact on our environment.

Thigpen, William↗

NASA NTRS1992

Animation of finite element models and results

This is not intended as a complete review of computer hardware and software that can be used for animation of finite element models and results, but is instead a demonstration of the benefits of visualization using selected hardware and software. The role of raw computational power, graphics speed, and the use of videotape are discussed.

Lipman, Robert R.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Bird's Eye View - A 3-D Situational Awareness Tool for the Space Station

Even as space-qualified computer hardware lags well behind the latest home computers, the possibility of using high-fidelity interactive 3-D graphics for displaying important on board information has finally arrived, and is being used on board the International Space Station (ISS). With the quantity and complexity of space-flight telemetry, 3-D displays can greatly enhance the ability of users, both onboard and on the ground, to interpret data quickly and accurately. This is particularly true for data related to vehicle attitude, position, configuration, and relation to other objects on the ground or in-orbit Bird's Eye View (BEV) is a 3-D real-time application that provides a high degree of Situational Awareness for the crew. Its purpose is to instantly convey important motion-related parameters to the crew and mission controllers by presenting 3-D simulated camera views of the International Space Station (ISS) in its actual environment Driven by actual telemetry, and running on board, as well as on the ground, the user can visualize the Space Station relative to the Earth, Sun, stars, various reference frames, and selected targets, such as ground-sites or communication satellites. Since the actual ISS configuration (geometry) is also modeled accurately, everything from the alignment of the solar panels to the expected view from a selected window can be visualized accurately. A virtual representation of the Space Station in real time has many useful applications. By selecting different cameras, the crew or mission control can monitor the station's orientation in space, position over the Earth, transition from day to night, direction to the Sun, the view from a particular window, or the motion of the robotic arm. By viewing the vehicle attitude and solar panel orientations relative to the Sun, the power status of the ISS can be easily visualized and understood. Similarly, the thermal impacts of vehicle attitude can be analyzed and visually confirmed. Communication opportunities can be displayed, and line-of-sight blockage due to interference by the vehicle structure (or the Earth) can be seen easily. Additional features in BEV display targets on the ground and in-orbit, including cities, communication sites, landmarks, satellites, and special sites of scientific interest for Earth observation and photography. Any target can be selected and tracked. This gives the user a continual line-of-sight to the target of current interest, and real-time knowledge about its visibility. Similarly, the vehicle ground-track, and an option to show "visibility circles" around displayed ground sites, provide continuous insight regarding current and future visibility to any target BEV was designed with inputs from many disciplines in the flight control and operations community both at NASA and from the International Partners. As such, BEV is setting the standards for interactive 3-D graphics for spacecraft applications. One important contribution of BEV is a generic graphical interface for camera control that can be used for any 3-D applications. This interface has become part of the International Display and Graphics Standards for the 16-nation ISS partnership. Many other standards related to camera properties, and the display of 3-D data, also have been defined by BEV. Future enhancements to BEV will include capabilities related to simulating ahead of the current time. This will give the user tools for analyzing off-nominal and future scenarios, as well as for planning future operations.

Dershowitz, Adam↗

NASA NTRS1973

Development of simulation computer complex specification

The Training Simulation Computer Complex Study was one of three studies contracted in support of preparations for procurement of a shuttle mission simulator for shuttle crew training. The subject study was concerned with definition of the software loads to be imposed on the computer complex to be associated with the shuttle mission simulator and the development of procurement specifications based on the resulting computer requirements. These procurement specifications cover the computer hardware and system software as well as the data conversion equipment required to interface the computer to the simulator hardware. The development of the necessary hardware and software specifications required the execution of a number of related tasks which included, (1) simulation software sizing, (2) computer requirements definition, (3) data conversion equipment requirements definition, (4) system software requirements definition, (5) a simulation management plan, (6) a background survey, and (7) preparation of the specifications.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1991

New computing systems and their impact on structural and fracture mechanics calculations

Advances made in computer technology and their impact on structural and fracture mechanics calculations are reviewed, and the computational needs for future structural systems are discussed. Special attention is given to the computer hardware, the network technology, the performance of new computing systems, and the supersystems and parallel processing and their impact on structure technology. The differences between different machines are identified.

Liebowitz, Harold↗

DOE OSTI2025

Breaking the mold: Overcoming the time constraints of molecular dynamics on general-purpose hardware

The evolution of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations has been intimately linked to that of computing hardware. For decades following the creation of MD, simulations have improved with computing power along the three principal dimensions of accuracy, atom count (spatial scale), and duration (temporal scale). Since the mid-2000s, computer platforms have, however, failed to provide strong scaling for MD, as scale-out central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) platforms that provide substantial increases to spatial scale do not lead to proportional increases in temporal scale. Important scientific problems therefore remained inaccessible to direct simulation, prompting the development of increasingly sophisticated algorithms that present significant complexity, accuracy, and efficiency challenges. While bespoke MD-only hardware solutions have provided a path to longer timescales for specific physical systems, their impact on the broader community has been mitigated by their limited adaptability to new methods and potentials. In this work, we show that a novel computing architecture, the Cerebras wafer scale engine, completely alters the scaling path by delivering unprecedentedly high simulation rates up to 1.144 M steps/s for 200 000 atoms whose interactions are described by an embedded atom method potential. This enables direct simulations of the evolution of materials using general-purpose programmable hardware over millisecond timescales, dramatically increasing the space of direct MD simulations that can be carried out. In this paper, we provide an overview of advances in MD over the last 60 years and present our recent result in the context of historical MD performance trends.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

NASA NTRS1990

The application of a computer data acquisition system for a new high temperature tribometer

The two data acquisition computer programs are described which were developed for a high temperature friction and wear test apparatus, a tribometer. The raw data produced by the tribometer and the methods used to sample that data are explained. In addition, the instrumentation and computer hardware and software are presented. Also shown is how computer data acquisition was applied to increase convenience and productivity on a high temperature tribometer.

Bonham, Charles D.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Functional requirements document for the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Scientific Computing Facilities (SCF) of the NASA/MSFC Earth Science and Applications Division, 1992

Five scientists at MSFC/ESAD have EOS SCF investigator status. Each SCF has unique tasks which require the establishment of a computing facility dedicated to accomplishing those tasks. A SCF Working Group was established at ESAD with the charter of defining the computing requirements of the individual SCFs and recommending options for meeting these requirements. The primary goal of the working group was to determine which computing needs can be satisfied using either shared resources or separate but compatible resources, and which needs require unique individual resources. The requirements investigated included CPU-intensive vector and scalar processing, visualization, data storage, connectivity, and I/O peripherals. A review of computer industry directions and a market survey of computing hardware provided information regarding important industry standards and candidate computing platforms. It was determined that the total SCF computing requirements might be most effectively met using a hierarchy consisting of shared and individual resources. This hierarchy is composed of five major system types: (1) a supercomputer class vector processor; (2) a high-end scalar multiprocessor workstation; (3) a file server; (4) a few medium- to high-end visualization workstations; and (5) several low- to medium-range personal graphics workstations. Specific recommendations for meeting the needs of each of these types are presented.

Botts, Michael E.↗

NASA NTRS1991

The application of a computer data acquisition system to a new high temperature tribometer

Bonham, Charles D.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Color graphics, interactive processing, and the supercomputer

The development of a common graphics environment for the NASA Langley Research Center user community and the integration of a supercomputer into this environment is examined. The initial computer hardware, the software graphics packages, and their configurations are described. The addition of improved computer graphics capability to the supercomputer, and the utilization of the graphic software and hardware are discussed. Consideration is given to the interactive processing system which supports the computer in an interactive debugging, processing, and graphics environment.

Smith-Taylor, Rudeen↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Signal and Power Integrity Design Methodology for High-Performance Flight Computing Systems

Computing capabilities of space systems have in-creased onboard performance by orders of magnitude with the use of radiation-tolerant field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)and processors. The incorporation of signal and power integrity analysis with printed circuit board (PCB) design in reliable computing architectures for space systems has become critical to enable future mission capabilities. Developers launch high-performance processors into a breadth of orbits and missions, running varying applications that create challenges for designing reliable computing hardware. Specifically, for these designs, academic and industry research has focused on component radiation performance, fault mitigation, and reliable architectures. How-ever, other design parameters including electromagnetic interference (EMI), PCB stackup, signal integrity (SI), voltage regulator module (VRM) design, and power distribution network (PDN)are often deprioritized or disregarded as the design matures. Since these characteristics are becoming more significant in high-performance processor designs, this research presents a hardware design and analysis methodology for high-performance, space-computing systems that focuses on a holistic design approach and PDN reliability. While these challenges exist across all space hardware, the reduced PCB dimensions imposed by SmallSats and CubeSats introduce additional hurdles, specifically to VRM and decoupling design. By examining the relationship between the PDN and radiation performance, an analytical relationship is developed that incorporates Total Ionizing Dose and Single-Event Transients to ensure reliability throughout the mission duration. The presented design methodology is applied to the SpaceCube v3.0 Mini, an FPGA-based on-board science data processing system developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Advanced avionics↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessing and Advancing the Potential of Quantum Computing: A NASA Case Study

Quantum computing is one of the most enticing computational paradigms with the potential to revolutionize diverse areas of future-generation computational systems. While quantum computing hardware has advanced rapidly, from tiny laboratory experiments to quantum chips that can outperform even the largest supercomputers on specialized computational tasks, these noisy- intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) processors are still too small and non-robust to be directly useful for any real-world applications. In this paper, we describe NASA’s work in assessing and advancing the potential of quantum computing. We discuss advances in algorithms, both near- and longer-term, and the results of our explorations on current hardware as well as with simulations, including illustrating the benefits of algorithm-hardware codesign in the NISQ era. This work also includes physics-inspired classical algorithms that can be used at application scale today. We discuss innovative tools supporting the assessment and advancement of quantum computing, and describe improved methods for simulating quantum systems of various types on high performance computing systems that incorporate realistic error models. We provide an overview of recent methods for benchmarking, evaluating, and characterizing quantum hardware for error mitigation, computational purposes.

quantum computing↗

NASA NTRS1983

High angle of attack inviscid flow calculations over a Shuttle-like vehicle with comparisons to flight data

Recent advances in computational techniques and computer hardware have made it possible to attack the problem of computing steady-state inviscid flowfields over complex three-dimensional bodies such as the Space Shuttle Orbiter. Certain problems have arisen in connection with cases involving high angles of attack. Weilmuenster et al. (1981, 1982) have, therefore, presented a time asymptotic computational method, HALIS, designed to handle the high angle-of-attack problem for the inviscid flow over the Space Shuttle vehicle. The code was modified to include all of the Shuttle vehicle forward of the wing root. Body surface pressures generated by the HALIS code were shown to be in excellent agreement with flight pressures measured on the Shuttle vehicle. In the present investigation, results from the HALIS code, which has been extended to cover the first 1212 inches of the Shuttle vehicle, are compared with flight surface pressures. Shock shapes at several angles of attack are also presented.

Weilmuenster, K. J.↗