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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2016

Using Tabulated Experimental Data to Drive an Orthotropic Elasto-Plastic Three-Dimensional Model for Impact Analysis

An orthotropic elasto-plastic-damage three-dimensional model with tabulated input has been developed to analyze the impact response of composite materials. The theory has been implemented as MAT 213 into a tailored version of LS-DYNA being developed under a joint effort of the FAA and NASA and has the following features: (a) the theory addresses any composite architecture that can be experimentally characterized as an orthotropic material and includes rate and temperature sensitivities, (b) the formulation is applicable for solid as well as shell element implementations and utilizes input data in a tabulated form directly from processed experimental data, (c) deformation and damage mechanics are both accounted for within the material model, (d) failure criteria are established that are functions of strain and damage parameters, and mesh size dependence is included, and (e) the theory can be efficiently implemented into a commercial code for both sequential and parallel executions. The salient features of the theory as implemented in LS-DYNA are illustrated using a widely used composite - the T800S/3900-2B[P2352W-19] BMS8-276 Rev-H-Unitape fiber/resin unidirectional composite. First, the experimental tests to characterize the deformation, damage and failure parameters in the material behavior are discussed. Second, the MAT213 input model and implementation details are presented with particular attention given to procedures that have been incorporated to ensure that the yield surfaces in the rate and temperature dependent plasticity model are convex. Finally, the paper concludes with a validation test designed to test the stability, accuracy and efficiency of the implemented model.

Polymer Matrix Composites↗
NASA NTRS2010

Modification of a Macromechanical Finite-Element Based Model for Impact Analysis of Triaxially-Braided Composites

A macro level finite element-based model has been developed to simulate the mechanical and impact response of triaxially-braided polymer matrix composites. In the analytical model, the triaxial braid architecture is simulated by using four parallel shell elements, each of which is modeled as a laminated composite. For the current analytical approach, each shell element is considered to be a smeared homogeneous material. The commercial transient dynamic finite element code LS-DYNA is used to conduct the simulations, and a continuum damage mechanics model internal to LS-DYNA is used as the material constitutive model. The constitutive model requires stiffness and strength properties of an equivalent unidirectional composite. Simplified micromechanics methods are used to determine the equivalent stiffness properties, and results from coupon level tests on the braided composite are utilized to back out the required strength properties. Simulations of quasi-static coupon tests of several representative braided composites are conducted to demonstrate the correlation of the model. Impact simulations of a represented braided composites are conducted to demonstrate the capability of the model to predict the penetration velocity and damage patterns obtained experimentally.

Goldberg, Robert K.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Environmental impact analysis with the airspace concept evaluation system

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center has developed the Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES), which is a fast-time simulation tool for evaluating Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems. This paper describes linking a capability to ACES which can analyze the environmental impact of proposed future ATM systems. This provides the ability to quickly evaluate metrics associated with environmental impacts of aviation for inclusion in multi-dimensional cost-benefit analysis of concepts for evolution of the National Airspace System (NAS) over the next several decades. The methodology used here may be summarized as follows: 1) Standard Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) noise and emissions-inventory models, the Noise Impact Routing System (NIRS) and the Emissions and Dispersion Modeling System (EDMS), respectively, are linked to ACES simulation outputs; 2) appropriate modifications are made to ACES outputs to incorporate all information needed by the environmental models (e.g., specific airframe and engine data); 3) noise and emissions calculations are performed for all traffic and airports in the study area for each of several scenarios, as simulated by ACES; and 4) impacts of future scenarios are compared to the current NAS baseline scenario. This paper also provides the results of initial end-to-end, proof-of-concept runs of the integrated ACES and environmental-modeling capability. These preliminary results demonstrate that if no growth is likely to be impeded by significant environmental impacts that could negatively affect communities throughout the nation.

Augustine, Stephen↗
NASA NTRS2007

Fire in the Brazilian Amazon: A Spatially Explicit Model for Policy Impact Analysis

This article implements a spatially explicit model to estimate the probability of forest and agricultural fires in the Brazilian Amazon. We innovate by using variables that reflect farmgate prices of beef and soy, and also provide a conceptual model of managed and unmanaged fires in order to simulate the impact of road paving, cattle exports, and conservation area designation on the occurrence of fire. Our analysis shows that fire is positively correlated with the price of beef and soy, and that the creation of new conservation units may offset the negative environmental impacts caused by the increasing number of fire events associated with early stages of frontier development.

Arima, Eugenio Y.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Exploration of COTS Ultrasonic NDE Methods for ISS MMOD Impact Analysis

The high orbital speed of the International Space Station (ISS) has created a concern about Micro-Meteorite and Orbital Debris (MMOD). The possibility exists that such an impact could cause significant damage to the ISS pressure wall, and possibly lead to a pressure leak. This paper explores the potential of using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Ultrasonic Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques in order to inspect and analyze MMOD impact damage if such an event would happen to occur. Different types of intra vehicular activity (IVA) Ultrasonic NDE equipment were evaluated, including the Olympus Omniscan MX and the General Electric Phasor XS. The equipment was tested by inspecting various aluminum standards and impact damage test plates in order to determine technological limitations of the equipment as well as the ease of use and availability of features. This study allowed for the design of scanning procedures in order to evaluate the extent of damage caused by an MMOD impact. Lastly, comparisons were drawn between the different pieces of COTS software and a recommendation is made based on each device s capability.

Violette, Daniel P.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Fuel Fabrication Specification Impact Analysis for NBSR LEU Conversion

As part of a national initiative to enhance nuclear security and reduce proliferation risks, significant efforts have been undertaken by the National Nuclear Security Administration Material Management and Minimization Office of Reactor Conversion Program to convert U.S. high performance research reactors (USHPRRs) from the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to low-enriched uranium (LEU), including the National Bureau of Standards Reactor (NBSR). The current plan is to procure LEU fuel assemblies from commercial fabricators according to fuel specifications tailored for each USHPRR. The analysis conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory was part of an effort to identify the sources of uncertainty in the fuel specifications that may impact the performance of the NBSR core after its conversion and, in particular, to assess the range of acceptable tolerance limits from the perspective of core safety and reactor performance. Using the stochastic neutronics code MCNP 6.2, the variations in important NBSR neutronics characteristics were analyzed as a function of the specification parameters independently and in combination. The important NBSR specification parameters analyzed were the fuel isotopic composition, the amount of impurity content in cladding, the fuel plate thickness, and the fuel element 235U mass loading. The range of variation of each specification parameter was based on the technical specification limit or available as-fabricated assay data and uncertainties. The NBSR neutronics characteristics selected for analysis were the reactor reactivity characteristics at equilibrium and the equilibrium fuel cycle length. Results show that with variations in the fabrication parameters of the as-fabricated U-10Mo fuel within the specification limitations, the excess reactivity of the NBSR LEU core remains well below the 15% Δk/k technical specification limit, and the shutdown margin is always significantly greater than the required 0.68% Δk/k. This ensures that the NBSR can be operated safely and reliably shut down for all analyzed cases within the specified fabrication limits after the LEU conversion. In the prototypic case, the fuel cycle length was 1.5 days longer than the targeted 38.5 days. In a credible worst-case scenario, where all low-reactivity parameters were combined, the fuel cycle length was reduced to 35.5 days, which is still considered manageable for reactor operations. Variations in cycle length are primarily driven by changes in 235U loading, with other parameters having secondary effects.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Impacts Analysis of Amendments to Mexico's Unit Commitment and Dispatch Rules

In Mexico, there are various amendments, approved and under discussion to significantly modify the order in which generation units are committed and dispatched. This report quantifies the potential impacts on Mexico's power system, utilizing a production cost model of the Mexican power system that analyzes the hourly optimal electricity dispatch of the Mexican electricity system for 1 year under four scenarios, a reference scenario, and three alternative scenarios. These scenarios are meant to evaluate the potential impacts of increasing participation of the state-owned power plants in generation mix, electricity production costs, emissions, and renewable curtailment.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS2023

Developing a Hail and Wind Damage Swath Event Database from Daily MODIS True Color Imagery and Storm Reports for Impact Analysis and Applications

Hail and damaging winds are two threats associated with intense and severe thunderstorms that traverse the Midwest and Great Plains during the primary growing season. In certain severe thunderstorm events, large swaths of agricultural crops are impacted, allowing the damage to be viewed from multiple satellite remote sensing platforms. Previous studies have focused on analyzing individual hail and wind damage swaths (HWDSs) using satellite remote sensing, but these swaths have never been officially archived or documented. This lack of documentation has made it difficult to analyze the spatial extent and temporal frequency of HWDSs from year to year. This study utilizes daily true color imagery from MODIS aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites and daily local storm reports from the Storm Prediction Center to build a database of HWDSs occurring in the months of May through August, for years 2000 through 2020. This database identified 1,646 HWDSs in 12 states throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, confirmed through a combination of archived severe weather warnings, radar information, and official storm reports. For each entry in the HWDS database, a geospatial outline is provided along with the most likely date of first visible damage from MODIS imagery as well as the physical characteristics and time of occurrence estimated from available warnings. This study also provides a summary of the radar characteristics for a portion of the database. This database will further the understanding of severe weather damage by hail and wind to agriculture to help understand the frequency of these events and assist in mapping the impacted areas.

Climatology↗
NASA NTRS1975

The NASTRAN SRB slapdown water impact analysis

A computer analysis was made of the hydroelastic interaction between a shell structure representing the space shuttle solid rocket motor case and an incompressible fluid during the slapdown phase of water impact. The large motions and hydroelastic response of the system were obtained by numerical integration of the combined hydrodynamics and structural equations of motion and are analyzed for a selected interval after the initial nozzle impact. The computerization of the slapdown hydroelastic capability was incorporated into the general purpose NASTRAN computer code. The development of the theoretical basis, a guide to the program's usage, results of correlation and parameter studies, and a detailed description of the computer code are also included.

Herting, D. N.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Model Advancements to Enable Impact Analysis of Climate Change on Streamflow Temperature

With support from the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has developed new tools that incorporate cutting-edge climate and hydrological science capabilities to assess the potential long-term impacts of future climate conditions on unregulated streamflow and water temperature within watershed-river-reservoir systems. The objectives of this project were achieved by enhancing key hydrologic and hydrodynamic models and transferring them to a high-performance computing environment to provide a high-spatiotemporal resolution, multi-scale modeling framework. The new modeling framework has the potential to quantify risks related climate change impacts on runoff, unregulated streamflow, and water temperature. Initial development and demonstration of the modeling framework was conducted under historical and future climate conditions in the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest and the Connecticut River Basin in New England.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1988

Space Shuttle Orbiter windshield bird impact analysis

The NASA Space Shuttle Orbiter's windshield employs three glass panes separated by air gaps. The brittleness of the glass offers much less birdstrike energy-absorption capability than the laminated polycarbonate windshields of more conventional aircraft; attention must accordingly be given to the risk of catastrophic bird impact, and to methods of strike prevention that address bird populations around landing sites rather than the modification of the window's design. Bird populations' direct reduction, as well as careful scheduling of Orbiter landing times, are suggested as viable alternatives. The question of birdstrike-resistant glass windshield design for hypersonic aerospacecraft is discussed.

Edelstein, Karen S.↗
NASA NTRS1973

A land use and environmental impact analysis of the Norfolk-Portsmouth SMSA

The feasibility of using remote sensing techniques for land use and environmental assessment in the Norfolk-Portsmouth area is discussed. Data cover the use of high altitude aircraft and satellite remote sensing data for: (1) identifying various heirarchial levels of land use, (2) monitoring land use changes for repetitive basis, (3) assessing the impact of competing land uses, and (4) identifying areas of potential environmental deterioration. High altitude aircraft photographs (scale 1:120,000) acquired in 1959, 1970, and 1972, plus Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS-1) color composite images acquired in 1972 were used for the land use and environmental assessments. The high altitude aircraft photography, as expected, was successfully used to map Level 1, Level 2, as well as some urban Level 3 land use categories. However, the detail of land use analysis obtainable from the ERTS imagery exceeded the expectations for the U.S. Geological Survey's land use classification scheme. Study results are consistent with the initial investigation which determined Level 1 land use change to be 16.7 square km per year.

Mitchel, W. B.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Life-Cycle Assessment Integration into Scalable Open-Source Numerical Models (LiAISON) for Prospective Impact Analysis of Novel Technologies

Decarbonizing the industrial sector is a significant challenge in achieving a net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions economy by 2050 and the Paris Agreement, i.e., a global climate change mitigation target of achieving a maximum average temperature change potential of 1.5 Degrees Celsius or less by 2100 with respect to pre-industrial levels. In the United States (US), the industrial sector accounts for 23% of total GHG emissions and is home to a number of hard-to-electrify activities. The chemicals subsector has the single largest subsector emissions profile after direct emissions from fossil fuel combustion and leakage from fossil fuel distribution systems. Within the chemicals subsector, many processes depend on hydrogen or ammonia precursors. Decarbonizing these two commodities would contribute significantly to decarbonizing the industrial sector as hydrogen could also be used for low carbon steel production (e.g., hydrogen-based direct reduction of iron) and other industrial applications. Emerging technologies require the application of prospective life cycle assessment (LCA), which can account for technology (foreground) scaling and process improvements via learning-by-doing, among others. In many cases, the future system context (background) in which the technologies are assumed to operate in is equally relevant. Background scenarios generated by integrated assessment models (IAM) can coherently incorporate potential future dynamics of the energy-climate-human-land system. Further, IAM scenarios are harmonized across socioeconomic and climate change mitigation pathways, which facilitates the comparability of prospective LCAs using different IAMs. We introduce an open source prospective LCA framework, the Life-cycle Assessment Integration into Scalable Open-source Numerical models (LiAISON), to analyze the non-linear relationships between technology foreground and the future energy system background across a series of midpoint and resource use metrics. The integration of LCA and IAM data is achieved using prospective environmental Impact assessment (PREMISE). We showcase it by assessing two Power-to-Hydrogen (PtH2) processes, namely Solid Oxide Electrolysis (SOE) and Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Electrolysis (PEME). We compare the technologies to a baseline of hydrogen production via natural gas-based Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) in a US context of multiple energy system and climate change mitigation futures. Besides providing an analysis that specifies the LCA results ranges with temporal and geospatial explicitness across the two technologies, metrics, and impact assessment methods, this research also aims to establish a base framework that can be expanded to use other IAM generated scenarios and US open-source life cycle inventory (LCI) databases. We find that the temporal environmental performance of either technology or their difference to SMR is directly influenced by the underlying background dynamics. Additionally we compare our results by linking two other prospective models with LiAISON - GCAM (Global Change Assessment Model) and ReEDS (Regional Energy Deployment System) to analyze the effect of changing background scenarios using varying predictions in life cycle analysis.

decarbonizing↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Noise Impact Analysis for Urban Air Mobility in Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex

This study supports re-design of airspace and procedures for management of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) fleet operations in a given metropolitan area. A goal of UAM is to maintain geographic separation of UAM flight tracks from densely populated areas in order to reduce the potential negative community impact of UAM and manage flight trajectory in anticipation of allowable noise levels and current land use. A UAM route inventory and a demographic-data-optimized topographic map are developed for the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to identify routes or baseline route segments for reduction of noise impact. Noise contours are computed for baseline route and alternative route design given the desired UAM demand level. The impact of UAM fleet noise is predicted based on predicted number of people and noise-sensitive facilities located inside the noise contours.

Urban Air Mobility↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Noise Impact Analysis for Urban Air Mobility in Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex

This study supports re-design of airspace and procedures for management of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) fleet operations in a given metropolitan area. A goal of UAM is to maintain geographic separation of UAM flight tracks from densely populated areas in order to reduce the potential negative community impact of UAM and manage flight trajectory in anticipation of allowable noise levels and current land use. A UAM route inventory and a demographic-data-optimized topographic map are developed for the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to identify routes or baseline route segments for reduction of noise impact. Noise contours are computed for baseline route and alternative route design given the desired UAM demand level. The impact of UAM fleet noise is predicted based on predicted number of people and noise-sensitive facilities located inside the noise contours.

Urban Air Mobility↗
DOE OSTI2023

Impact Analysis of Transitioning to Heat Pump Rooftop Units for the U.S. Commercial Building Stock: Preprint

20% of the U.S. commercial building sector's energy usage is from on-site combustion of fossil fuels for heating. Decarbonization will require electrification of these systems to meet climate goals, often by transitioning to heat pumps. Rooftop units (RTU) are the most prominent commercial building HVAC system type and should therefore be prioritized for decarbonization solutions. However, there is limited understanding of the impact on emissions that considers regional electricity generation methods, as well as the impact of other heat pump intricacies such as the effects of temperature on capacity/efficiency, defrost operation, realistic sizing methodologies, and supplementary heating. This study explores the effects of transitioning all conventional RTUs to high-performance heat pump RTUs for the U.S. commercial building stock. The analysis is performed using ComStock, DOE's calibrated model of the U.S. commercial building stock developed by NREL. Results show 9% and 17% reductions in stock aggregate energy consumption and GHG emissions, respectively. Furthermore, average heat pump operational details are presented by state. This analysis will help inform the transition to heat pump RTUs for the U.S. commercial building stock.

commercial building electrification↗