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At least 757 records · Page 42

SC-228 Inclusion of DAA Warning Alert for TCAS Interoperability

This white paper summarizes NASA research results that have informed Special Committee 228 (SC-228) discussions and decisions regarding the inclusion of a warning-level alert within the detect and avoid (DAA) alerting structure for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). For UAS, the removal of the pilot from onboard the aircraft has eliminated the ability of the ground-based pilot in command (PIC) to use out-the-window visual information to make judgments about a potential threat of a loss of well clear with another aircraft. As a result, the DAA traffic display will be the primary source of information that the PIC can use to execute the three primary well clear functions: 1) detect a potential loss of well clear, 2) determine a resolution maneuver, and 3) upload that maneuver to the aircraft via the ground control station (GCS). In addition, pilots are required to coordinate with air traffic control (ATC) prior to maneuvering off of their approved flight plan. In determining an appropriate resolution maneuver to avoid a loss of well clear, the PIC must decide both when and how to maneuver, and both the timeliness and the accuracy (i.e., correctness) of the maneuver are critical to reducing the likelihood and/or severity of a loss of well clear. Alerting information is one of three critical components of the DAA display, along with traffic information elements (e.g., relative heading, speed and altitude) and maneuver guidance. Alerting information and maneuver guidance, in particular, have been found to have a significant impact, both statistically and practically, on pilots' ability to avoid and minimize the severity of losses of well clear While all three display components are key to pilots performing the traffic avoidance task of remaining well clear, in general, alerting information provides crucial information about when a resolution maneuver is required while maneuver guidance assists the pilot in determining how best to maneuver. A fundamental task of the DAA alerting system is to provide critical timing information to the pilot about the potential for a loss of well clear with another aircraft. This is done by employing both temporal and spatial thresholds that indicate to the pilot the likelihood and imminence of a loss of well clear. The design of the DAA alerting thresholds is a balancing act between eliciting the desired pilot response in real loss of well clear threat events and reducing excessive, unnecessary, and/or uncoordinated UAS maneuvering within the air traffic environment; larger thresholds, both spatially and temporally, may increase the likelihood of a pilot avoiding a loss of well clear, but it can also increase the frequency of maneuvering - especially in cases where a maneuver is not actually needed to maintain well clear. A series of human in the loop (HITL) simulations have been conducted as part of NASA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) project. The purpose of these HITLs has been to provide empirical results in order to inform development of the minimum human-machine interface requirements for the DAA system. This white paper will present those results which provide evidence of a human performance benefit (in terms of response times and ability to remain well clear of other aircraft) of the DAA warning alert both with and without a collision avoidance system on board the aircraft.

TCAS interoperability↗

Integration of Automated Systems (IAS) Flight Test Overview

The Integration of Automated Systems (IAS) Project is conducting a series of 2023 flight tests supporting NASA's Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and National Campaign efforts. These flights include crewed, test (i.e., ownship) and traffic (i.e., intruder) aircraft that will fly with unique technologies onboard. The presentation will include overviews of the Hazard Perception and Avoidance (HPA) and Flight Path Management (FPM) technical areas but will focus primarily on HPA. HPA will test the FAA's Airborne Collision Avoidance System X (ACAS X), a next-generation collision avoidance tool developed to support different aircraft types and operations. The rotorcraft variant, ACAS Xr, is designed to accommodate existing helicopter platforms and in-development, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) concepts, which are critical to the emerging AAM concept of operations. Two configurations of ACAS Xr will be examined: Collision Avoidance System (CAS, similar to the Traffic Collision Avoidance System [TCAS] II) and Detect and Avoid (DAA, previously developed to provide added situational awareness for uncrewed aircraft). Additionally, this system will be explored during cruise and low-speed flight as well as flights within en-route, structured (i.e., dense/urban), and terminal airspaces. Scripted flight conflicts will be conducted, and these conflicts will be mitigated through maneuvers that are manual (i.e., performed by the pilots) or automated (i.e., achieved by the cooperation of the program middleware and onboard ownship systems). Objective data will be collected involving system and pilot performance as well as pilot decisions; subjective data will include pilot opinions of ACAS Xr's alerting and guidance as well as the automated maneuvers.

detect and avoid↗

Relative reproductive phenology and synchrony affect neonate survival in a nonprecocial ungulate

Abstract Degree of reproductive synchronization in prey is hypothesized as a predator defense strategy reducing prey risk via predator satiation or predator avoidance. Species with precocial young, especially those exposed to specialist predators, should be highly synchronous to satiate predators (predator satiation hypothesis), while prey with nonprecocial (i.e. altricial) young, especially those exposed to generalist predators, should become relatively asynchronous to avoid predator detection (predator avoidance hypothesis). The white‐tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus in North America is an example of a nonprecocial ungulate that uses the hider strategy early in life; its primary predator (coyote; Canis latrans ) is a generalist, making white‐tailed deer a good model species to test the predator avoidance hypothesis. We used birth dates and known fates of white‐tailed deer neonates ( n = 1,032) across nine study sites varying in relative synchrony and predator assemblages to test the predator avoidance hypothesis. We predicted that relative birthing asynchrony of the population would increase relative survival at the population level; therefore, at the individual scale, neonate birth date nearer to mean birthing date in a respective population would not influence individual survival. Coyotes were responsible for the majority of predation events, and survival of those neonates increased the closer the individual was born to peak birthing season in each respective population. Also, at the population level, reproductive asynchronization negatively affected survival. Contrary to the predator avoidance hypothesis, our data indicate patterns in neonate survival for white‐tailed deer better support the predator satiation hypothesis at the individual and population level. Additionally, coyotes may present a selective force great enough to shift reproductive synchrony such that predator satiation may become a feasible defense strategy for neonates at local spatial scales. Our results indicate that synchronizing reproduction may still be the most effective strategy to reduce individual predation risk from generalist predators, particularly when the window of heightened resource availability to the prey is narrow. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Michel, Eric S.↗

Data for The Value of Reversible Carbon Storage in a Zero-Emissions World

Atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is required to stabilize global temperature. CDR can be achieved via ecosystem-based approaches that are cost-effective but reversible (e.g., soil and forest management) or by more durable but expensive approaches (e.g., direct air capture coupled with geologic storage). Here, we examine trade-offs between these approaches, focusing on timing, climate impacts, and cost. We simulated reversible carbon accrual for a range of CDR contract structures using a general minimalist model of ecosystem carbon cycling, and parameterized it to simulate US agricultural soil management─specifically cover cropping─as a case study. We then quantified the resulting impact on atmospheric carbon and global temperature using a climate model emulator. We find that maintaining a patchwork of reversible CDR projects by replacing lapsed projects with new projects can reduce warming by 22–195 μ°C in 2100 and that the magnitude of this cooling effect depends on how effectively the patchwork is maintained. Long-term maintenance of reversible CDR projects requires institutional stability that cannot be guaranteed over multiple decades. Consequently, effective CDR ultimately requires replacing reversible projects with durable projects. To address this problem, we modeled the cost of replacing reversible agricultural soil CDR with geologic CDR. We found that using reversible CDR as a bridge to durable CDR is potentially more cost-effective as a global cooling strategy (0.20–0.81 billion USD per μ°C avoided) than perpetual maintenance of reversible CDR (0.32–1.31 billion USD per μ°C avoided) or an immediate transition to durable CDR (1.37–2.19 billion USD per μ°C avoided). However, we emphasize that institutional commitments to maintain reversible CDR projects cannot be guaranteed. Reliance on reversible CDR as a bridge to durable CDR therefore carries an unknown amount of risk and will only function if efforts to maintain reversible CDR are robust.

Carbon↗

Investigating motion sickness using the conditioned taste aversion paradigm

The avoidance of foods which are associated with uncomfortable or aversive internal states has long been recognized. Many people are aware, either directly or via anecdotal reports, of individuals who avoid foods which were eaten just before the onset of sickness. Awareness of this phenomenon can be traced to the writings of John Locke. The disruption of diet during cancer therapy is sometimes ascribed to the attribution of an unpleasant quality to foods eaten preceding the sickness induced by therapy itself. In addition, it has long been recognized by the manufacturers of rodent poisons that animals avoid the injection of food treated with nonlethal doses of poison. An important part of the laboratory study of this phenomenon was directed toward studying the role learning plays in this type of avoidance behavior. Following the lead of Garcia and his associates, this avoidance has come to be interpreted as arising from a form of classical conditioning. In typical laboratory studies of this behavior, a novel food is ingested just prior to exposure to some stimulus, commonly poisoning or irradiation, which produces illness. Following the terminology of classical conditioning, it is common to describe this procedure as one of 'pairing' a conditioned stimulus (CS), the novel food, with an unconditioned stimulus (US), the illness induced by toxicosis or irradiation. Avoidance of the food in succeeding feeding opportunities is viewed as a learned response or a conditioned taste aversion (CTA). Garcia et al. asserted that motion sickness could produce 'gustatory' aversions, but passive motion was first reported as an US to establish CTA by Green and Rachlin. The purpose is to review the manner in which CTA has been used to study motion sickness. Numerous reviews concentrating on other aspects of CTA are available in the existing literature. Readers are encouraged to consult the various papers and edited books for extensive information on other aspects of this literature.

Robert A Fox↗

Step 1: Human System Integration Pilot-Technology Interface Requirements for Weather Management

This document involves definition of technology interface requirements for Hazardous Weather Avoidance. Technology concepts in use by the Access 5 Weather Management Work Package were considered. Beginning with the Human System Integration (HIS) high-level functional requirement for Hazardous Weather Avoidance, and Hazardous Weather Avoidance technology elements, HSI requirements for the interface to the pilot were identified. Results of the analysis describe (1) the information required by the pilot to have knowledge of hazardous weather, and (2) the control capability needed by the pilot to obtain hazardous weather information. Fundamentally, these requirements provide the candidate Hazardous Weather Avoidance technology concepts with the necessary human-related elements to make them compatible with human capabilities and limitations. The results of the analysis describe how Hazardous Weather Avoidance operations and functions should interface with the pilot to provide the necessary Weather Management functionality to the UA-pilot system. Requirements and guidelines for Hazardous Weather Avoidance are partitioned into four categories: (1) Planning En Route (2) Encountering Hazardous Weather En Route, (3) Planning to Destination, and (4) Diversion Planning Alternate Airport. Each requirement is stated and is supported with a rationale and associated reference(s).

Source record↗

Improved Path Planning Onboard the Mars Exploration Rovers

A revised version of the AutoNav (autonomous navigation with hazard avoidance) software running onboard each Mars Exploration Rover (MER) affords better obstacle avoidance than does the previous version. Both versions include GESTALT (Grid-based Estimation of Surface Traversability Applied to Local Terrain), a navigation program that generates local-terrain models from stereoscopic image pairs captured by onboard rover cameras; uses this information to evaluate candidate arcs that extend across the terrain from the current rover location; ranks the arcs with respect to hazard avoidance, minimization of steering time, and the direction towards the goal; and combines the rankings in a weighted vote to select an arc, along which the rover is then driven. GESTALT works well in navigating around small isolated obstacles, but tends to fail when the goal is on the other side of a large obstacle or multiple closely spaced small obstacles. When that occurs, the goal seeking votes and hazard avoidance votes conflict severely. The hazard avoidance votes will not allow the rover to drive through the unsafe area, and the waypoint votes will not allow enough deviation from the straight-line path for the rover to get around the hazard. The rover becomes stuck and is unable to reach the goal. The revised version of AutoNav utilizes a global path-planning program, Field D*, to evaluate the cost of traveling from the end of each GESTALT arc to the goal. In the voting process, Field D* arc votes supplant GESTALT goal-seeking arc votes. Hazard avoidance, steering bias, and Field D* votes are merged and the rover is driven a preset distance along the arc with the highest vote. Then new images are acquired and the process as described is repeated until the goal is reached. This new technology allows the rovers to autonomously navigate around much more complex obstacle arrangements than was previously possible. In addition, this improved autonomy enables longer traverses per Sol (a day on Mars), and can make planning drives easier for operators on Earth.

Stentz, Anthony↗

Weather Guidance for UAS Urban Medical Transport Missions

Unmanned aircraft will revolutionize healthcare services by providing efficient and expeditious delivery of life-saving transplant organs and supplies to hospitals in urban environments, where road traffic and congestion can slow delivery times and endanger lives. Bell has developed the Autonomous Pod Transport (APT) vehicle to serve this market, with entry into service in mid-2020s. Adverse weather conditions can introduce risks and inefficiencies in urban environments leading to flight delays and cancellations. In 2018, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Bell entered into a cooperative agreement, under the Systems Integration and Operationalization (SIO) program to tackle key challenges to enable future commercial unmanned aircraft operations. The Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, joined this team to demonstrate weather avoidance technologies for remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles. CASA has developed the ‘City Warn’ hazard alerting platform to gather weather information from various weather sensors and models, and based on user (or mission) preferences for alerting and on user (or unmanned aircraft) locations, the platform shares timely weather intelligence with users and the systems used by them for remote operations. This presentation discusses the weather avoidance solution developed during this project, leading up to the demonstration of the end-to-end system in Fall 2020. The presentation will cover the following topics: 1) goals related to weather avoidance 2) the design requirements process, including the results of pilot interviews, 3) weather observation and avoidance needs 4) selection of regional and national weather data sets 5) design of the weather graphical interface and 6) considerations for real-time weather alerting. The end-to-end system that was developed will be discussed, along with the results from the demonstration flight. The presentation will conclude with insights from the project team on lessons learned and best practices on weather avoidance technologies for the industry going ahead.

weather avoidance↗

Weather Guidance for UAS Urban Medical Transport Missions

Unmanned aircraft will revolutionize healthcare services by providing efficient and expeditious delivery of life-saving transplant organs and supplies to hospitals in urban environments, where road traffic and congestion can slow delivery times and endanger lives. Bell has developed the Autonomous Pod Transport (APT) vehicle to serve this market, with entry into service in mid-2020s. Adverse weather conditions can introduce risks and inefficiencies in urban environments leading to flight delays and cancellations. In 2018, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Bell entered into a cooperative agreement, under the Systems Integration and Operationalization (SIO) program to tackle key challenges to enable future commercial unmanned aircraft operations. The Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, joined this team to demonstrate weather avoidance technologies for remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles. CASA has developed the ‘City Warn’ hazard alerting platform to gather weather information from various weather sensors and models, and based on user (or mission) preferences for alerting and on user (or unmanned aircraft) locations, the platform shares timely weather intelligence with users and the systems used by them for remote operations. This presentation discusses the weather avoidance solution developed during this project, leading up to the demonstration of the end-to-end system in Fall 2020. The presentation will cover the following topics: 1) goals related to weather avoidance 2) the design requirements process, including the results of pilot interviews, 3) weather observation and avoidance needs 4) selection of regional and national weather data sets 5) design of the weather graphical interface and 6) considerations for real-time weather alerting. The end-to-end system that was developed will be discussed, along with the results from the demonstration flight. The presentation will conclude with insights from the project team on lessons learned and best practices on weather avoidance technologies for the industry going ahead.

weather avoidance↗

Applying Non-Energy Impacts from Other Jurisdictions in Cost-Benefit Analyses of Energy Efficiency Programs: Resources for States for Utility Customer-Funded Programs

Avoided energy and capacity costs are the primary yardstick utilities use to determine which energy efficiency programs are cost-effective for their customers. But sometimes "non-energy impacts" — not commonly recognized as directly associated with energy generation, transmission and distribution — represent substantial benefits, such as improving comfort, air quality and public health. Considering whether and how to include non-energy impacts is an important part of cost-benefit analyses for these programs. This report offers practical considerations for deciding which non-energy impacts to include and how to apply values or methods from other jurisdictions. Researchers reviewed studies quantifying non-energy impacts used in 30 states and applied a five-point system to indicate transferability of a value or method from each study for 16 categories of non-energy impacts: Water resource costs and benefits; Other fuels costs and benefits; Avoided environmental compliance costs; Environmental impacts; Productivity; Health and safety; Asset value; Energy and/or capacity price suppression effects; Avoided costs of compliance with Renewable Portfolio Standard requirements; Avoided credit and collection costs; Avoided ancillary services; Comfort; Economic development and job impacts; Public health impacts; Energy security impacts; Increased reliability. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office supported this work.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Steering Law Design for Redundant Single Gimbal Control Moment Gyro Systems

The correspondence between robotic manipulators and single gimbal Control Moment Gyro (CMG) systems was exploited to aid in the understanding and design of single gimbal CMG Steering laws. A test for null motion near a singular CMG configuration was derived which is able to distinguish between escapable and unescapable singular states. Detailed analysis of the Jacobian matrix null-space was performed and results were used to develop and test a variety of single gimbal CMG steering laws. Computer simulations showed that all existing singularity avoidance methods are unable to avoid Elliptic internal singularities. A new null motion algorithm using the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse, however, was shown by simulation to avoid Elliptic type singularities under certain conditions. The SR-inverse, with appropriate null motion was proposed as a general approach to singularity avoidance, because of its ability to avoid singularities through limited introduction of torque error. Simulation results confirmed the superior performance of this method compared to the other available and proposed pseudoinverse-based Steering laws.

Bedrossian, Nazareth Sarkis↗

Concepts and Challenges for Environmentally Friendly En Route Operations

A flight trajectory optimization algorithm with fuel and contrails models, which develops alternative flight paths, provides policy makers the necessary data to make tradeoffs between persistent contrails mitigation and aircraft fuel consumption. This study develops an algorithm that calculates wind-optimal trajectories for cruising aircraft while avoiding the regions of airspace prone to persistent contrails formation. The optimal trajectory is derived using Singular Perturbation Method. The regions of airspace favorable to persistent contrails formation are modeled as high-risk areas that aircraft should avoid and are adjustable. The tradeoffs between persistent contrails formation and additional travel time are investigated for wind-optimal trajectories and various contrails-avoidance trajectories at 10 different cruising altitudes for flights departing from Chicago and San Diego to New York. The additional travel times required for avoiding 100% persistent contrails formation at various flight altitudes ranged from approximately 0% to 4.3% for flights from Chicago to New York. For flights between San Diego and New York, additional traveling times vary between 1.3% and 5% depending on the cruise altitude and the percentage of contrail avoidance. Talk will present the results of aircraft fuel consumptions that are proportional to the travel time for cruising aircraft.

Sridhar, Banavar↗

Concepts of Integration for UAS Operations in the NAS

One of the major challenges facing the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS) is the lack of an onboard pilot that can comply with the legal requirement identified in the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) that pilots see and avoid other aircraft. UAS will be expected to demonstrate the means to perform the function of see and avoid while preserving the safety level of the airspace and the efficiency of the air traffic system. This paper introduces a Sense and Avoid (SAA) concept for integration of UAS into the NAS that is currently being developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and identifies areas that require additional experimental evaluation to further inform various elements of the concept. The concept design rests on interoperability principles that take into account both the Air Traffic Control (ATC) environment as well as existing systems such as the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). Specifically, the concept addresses the determination of well clear values that are large enough to avoid issuance of TCAS corrective Resolution Advisories, undue concern by pilots of proximate aircraft and issuance of controller traffic alerts. The concept also addresses appropriate declaration times for projected losses of well clear conditions and maneuvers to regain well clear separation.

Consiglio, Maria C.↗

Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging Performance in a High-Fidelity Lunar Terrain Field

The prime objective of this project is to evaluate Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems and compare their performance for hazard avoidance when tested at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's (MSFC's) lunar high-fidelity terrain field (see fig. 1). Hazard avoidance is the ability to avoid boulders, holes, or slopes that would jeopardize a safe landing and the deployment of scientific payloads. This capability is critical for any sample return mission intending to land in challenging terrain. Since challenging terrain is frequently where the most scientifically attractive targets are, hazard avoidance will be among the highest priorities for future robotic exploration missions. The maturation of hazard avoidance sensing addressed in this project directly supports the MSFC Tier I priority of sample return.

Chuang, Jason↗

Monocular Ranging for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems in the Far-Field

Recent proliferation of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) applications requires onboard collision avoidance systems to mitigate the risk of collision with non-cooperative aircraft and manned aircraft, which may not see sUAS in time to perform an avoidance maneuver. An attractive avenue for onboard collision avoidance is the utilization of machine vision cameras due to their low size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements. In this paper, we characterize the range performance of a machine vision system developed in-house and mounted onto an sUAS. The technique was designed to estimate the performance of a sense-and-avoid system to ensure that the sensing components meet the well-clear requirements for the chosen platform and avoidance strategy. Experimental flight-test data was acquired from test-flights flown along multiple collision geometries for two intruders: a general Aviation (GA) aircraft and a fixed-wing sUAS. The ownship and both intruders were instrumented with inertial navigation systems (INS) recording position and attitude information. The range at first detection, 𝑹𝟎, was extracted from in-flight imagery of head-on collision course geometry synchronized with INS data from both aircraft and ground-truth values extracted from the raw imagery. This initial detection distance, 𝑹𝟎, scales with atmospheric attenuation. Therefore, under clear sky conditions, the derived 𝑹𝟎 value represents the upper bound on the detection range achievable by the test configuration of the detector. Results indicate that the maximum initial detection distance for a 4k resolution action camera fitted with a 41º Field of View (FOV) lens is 2.763 ± 0.037 km for a GA aircraft and 0.881 ± 0.061 km for a fixed-wing sUAS, respectively. The in results this study suggest that a vision-based detect and track system may be analyzed using the sensor characterization and contextualized within aircraft well-clear volumes.

Chester V. Dolph↗

Safe Space Conduct: NASA Best Practices Overview

While prevention of launch and on-orbit collisions has been an institutional concern of NASA for several decades (beginning with the Shuttle program), historically the paucity of spaceactors and deployed payloads made the conduct of such protection activities relatively straightforward. With the substantial increases in launched payloads over the last several years, collision avoidance operations have become substantially more complicated. At the same time, many operators are uncertain regarding what collision avoidance activities are appropriate to their missions. The lack of a space traffic management authority to articulate standards and guidelines for such conduct has only increased the confusion.In response to this situation, NASA has published a Spacecraft Conjunction Assessment and Collision Avoidance Handbook, which articulates and explains the launch and on-orbit collision avoidance best practices that the Agency has developed and is requiring of present and future NASA missions. Because the CA2 Handbook is a living document regularly updated to reflect best practices changes as the industry develops, feedback from both NASA missions and other users is continuously collected in order to issue CA2 Handbook updates.This talk will summarize and explain the collision avoidance best practices from the CA2Handbook, along with the key issues that drove the selection of those practices.

Conjunction Assessment↗

NASA Best Practices Overview

While prevention of launch and on-orbit collisions has been an institutional concern of NASA for several decades (beginning with the Shuttle program), historically the paucity of space actors and deployed payloads made the conduct of such protection activities relatively straightforward. With the substantial increases in launched payloads over the last several years, collision avoidance operations have become substantially more complicated. At the same time, many operators are uncertain regarding what collision avoidance activities are appropriate to their missions. The lack of a space traffic management authority to articulate standards and guidelines for such conduct has only increased the confusion. In response to this situation, NASA has published a Spacecraft Conjunction Assessment and Collision Avoidance Handbook, which articulates and explains the launch and on-orbit collision avoidance best practices that the Agency has developed and is requiring of present and future NASA missions. Because the CA2 Handbook is a living document regularly updated to reflect best practices changes as the industry develops, feedback from both NASA missions and other users is continuously collected in order to issue CA2 Handbook updates. This talk will summarize and explain the collision avoidance best practices from the CA2 Handbook, along with the key issues that drove the selection of those practices.

Conjunction Assessment↗

Recent developments in catalyst-related PEM fuel cell durability

Cost and durability remain the two major barriers to the widespread commercialization of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-based power systems, especially for the most impactful but challenging fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) application. Commercial FCEVs are now on the road; however, their PEMFC systems do not meet the cost targets established by the U.S. Department of Energy, primarily due to the high platinum loading needed on the cathode to achieve the requisite performance and lifetime. Furthermore, while the activities of a number of commercial Pt-based alloy cathode catalysts exceed the beginning-of-life (BOL) targets, these activities, and the overall cathode performance, degrade via a variety of mechanisms described herein. Degradation is mitigated in current FCEVs by utilizing a cathode catalyst with a lower BOL activity (e.g., much lower transition metal alloy content and larger BOL nanoparticle size), necessitating higher catalyst loadings, and through the utilization of system controls that avoid conditions known to exacerbate degradation processes, such as limiting the fuel cell stack voltage range. The design and development of active and robust materials and eliminating the need for vehicle mitigation strategies would greatly simplify the operating system, allowing for greater transient operation, avoiding large hybridization, and curtailing of fuel cell power. Although system mitigation strategies have provided the near-term pathway for FCEV commercialization, material-specific solutions are required to further reduce costs and improve operability and efficiency. Future material developments should focus on stabilization of the electrode structure and minimization of the catalyst particle susceptibility to dissolution caused by oxide formation and reduction over PEMFC cathode-relevant operating potentials plus minimization of support corrosion. Ex situ accelerated stress tests have provided insight into the processes responsible for material and performance degradation and will continue to provide useful information on the relative stability of materials and benchmarks for robust and stable materials-based solutions not requiring system mitigation strategies to achieve adequate lifetime.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗