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NASA NTRS2019

TPSAS-NF1676L-32920-DND

In June 2019, a full-scale crash test of a Fokker F28 Fellowship aircraft will be conducted at NASA Langley Research Center?s Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) Facility. The F28 is a high-performance twin-turbo fan narrow-body aircraft with seating in a 3+2 configuration. The MK4000 variant, used in this test, is capable of carrying up to 85 passengers on medium range routes. The F28 was first type certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1969 and now the majority of the F28 fleet has retired from service in the United States. In 2016, the FAA and NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) signed an interagency agreement for conducting a research program to obtain test data that will support the development of airframe level crash requirements for transport category airplanes [1]. The objectives of the full-scale crash test can be divided into six categories: (1) To compare and contrast responses in identical aircraft undergoing vertical only to combined vertical and horizontal loading conditions, (2) To examine the effects of horizontal loading on aircraft structure during a crash event, (3) To generate data for the use in calibration of computer modelling efforts, (4) To generate data from onboard Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATDs) for the evaluation of injury, (5) To obtain data from experimental seats, and (6) To obtain data from new and novel ATD designs including Warrior Injury Assessment MANikin (WIAMan) [2], Test device for Human Occupant Response (THOR), and other newly developed child ATDs. The focus of this presentation will be to document finite element model development of the full-scale F28 aircraft and to present preliminary test-analysis predictions. NASA obtained the full-scale F28 aircraft, plus three fuselage sections and two sets of wings with funding through the NASA Aviation Safety Program in 1998. In addition to the hardware, NASA purchased a full NASTRAN model of the airframe that had been developed by the Dutch manufacturer, Fokker. Beginning in 2016, the NASTRAN model was converted to LS-DYNA? [4, 5] format and modified by combining parts, adding missing parts of internal structure, and including ballast for loading weights, etc. It contains: 89,223 nodes; 24,065 beam elements; 55,404 shell elements; 29,044 solid elements; 740 parts; 80 material definitions; and, 46 Constrained Nodal Rigid Bodies (CNRBs). The aircraft model will be executed in LSDYNA to simulate the test article impact onto a 2-ft.-high bed of soil under combined velocity conditions of 70-ft/s forward and 30-ft/s vertical velocity. Pre-test simulation predictions will be generated and correlated with test data.

Karen E Jackson↗

DOE OSTI2022

Potential State Regulatory Pathways to Facilitate Low-Carbon Fuels

States and the federal government are increasingly engaged in the challenges around decarbonizing the electric grid. In particular, regulators, consumers, stakeholders, and utilities recognize the need to carefully consider the role natural gas will play in a decarbonized future. A variety of technology and policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with natural gas use are available, including energy efficiency programs, demand reduction tools, strategic electrification, and strategies to reduce emissions from natural gas production, transportation, and consumption. Low-carbon fuels – mainly renewable natural gas (RNG) and clean hydrogen – are being considered an important component of decarbonization goals. RNG and hydrogen may be able to meaningfully reduce emissions from processes independent of geologic natural gas, displacing emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Although RNG and hydrogen are not cost-competitive today with geologic natural gas and are smaller in scale and potential than other decarbonization options, they can be explored as potential critical tools to decarbonize sectors that are difficult to electrify or shift off of natural gas entirely, such as air travel, industrial processes, maritime transport, long-distance trucking, space heating on cold days, and railroads (Nadel, 2022). The role of this report is to provide informational context for state utility regulators to understand the impacts of and challenges associated with broader integration of low-carbon fuels, followed by examples of state regulatory actions taken to date to facilitate the development of low-carbon fuels. Setting clear guidance to calculate the environmental benefits of low-carbon fuels and continuing federal and state investments in research and development to reduce costs relative to fossil fuels will be important steps to take to signal the desire to grow the market for these fuels. State public utility commissions may play a key role in setting regulatory frameworks for low-carbon fuels and ensuring that ratepayer funds, if utilized, are done so to further the public interest. This report is intended to summarize decisions that states have made to date on low-carbon fuels. In the spirit of understanding the current market and sharing information, this report provides success stories, and lessons learned across states as regulators implement varying strategies to achieve decarbonization objectives while maintaining their focus on affordability, safety, and reliability of the energy system. The report begins with an introduction of the role of natural gas in the U.S. economy (Section I) and background information on natural gas use, decarbonization, and low-carbon fuels (Section II). Next, the report describes the current market by discussing the scale of current production, emissions intensity, resource potential, and costs of low-carbon fuels compared to geologic natural gas (Section III). Following these sections, the report describes four strategies states have employed to facilitate low-carbon fuels: opening exploratory dockets, approving voluntary tariffs for customers, approving interconnection tariffs for producers, and considering portfolio-wide procurement targets (Section IV). This section lists states that have taken actions in each category, citing utility filings, commission decisions, stakeholder comments, and other relevant sources. Finally, the report concludes with suggested questions regulators may wish to consider regarding low-carbon fuels, in the interest of preparing to make decisions in the future (Section V). These questions include: Are there existing regulatory or technical barriers to voluntary purchases of low-carbon fuels? Can customers work with utilities to procure low-carbon fuels; are producers able to interconnect projects without significant barriers to entry? Should the infrastructure and/or commodity costs of low-carbon fuels be socialized among all ratepayers, or borne solely by the large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers currently driving the market? Should regulated natural gas and/or electric utilities own and operate low-carbon fuel production? How should regulators consider the unique decarbonization potential of low-carbon fuels, particularly for hard-to-abate sectors, in decision-making? Is additional direction or clarity from state policymakers needed? What no-regrets approaches can help facilitate both near-term RNG development and long-term development of hydrogen and other zero-carbon fuels? We collectively wish to express our gratitude to the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, for supporting this report and other technical assistance resources for state regulators on natural gas topics. State regulators operate under a variety of policy environments, and states have vastly different types of energy resources, infrastructure, and customers. While there is no optimal regulatory, policy, or technological solution that will be successful in every state, state regulators can benefit by exchanging lessons learned with their peers across the country. We look forward to continued engagement with our fellow commissioners, commission staff, NARUC, the U.S. Department of Energy, and other stakeholders to develop sound regulation in the public interest.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

NASA NTRS2019

Further Development Of Aperture: A Precise Extremely Large Reflective Telescope Using Re-Configurable Elements: NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) - Phase II

One of the pressing needs for space ultraviolet-visible astronomy is a design to allow larger mirrors than the James Webb Space Telescope primary. The diameter of the rocket fairing limits the mirror diameter such that all future missions calling for mirrors up to 16 meters in diameter or larger will require a mirror that is deployed post-launch. In response to the deployment requirement, we address the issues of this concept called "A Precise Extremely Large Reflective Telescope Using Reconfigurable Elements (APERTURE) with both hardware experiments and software simulations... We designed and built several fixtures with O-rings to hold a membrane. We established a coating process to make a membrane that was coated on one side with Cr and the other side with Cr-Terfenol-D-NiCo. The Terfenol-D (T-D hereafter) is the MSM (Magnetic Smart Memory) we use. We bought and established a procedure for measuring a deformation over time and purchased a Shack Hartmann system from Imagine Optic (https://www.imagine-optic.com). The first substrate we used was DuPont (TM) Kapton® polyimide film. Due to material creep, we found the stability over a 48-hour period with a Kapton substrate was not as good as desired (greater than 1 micron). We then switched to CP1 Polyimide. We found the CP1 much more stable to creep, being stable from about 3 hours to 48 hours to within a measurement error to below approximately 0.1 micron. We produced a 13 micron maximum deviation on a 50-millimeter-diameter piece of CP1 (25 microns thick). The T-D coating was about 2 microns, and the other layers, about 10 nanometers. The magnetic field at the base was about 0.1 teslas. We can make the T-D film at least 5 times thicker and the magnetic field at least 5 times stronger, and hence make deformations as much as 25 times larger. We have a formed a collaboration produced at the NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) mid-term review with Dr. Ron Shiri of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to explore making controlled deviations on lambda/14-lambda/20 scales which are required to bring a surface to the diffraction limit. We carried out only preliminary work on Si using a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM), which produced deviations on the 1 micron level. We are still working on a program to bring to GSFC a flat enough (radius of curvature greater than 10 microns) -coated a Si piece with Cr, T-D, NiCo. Then we plan to carry out tests with an interferometer. Further, we formed a new collaboration with Prof. Rajan Vaidyanathan of the University of Central Florida to replace the CP1 with a shape memory alloy (SMA). With his collaboration, we acquired new Federal funding outside of NASA to explore the use of SMAs (we use NiTi). Our preliminary results indicate that we can produce deformations greater than 1 micron on approximately 100 microns thick. Furthermore we have shown that the NiTi can deploy to better than 1 micron of its set original and then trained shape.

Re-Configurable Elements↗