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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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Design analysis tests were performed on selected power switching components to determine the possible applicability of off-the-shelf hardware to space shuttles. Various characteristics were also evaluated in those devices to determine the most desirable properties for the space shuttle.
ORNL worked with Quintus Technologies to develop new hot isostatic pressing parameters for Ti-6Al-4V components fabricated via Arcam electron beam melting. These parameters result in isotropic tensile behavior compared to the conventional hot isostatic press HIP parameters that result in anisotropic tensile properties depending on the build direction. Furthermore, an improvement in fatigue behavior was observed.
Microstructure design can have a substantial effect on the performance of critical components in numerous aerospace applications. However, the stochastic nature of metallic microstructures leads to deviations in material properties from the design point and alters the performance of these critical components. In this paper, a novel stochastic linear programming (LP) methodology is developed for microstructure design accounting for uncertainties in desired properties. The metallic microstructure is represented using a finite element discretized form of the orientation distribution function (ODF). The inverse LP problem solves the mean values and covariance matrix of the ODFs to maximize the mean values of a property, given the statistical constraints on other properties. The highlight is an analytical uncertainty quantification model via a Gaussian distribution to model propagation of microstructural uncertainties to the properties. Examples illustrate maximization of the yield strength and magnetostriction of a galfenol alloy when constrained by uncertainties in a set of stiffness constants.
Radiation effects in photonic and microelectronic components can impact the performance of high-speed digital optical data link in a variety of ways. This segment of the short course focuses on radiation effects in digital optical data links operating in the MHz to GHz regime. (Some of the information is applicable to frequencies above and below this regime) The three basic component level effects that should be considered are Total Ionizing Dose (TID), Displacement Damage Dose (DDD) and Single Event Effects (SEE). In some cases the system performance degradation can be quantified from component level tests, while in others a more holistic characterization approach must be taken. In Section 2.0 of this segment of the Short Course we will give a brief overview of the space radiation environment follow by a summary of the basic space radiation effects important for microelectronics and photonics listed above. The last part of this section will give an example of a typical mission radiation environment requirements. Section 3.0 gives an overview of intra-satellite digital optical data link systems. It contains a discussion of the digital optical data link and it's components. Also, we discuss some of the important system performance metrics that are impacted by radiation effects degradation of optical and optoelectronic component performance. Section 4.0 discusses radiation effects in optical and optoelectronic components. While each component effect will be discussed, the focus of this section is on degradation of passive optical components and SEE in photodiodes (other mechanisms are covered in segment II of this short course entitled "Photonic Devices with Complex and Multiple Failure Modes"). Section 5.0 will focus on optical data link system response to the space radiation environment. System level SEE ground testing will be discussed. Then we give a discussion of system level assessment of data link performance when operating in the space radiation environment.
The performance of the thermal protection system, field joint protection system, and systems tunnel components of Flight Set 360L006, are documented, as evaluated by postflight hardware inspection. The condition of both motors was similar to previous flights. Sixteen aft edge hits were noted on the ground environment instrumentation thermal protection system. Each hit left a clean substrate, indicating that the damage was caused by nozzle severance debris and/or water impact. No National Space and Transporation System debris criteria for missing thermal protection system were violated. One 5.0 by 1.0 in. unbond was observed on the left hand center field joint K5NA closeout and was elevated to an in-flight anomaly (STS-34-M-4) by the NASA Ice/Debris team. Aft edge damage to the K5NA and an associated black streak indicate that burning debris from the nozzle severance system was the likely cause of the damage. Minor divots caused by debris were seen on previous flights, but this is the first occurrence of a K5NA unbond. Since the unbond occurred after booster separation there is no impact on flight safety and no corrective actions was taken. The right hand center field joint primary heater failed the dielectric withstanding voltage test after joint closeout. The heater was then disabled by opening the circuit breaker, and the redundant heater was used. The redundant heater performed nominally during the launch countdown. A similar condition occurred on Flight 4 when a secondary joint heater failed the dielectric withstanding voltage test.
The performance of the thermal protection system, field joint protection system, and systems tunnel components of flight set 360L007 is presented as evaluated by postflight hardware inspection. The condition of both motors was similar to previous flights. Four aft edge strikes were noted on the ground environment instrumentation thermal protection system. The hits all left a clean substrate, indicating that the damage was caused by nozzle severance debris and/or water impact. No National Space Transportation System debris criteria for missing thermal protection system were violated. Two problem reports were written against the field joint protection system. The first concerned two cracks in the K5NA closeout over the trunnion/vent valve location on the left-hand aft field joint. A similar condition was observed on Flight 5 (360H005). The second problem report referred to a number of small surface cracks between two impact marks on the left-hand forward field joint. Neither area exhibited loose material or any abnormal heat effects, and they have no impact on flight safety.
An effort is underway to incorporate advanced suit and LSS components into a functional suit in order to assess the performance of these components. A brief description of the suit configuration is presented.
Rocket engine technology continues to demand higher performance with lighter weight components that have man-rated reliability requirements. These requirements have yielded higher operating pressures, temperatures, and transient effects as well as markedly increased mechanical vibration and flow-related loads. The difficulty in installation, cost, and potential for destroying an engine severely limited the required instrumentation and measurements to adequately define loads of key components such as turbine blades. Also, accurate analytical methodologies for defining internal flow-related loads are just emerging for problems typically found in rocket engines. The difficulty of obtained measured data and verified analysis methodologies has led to the probabilistic load definition approach.
Recent studies in support of Cast Stone development for the Hanford Site were designed to screen the effects of mix components on properties and performance of the waste form. Dry blend components, including portland cement, blast furnace slag, and Class F fly ash, sourced from both southeastern and northwestern suppliers, were included in the screening matrix. Multiple decontaminated salt solutions (simulated) were combined with the dry blend components at various liquid to solid ratios following a statistically designed matrix of compositions. Properties of the resulting mixes and performance of the cured materials were then measured and related to the dry blend components and salt solutions that were used for each mix. At the conclusion of the screening matrix work, SRNL felt that additional insight into the study might be obtained by relating the properties and performance of the materials to the composition of each Cast Stone mix, as opposed to just the dry blend – salt solution combination. This memorandum provides the results of a statistically driven review of the screening matrix data as a function of the composition of each mix. It is meant to augment the results obtained by reviewing the screening matrix data as a function of the dry blend and salt solution combination.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is enabling the fabrication of artifacts with unprecedented geometric and material complexity. The focus of this paper is on the build the optimization of short fiber reinforced polymers (SFRP) AM components. Specifically, we consider optimization of the build direction, topology, and fiber orientation of SFRP components. All three factors have a significant impact on the functional performance of the printed part. While significant progress has been made on optimizing these independently, the objective of this paper is to consider all three factors simultaneously and explore their interdependency, within the context of thermal applications. Towards this end, the underlying design parameters are identified, appropriate sensitivity equations are derived, and a formal optimization problem is posed as an extension to the popular Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP). Results from several numerical experiments are presented, highlighting the impact of build direction, topology, and fiber orientation on the performance of SFRP components.
As wind energy generation becomes more prevalent in some regions, there is increased demand for wind power plants to provide ancillary services, which are essential for grid reliability. This paper compares two different wind turbine control methodologies to provide active power control (APC) ancillary services, which include derating or curtailing power generation, providing automatic generation control (AGC), and providing primary frequency control (PFC). The torque APC controller provides all power control through the power electronics whereas the pitch APC controller uses the blade pitch actuators as the primary means of power control. These controllers are simulated under various wind conditions with different derating set points and AGC participation levels. The metrics used to compare their performance are the damage equivalent loads (DELs) induced on the structural components and AGC performance metrics, which are used to determine the payments for AGC services by system operators in the United States. The simulation results show that derating the turbine reduces structural loads for both control methods, with the APC pitch control providing larger reductions in DELs, lower AGC performance scores, and higher root-mean-square pitch rates. Providing AGC increases the structural loads when compared to only derating the turbine, but even the AGC DELs are generally lower than those of the baseline control system. The torque APC control methodology also allows for more sustained PFC responses under certain derating conditions.
Hydrogen is absorbed into zirconium alloy-clad fuel elements and structural components as a result of water-side corrosion in both pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR) environments. Increasing hydrogen concentrations in the zirconium alloy affect both its mechanical properties and dimensional stability. It is well known that hydrogen can diffuse relatively rapidly through zirconium base alloys (in relation to the lifetime of the components) in response to solid solution concentration, temperature, and stress gradients. Migration of hydrogen within a component through its life must be considered to reliably predict the performance of the component through life and even post-service life. Many of the physical properties needed to describe this process, such as the solubility of hydrogen in zirconium alloys, diffusion coefficients of hydrogen through zirconium alloys, and the Soret effect within zirconium alloys, already have been published. Many of these measurements have been made outside of the reactor core environment on nonirradiated zirconium alloys. This paper presents in-reactor, isothermal hydrogen diffusion data that show an effect of the in-reactor radiation environment on the final measured hydrogen concentrations. Samples used are similar to the hydrogen diffusion couples used by several investigators in the past to measure the hydride dissolution solvus as a function of temperature. The experimental results are interpreted on the basis of a physical model for hydrogen trapping that hypothesizes that hydrogen in solid solution in the zirconium lattice comes into thermodynamic equilibria with the hydride phase as well as into a steady-state equilibrium with trapping at irradiation-induced defects within the lattice. In agreement with the model, the irradiation effect on final measured concentrations is seen to be a decreasing function of the irradiation temperature between ∼271 deg. C and 354 deg. C, with any effect essentially eliminated by an irradiation temperature of 354 deg. C. (authors)
The design is reported of a dual mode multispectral scanner, capable of satisfying both overland and oceanographic requirements. A complete system description and performance summary of the scanner are given. In addition, subsystem and component descriptions and performance analyses are treated in individual sections. The design of the scanner, with minimum modifications, interfaces to the ERTS spacecraft and the ground data handling system.
Special designs of two types of electronic components transistors and transmission lines have been conceived to optimize the performances of these components as parts of waveguide-embedded differential-amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) of the type described in the immediately preceding article. These designs address the following two issues, the combination of which is unique to these particular MMICs: Each MMIC includes a differential double-strip transmission line that typically has an impedance between 60 and 100 W. However, for purposes of matching of impedances, transmission lines having lower impedances are also needed. The transistors in each MMIC are, more specifically, one or more pair(s) of InP-based high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs). Heretofore, it has been common practice to fabricate each such pair as a single device configured in the side-to-side electrode sequence source/gate/drain/gate/source. This configuration enables low-inductance source grounding from the sides of the device. However, this configuration is not suitable for differential operation, in which it is necessary to drive the gates differentially and to feed the output from the drain electrodes differentially. The special transmission-line design provides for three conductors, instead of two, in places where lower impedance is needed. The third conductor is a metal strip placed underneath the differential double-strip transmission line. The third conductor increases the capacitance per unit length of the transmission line by such an amount as to reduce the impedance to between 5 and 15 W. In the special HEMT-pair design, the side-to-side electrode sequence is changed to drain/gate/source/gate/ drain. In addition, the size of the source is reduced significantly, relative to corresponding sizes in prior designs. This reduction is justified by the fact that, by virtue of the differential configuration, the device has an internal virtual ground, and therefore there is no need for a low-resistance contact between the source and the radio-frequency circuitry. The source contact is needed only for DC biasing. These designs were implemented in a single-stage-amplifier MMIC. In a test at a frequency of 305 GHz, the amplifier embedded in a waveguide exhibited a gain of 0 dB; after correcting for the loss in the waveguide, the amplifier was found to afford a gain of 0.9 dB. In a test at 220 GHz, the overall gain of the amplifier- and-waveguide assembly was found to be 3.5 dB.
Predicting workload performance is a crucial task for many architecture and system research. In this paper we present Dee, a framework to estimate the workload performances under varying architectural configurations. The infrastructure component of Deffe is based on scalable and easy-to-use open-source software components. By casting the performance modeling as transfer learning tasks, the modeling component of Deffe can leverage the learned knowledge on one workload, and “transfer” it to a new workload. Extensive experimental results show that the method can achieve superior testing accuracy with an effective reduction of 32-80x in terms of the amount of required training data.
The reaction distribution in macro or device-scale has been studied for redox flow batteries. The reaction distribution on electrode pore-scale structure however is not well understood, lacking especially on how the reaction distribution on the pore-scale may impact the overall performance of a flow battery. This study introduces for the first time a framework of a multi-scale model that provides understanding of the relationship between the pore-scale electrode structure reaction and the device-scale electrochemical reaction uniformity within the flow battery. A reduced order model is constructed based on 128 pore-scale simulations, which provide a quantitative relationship between the battery operation conditions (inlet velocity, current density, inlet concentration) and the surface reaction uniformity for the pore-scale sample. The multi-scale framework upscales this pore-scale surface reaction uniformity to device-scale combined uniformity. Based on the multi-scale model, a time-varying optimization of the inlet velocity is established, leading to significant reduction on pump power consumption with targeted surface reaction uniformity. The multi-scale model establishes the critical link between the micro-structure of a flow battery component and its performance at the macro-scale, therefore providing rationale for further operational or material optimization.
Heterogeneous integration of microelectronic components provides a pathway to improve circuit/component performance; however, this comes with assembly challenges, in particular due to complex interfaces via subsurface bump bonds. The ability of these bonds to transmit electrical signals and conduct heat to the carrier substrate limits component performance. In this work, hyperspectral frequency‐domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) imaging is demonstrated as a robust technique for evaluating the quality of subsurface indium bump bonds in a surrogate microelectronic sample. By performing microscale FDTR imaging with coarse motion image stitching, thermal phase maps that cover a 4 mm by 4 mm field‐of‐view with subsurface feature sensitivity at depths greater than 50 µm are obtained. The resulting FDTR hyperspectral data contains more than three million pixels and reveal the quality of subsurface microbump arrays. Wide‐field analysis of bonded versus gap regions is enabled by deep neural network feature reconstruction, that after training, rapidly provides an interpretable representation of bond quality. Utility of noisy higher frequency FDTR phase maps, i.e., near the computationally predicted sensing depth limit, results in an average prediction error of 11%. Taken together, FDTR with neural network‐based analysis demonstrates subsurface bond monitoring at length scales relevant for heterogeneously integrated microelectronics.
Storage systems are complex, including multiple subsystems and components. Sustained operations with top performance require all these subsystems and components working as expected. Having a detailed performance profile helps establishing a baseline. This baseline can be used for easier identification of possible future problems. A systematic bottom-to-top approach, starting with a detailed performance analysis of disks and moving up across layers and subsystems, provides a quantitative breakdown of each component's capabilities and bottlenecks. Coupling these low-level tests with Lustre-level evaluations will present a better understanding of performance expectations under different I/O workloads.