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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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DOE OSTI2020

FY20 Progress Report on FIPD Development and User Support

The DOE Advanced Reactor Technologies program has supported efforts to recover and preserve metallic fuel data generated throughout the past fast reactor R&D programs. Those efforts have focused on establishing databases for information from the experiments conducted during the Integral Fast Reactor program including data generated at EBR-II, FFTF, and TREAT reactors, as well as out of pile transient testing data. These databases are essential for future-licensing activities of metallic fuel based advanced fast reactors. This report describes the EBR-II Fuels Irradiation & Physics Database (FIPD) development, content updates, and user support during the current fiscal year (FY20). Future plans are also provided.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
NASA NTRS2004

Advanced Power Electronics Components

This paper will give a description and status of the Advanced Power Electronics Materials and Components Technology program being conducted by the NASA Glenn Research Center for future aerospace power applications. The focus of this research program is on the following: 1) New and/or significantly improved dielectric materials for the development of power capacitors with increased volumetric efficiency, energy density, and operating temperature. Materials being investigated include nanocrystalline and composite ceramic dielectrics and diamond-like carbon films; 2) New and/or significantly improved high frequency, high temperature, low loss soft magnetic materials for the development of transformers/inductors with increased power/energy density, electrical efficiency, and operating temperature. Materials being investigated include nanocrystalline and nanocomposite soft magnetic materials; 3) Packaged high temperature, high power density, high voltage, and low loss SiC diodes and switches. Development of high quality 4H- and 6H- SiC atomically smooth substrates to significantly improve device performance is a major emphasis of the SiC materials program; 4) Demonstration of high temperature (> 200 C) circuits using the components developed above.

Schwarze, Gene E.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Update: NASA Pyrotechnically Actuated Systems Program

This technical report discusses the NASA Pyrotechnically Actuated Systems (PAS) Program. It contains the following three sections: program origin, program description, and summary. The first section, program origin, contains an introduction to pyrotechnic systems and devices and discusses some examples. Section two focuses on the PAS program goals, program flow, and PAS programs organization. And section three gives a overall summary of the program.

Schulze, Norman R.↗
NASA NTRS2001

NASA's Hall Thruster Program

NASA's Hall thruster program has base research and focused development efforts in support of the Advanced Space Transportation Program, Space-Based Program, and various other programs. The objective of the base research is to gain an improved understanding of the physical processes and engineering constraints of Hall thrusters to enable development of advanced Hall thruster designs. Specific technical questions that are current priorities of the base effort are: (1) How does thruster life vary with operating point? (2) How can thruster lifetime and wear rate be most efficiently evaluated? (3) What are the practical limitations for discharge voltage as it pertains to high specific impulse operation (high discharge voltage) and high thrust operation (low discharge voltage)? (4) What are the practical limits for extending Hall thrusters to very high input powers? and (5) What can be done during thruster design to reduce cost and integration concerns? The objective of the focused development effort is to develop a 50 kW-class Hall propulsion system, with a milestone of a 50 kW engineering model thruster/system by the end of program year 2006. Specific program wear 2001 efforts, along with the corporate and academic participation, are described.

Jankovsky, Robert S.↗
NASA NTRS1993

NASA Propulsion Engineering Research Center, volume 1

Over the past year, the Propulsion Engineering Research Center at The Pennsylvania State University continued its progress toward meeting the goals of NASA's University Space Engineering Research Centers (USERC) program. The USERC program was initiated in 1988 by the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology to provide an invigorating force to drive technology advancements in the U.S. space industry. The Propulsion Center's role in this effort is to provide a fundamental basis from which the technology advances in propulsion can be derived. To fulfill this role, an integrated program was developed that focuses research efforts on key technical areas, provides students with a broad education in traditional propulsion-related science and engineering disciplines, and provides minority and other under-represented students with opportunities to take their first step toward professional careers in propulsion engineering. The program is made efficient by incorporating government propulsion laboratories and the U.S. propulsion industry into the program through extensive interactions and research involvement. The Center is comprised of faculty, professional staff, and graduate and undergraduate students working on a broad spectrum of research issues related to propulsion. The Center's research focus encompasses both current and advanced propulsion concepts for space transportation, with a research emphasis on liquid propellant rocket engines. The liquid rocket engine research includes programs in combustion and turbomachinery. Other space transportation modes that are being addressed include anti-matter, electric, nuclear, and solid propellant propulsion. Outside funding supports a significant fraction of Center research, with the major portion of the basic USERC grant being used for graduate student support and recruitment. The remainder of the USERC funds are used to support programs to increase minority student enrollment in engineering, to maintain Center infrastructure, and to develop research capability in key new areas. Significant research programs in propulsion systems for air and land transportation complement the space propulsion focus. The primary mission of the Center is student education. The student program emphasizes formal class work and research in classical engineering and science disciplines with applications to propulsion.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2021

H 2 Production Pathways Cost Analysis (2016 - 2021) (Final Report)

This final report documents cost analysis conducted for the Department of Energy over a five year period (2016 to 2021) pertaining to hydrogen production and delivery system components, focusing on the key remaining challenges of the technology pathways within the Hydrogen Production and Delivery sub-program portfolio. A particular focus was placed on electrolysis for the generation of hydrogen. The effort primarily used the H2A discounted cash flow computational model as a tool to project hydrogen cost ($/kgH 2 ) and determine status improvements resulting from technology advancements. The effort also considered cost as a function of production volume, employed error bars to illustrate uncertainties in the cost estimates, and utilized sensitivity analyses to show the potential for cost reductions. The project examined a range of hydrogen production and delivery related systems. These included WireTough wire-wrapped pressure vessels for hydrogen storage, proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis, solid oxide electrolysis (SOE), anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolysis, photoelectrochemical (PEC) electrolysis, solar thermochemical hydrogen (STCH) production, the cost of energy transmission, and a study on the necessary price of hydrogen to produce competitively-priced electricity via fuel cell conversion.

08 HYDROGEN↗
NASA NTRS2001

HERO: Program Status and Fist Images from a Balloon-Borne Focusing Hard-X-ray Telescope

HERO is a balloon payload featuring shallow-graze angle replicated optics for hard-x-ray imaging. When completed, the instrument will offer unprecedented sensitivity in the hard-x-ray region, giving thousands of sources to choose from for detailed study on long flights. A recent proof-of-concept flight captured the first hard-x-ray focused images of the Crab Nebula, Cygnus X-1 and GRS 1915+105. Full details of the HERO program are presented, including the design and performance of the optics, the detectors and the gondola. Results from the recent proving flight are discussed together with expected future performance when the full science payload is completed.

Ramsey, B. D.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Demonstrating Robotic Autonomy in NASA's Intelligent Systems Project

This paper will provide an overview of NASA's investments in autonomy during the past five years within the Intelligent Systems Project, with particular attention paid to investments that have resulted in mission infusion of autonomy technology, in particular, into the recent Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. The content of the paper will be divided into two primary topic areas: a technical overview of the component technologies developed under the program, and a programmatic overview of the history and organization of the NASA IS project itself, with a focus on describing the program elements related to autonomy and intelligent robotics. The paper will also provide an overview of the September 2004 autonomy demonstrations, including a discussion of objectives, organization, and preliminary results (to the extent they are available before the submission deadline).

Morris, Robert↗
DOE OSTI2019

US Contribution to the High Luminosity LHC Upgrade: Focusing Quadrupoles and Crab Cavities

In the early 2000's, the US High Energy Physics community contributing to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) launched the LHC Accelerator R&D Program (LARP), a long-vision focused R&D program, intended contribute to a quick LHC commissioning and to bring the Nb3Sn and other technologies to a maturity level that would allow applications in HEP machines [1,2]. Around 2015, the technologies developed by LARP, CERN and other institutions were mature enough to allow the spin-off of a major upgrade project to the LHC complex, the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) [3]. This paper will focus on the US contribution to HL-LHC, namely the large-aperture low-β focusing Nb3Sn quadrupoles and the Radio Frequency Dipole (RFD) Crab Cavities, located in close proximity to the ATLAS and CMS experiments. This contribution, called the HL-LHC Accelerator Upgrade Project (HL-LHC AUP), focuses on production of these quadrupoles and cavities by sharing the work among a consortium of US Laboratories (FNAL, LBNL, BNL and SLAC) and Universities and in close connection with the CERN-led HL-LHC Collaboration. The collaboration achieved commonality of specifications and uniformity of performance. Final development of design, construction and first results from the prototypes are described to indicate the status of these critical components for HL-LHC.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
NASA NTRS2001

Reverse Micelle Based Synthesis of Microporous Materials in Microgravity

Microporous materials include a large group of solids of varying chemical composition as well as porosity. These materials are characterized by channels and cavities of molecular dimensions. The framework structure is made up of interconnecting T-O-T' bonds, where T and T' can be Si, Al, P, Ga, Fe, Co, Zn, B and a host of other elements. Materials with Si-O-Al bonding in the framework are called zeolites and are extensively used in many applications. Ion-exchange properties of these materials are exploited in the consumer and environmental industries. Chemical and petroleum industries use zeolites as catalysts in hydrocarbon transform ations. Synthesis of new microporous frameworks has led to the development of new technologies, and thus considerable effort worldwide is expended in their discovery. Microporous materials are typically made under hydrothermal conditions. Influence of nature of starting reactants, structure directing agents, pH, temperature, and aging all have profound influence on the synthesis process. This is primarily because the most interesting open frameworks are not necessarily the stable structures in the reaction medium. Thus, the discovery of new frameworks is often tied to finding the right composition and synthesis conditions that allow for kinetic stabilization of the structure. This complexity of the synthesis process and limited understanding of it has made it difficult to develop directed is of microporous materials and most advances in this field have been made by trial and error. The basic issues in crystal growth of these materials include: (1) Nature of the nucleation process; (2) Molecular structure and assembly of nuclei; (3) Growth of nuclei into crystals; (4) Morphology control; and (5) Transformation of frameworks into other structures. The NASA-funded research described in this paper focuses on all the above issues and has been described in several publications. We present the highlights of our program, especially with the focus on possible experiments in microgravity.

Dutta, Prabir K.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Techniques for hot structures testing

Hot structures testing have been going on since the early 1960's beginning with the Mach 6, X-15 airplane. Early hot structures test programs at NASA-Ames-Dryden focused on operational testing required to support the X-15 flight test program, and early hot structures research projects focused on developing lab test techniques to simulate flight thermal profiles. More recent efforts involved numerous large and small hot structures test programs that served to develop test methods and measurement techniques to provide data that promoted the correlation of test data with results from analytical codes. In Nov. 1988 a workshop was sponsored that focused on the correlation of hot structures test data with analysis. Limited material is drawn from the workshop and a more formal documentation is provided of topics that focus on hot structures test techniques used at NASA-Ames-Dryden. Topics covered include the data acquisition and control of testing, the quartz lamp heater systems, current strain and temperature sensors, and hot structures test techniques used to simulate the flight thermal environment in the lab.

Deangelis, V. Michael↗
DOE OSTI2019

Abradable Sealing Materials for Emerging IGCC-Based Turbine Systems (Final Report)

Reducing the gap between rotating and stationary parts in gas turbine engines, and mitigating gas leakage via these paths, can significantly increase the performance and attendant efficiency. One approach to reducing such gaps is to deploy abradable coatings on the stationary shroud components as seals, to reduce the blade-tip clearances under operational conditions. Abradable coatings must be able to withstand high temperature oxidation, thermal cycling, and erosion, while providing optimal controlled abrasion and associated shape retention. Existing abradable seals utilized in power generation turbines have generally been optimized for use with natural gas-fired systems; however, preliminary testing of syngas and high-hydrogen-content (HHC) fired turbines has shown that the stability of hot-section materials (and presumably abradable sealing materials) may be substantially altered due to characteristic changes in the combustion by-products (partial pressures of water vapor, etc.) as well as characteristic impurities and particulate matter entrained in the fuel. The primary focus of this research program has been to develop a mechanistic understanding of how the altered combustion environments modify the thermo-mechanical stability and performance of the sealing materials, including the requisite abradable sealing behavior. A key component of the research program carried out has been an exploration of mechanisms underpinning observed degradation processes, and an assessment of connections to the combustion environments and characteristic non-combustible constituents. The ultimate goal of the project has been to advance the goals of the Advanced Turbine Program by developing materials design protocols leading to turbine hot-section components with improved resistance to service lifetime degradation under advanced fuels exposures. This research program has evaluated the performance and degradation of ceramic abradable seals used in the high-temperature turbine sections of gas turbine engines. The focus has been two-fold: (1) to understand performance of such materials in relation to the turbines operating on coal-derived syngas and high hydrogen content (HHC) fuels, ultimately seeking an improved understanding of factors that control performance and durability of abradable seal materials for these combustion environments (and play into materials design protocols); and (2) to evaluate the potential of alternative materials as abradable seals for the higher temperatures expected with IGCC and HHC fueled turbine systems. In particular, we carried out an initial assessment of multi-layered systems of existing abradable seal materials (YSZ) and other ceramics. The research program also investigated several classes of abradable coatings under simulated exposures to syngas-based combustion environments, evaluating the relevant wear behavior, hardness, stability under cyclic oxidation, and general thermo-mechanical behavior. The research also attempted to develop alternatives to carrying out full-scale combustion-based abradability test rig exposures to evaluate materials system performance. The research has been focused on correlating the measured thermo-mechanical behavior, and controlled abrasive wear, with the intrinsic properties of the multilayer coatings and processing-controlled microstructural features that have shown attractive machinability characteristics based on weak interfacial bonding between the constituent phases at elevate temperatures (while maintaining thermochemical stability). This program has resulted in an improved mechanistic understanding of factors governing performance of high temperature abradable seals, and degradation mechanisms unique to IGCC-based power generation turbine systems and the realization of coal-derived syngas and HHC-based combustion environments – ultimately with the goal of developing a knowledge base upon which the design of coatings that retain optimal sealing characteristics and are more resistant to the observed wear/attack mechanisms, important aspects of advancing the goals of the DOE Advanced Turbine Program.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS2004

The International Space Station: A Pathway to the Future

Nearly six years after the launch of the first International Space Station element, and four years after its initial occupation, the United States and our 16 international partners have made great strides in operating this impressive Earth orbiting research facility. This past year we have done so in the face of the adversity of operating without the benefit of the Space Shuttle. In his January 14, 2004, speech announcing a new vision for America's space program, President Bush affirmed the United States' commitment to completing construction of the International Space Station by 2010. The President also stated that we would focus our future research aboard the Station on the longterm effects of space travel on human biology. This research will help enable human crews to venture through the vast voids of space for months at a time. In addition, ISS affords a unique opportunity to serve as an engineering test bed for hardware and operations critical to the exploration tasks. NASA looks forward to working with our partners on International Space Station research that will help open up new pathways for future exploration and discovery beyond low Earth orbit. This paper provides an overview of the International Space Station Program focusing on a review of the events of the past year, as well as plans for next year and the future.

Kitmacher, Gary H.↗
NASA NTRS1990

NASA's commercial space program - Initiatives for the future

NASA's commercial development of the space program aimed at the stimulation and assistance of expanded private sector involvement and investment in civil space activities is discussed, focusing on major new program initiatives and their implementation. NASA's Centers for the Commercial Development of Space (CCDS) program, composed of competitively selected consortia of universities, industries, and government involved in early research and testing phases of potentially commercially viable technologies is described. The 16 centers concentrate on seven different technical areas such as automation and robotics; remote sensing; life sciences; and space power, propulsion, and structures. Private sector participation, CCDS technology development, government and commercially supplied access to space in support of CCDS programs, CCDS hardware development, and CCDS spinoffs are discussed together with various cooperative and reimbursable agreements between NASA and the private sector.

Rose, James T.↗
NASA NTRS1992

GaAs/Ge solar panels for the SAMPEX program

GaAs based solar cells have been developed for spacecraft use for several years. However, acceptance and application of these cells for spacecraft missions has been slow because of their high cost and concerns about their integration onto solar panels. Spectrolab has now completed fabrication of solar panels with GaAs/Ge solar cells for a second space program. This paper will focus on the design, fabrication and test of GaAs/Ge solar panels for the Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) Program.

Dobson, Rodney↗
NASA NTRS2011

The Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health Newsletter

The June 2010 LSAH newsletter introduced the change from the Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health research study to the new Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health program (An Overview of the New Occupational Surveillance Program for the Astronaut Corps). Instead of performing research-focused retrospective analyses of astronaut medical data compared to a JSC civil servant control population, the new program is focused on prevention of disease and prospective identification and mitigation of health risks in each astronaut due to individual exposure history and the unique occupational exposures experienced by the astronaut corps. The new LSAH program has 5 primary goals: (1) Provide a comprehensive medical exam for each LSAH participant; (2) Conduct occupational surveillance; (3) Improve communication, data accessibility, integrity and storage; (4) Support operational and healthcare analyses; and (5) Support NASA research objectives. This article will focus primarily on the first goal, the comprehensive medical exam. Future newsletters will outline in detail the plans and processes for addressing the remaining program goals.

Lee, Lesley↗
DOE OSTI2023

Virtual Power Plants and Energy Justice

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) Order 2222, issued in September 2020, removes barriers for distributed energy resources (DERs) to participate in wholesale energy markets by allowing DERs to aggregate and participate in wholesale markets as a single entity, known as a virtual power plant (VPP). VPPs can provide balancing, reliability, and resiliency grid services and can participate in capacity, energy and ancillary services markets. They can also increase customer energy access and lower electricity bills. This report focuses on VPP business models, including considerations of energy justice (EJ). Through an analysis of the VPP value chain, business models, programs, and pilots, several VPP applications are identified and grouped by their ability to have quantitatively measurable or monetized benefits. Benefits and barriers specific to underserved communities are outlined, and VPP programs with an intentional focus on underserved communities are compared to those without such a focus.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1986

Turbine airfoil film cooling

Emphasis is placed on developing more accurate analytical models for predicting turbine airfoil external heat transfer rates. Performance goals of new engines require highly refined, accurate design tools to meet durability requirements. In order to obtain improvements in analytical capabilities, programs are required which focus on enhancing analytical techniques through verification of new models by comparison with relevant experimental data. The objectives of the current program are to develop an analytical approach, based on boundary layer theory, for predicting the effects of airfoil film cooling on downstream heat transfer rates and to verify the resulting analytical method by comparison of predictions with hot cascade data obtained under this program.

Hylton, Larry D.↗