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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 109 records · Page 6

Thermal (Silicon Diode) Data Acquisition System

Marshall Space Flight Center's X-ray Calibration Facility (XRCF) has been performing cryogenic testing to 20 Kelvin since 1999. Two configurations for acquiring data from silicon diode temperature sensors have been implemented at the facility. The facility's environment is recorded via a data acquisition system capable of reading up to 60 silicon diodes. Test article temperature is recorded by a second data acquisition system capable of reading 150+ silicon diodes. The specifications and architecture of both systems will be presented.

Kegley, Jeffrey↗

Creep testing of foil-gage metals at elevated temperature using an automated data acquisition system

A method is being developed to obtain creep data on foil gage metals at elevated temperatures using an automated data acquisition system in conjunction with a mechanically counter balanced extensometer. The automated system components include the Hewlett-Packard (HP) 9845A desktop computer, the HP 3455A digital voltmeter and the HP 3495A scanner. Software for test monitoring and data collection was developed; data manipulation, including curve plotting was done with a HP regression analysis software package. Initial creep tests were conducted on .003 in. thick foil specimens of Ti-6A1-4V at temperatures of 800 F and 1000 F and at stress levels of 25 ksi and 45 ksi. For comparison, duplicate tests were run on .049 in. thick specimens sheet of the same alloy. During testing, the furnace and specimen temperature, bridge voltage, strain and load output were automatically monitored and recorded at predetermined intervals. Using the HP regression analysis program, recorded strain output was plotted as a function of time. These resultant creep curves indicate that, under similar conditions of temperature and stress, foil gage specimens exhibit a higher creep rate than sheet specimens.

Blackburn, L. B.↗

Data Acquisition System(DAS) Sustaining Engineering

This paper presents general information describing the Data Acquisition System contract, a summary of objectives, tasks performed and completed. The hardware deliverables which are comprised of: 1) Two ground DAS units; 2) Two flight DAS units; 3) Logistic spares; and 4) Shipping containers are described. Also included are the data requirements and scope of the contract.

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Study of a Tracking and Data Acquisition System (TDAS) in the 1990's

Progress in concept definition studies, operational assessments, and technology demonstrations for the Tracking and Data Acquisition System (TDAS) is reported. The proposed TDAS will be the follow-on to the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System and will function as a key element of the NASA End-to-End Data System, providing the tracking and data acquisition interface between user accessible data ports on Earth and the user's spaceborne equipment. Technical activities of the "spacecraft data system architecture' task and the "communication mission model' task are emphasized. The objective of the first task is to provide technology forecasts for sensor data handling, navigation and communication systems, and estimate corresponding costs. The second task is concerned with developing a parametric description of the required communication channels. Other tasks with significant activity include the "frequency plan and radio interference model' and the "Viterbi decoder/simulator study'.

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Advanced Data Acquisition Systems

Current and future requirements of the aerospace sensors and transducers field make it necessary for the design and development of new data acquisition devices and instrumentation systems. New designs are sought to incorporate self-health, self-calibrating, self-repair capabilities, allowing greater measurement reliability and extended calibration cycles. With the addition of power management schemes, state-of-the-art data acquisition systems allow data to be processed and presented to the users with increased efficiency and accuracy. The design architecture presented in this paper displays an innovative approach to data acquisition systems. The design incorporates: electronic health self-check, device/system self-calibration, electronics and function self-repair, failure detection and prediction, and power management (reduced power consumption). These requirements are driven by the aerospace industry need to reduce operations and maintenance costs, to accelerate processing time and to provide reliable hardware with minimum costs. The project's design architecture incorporates some commercially available components identified during the market research investigation like: Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) Programmable Analog Integrated Circuits (PAC IC) and Field Programmable Analog Arrays (FPAA); Digital Signal Processing (DSP) electronic/system control and investigation of specific characteristics found in technologies like: Electronic Component Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF); and Radiation Hardened Component Availability. There are three main sections discussed in the design architecture presented in this document. They are the following: (a) Analog Signal Module Section, (b) Digital Signal/Control Module Section and (c) Power Management Module Section. These sections are discussed in detail in the following pages. This approach to data acquisition systems has resulted in the assignment of patent rights to Kennedy Space Center under U.S. patent # 6,462,684. Furthermore, NASA KSC commercialization office has issued licensing rights to Circuit Avenue Netrepreneurs, LLC , a minority-owned business founded in 1999 located in Camden, NJ.

Perotti, J.↗

An automated pressure data acquisition system for evaluation of pressure sensitive paint chemistries

An automated pressure data acquisition system for testing of pressure sensitive phosphorescent paints was designed, assembled, and tested. The purpose of the calibration system is the evaluation and selection of pressure sensitive paint chemistries that could be used to obtain global aerodynamic pressure distribution measurements. The test apparatus and setup used for pressure sensitive paint characterizations is described. The pressure calibrations, thermal sensitivity effects, and photodegradation properties are discussed.

Sealey, Bradley S.↗

Development of a Data Acquisition System for Kinetic Inductance Detectors: Wide Dynamic Range and High Sampling Rate for Astronomical Observation

Microwave kinetic inductance detectors have a variety of potential applications in astronomical observations. We built a data acquisition system for kinetic inductance detectors combining a dedicated analog board and a commercially available digital board to meet the requirements of astronomical measurements, such as observation of the cosmic microwave background. This paper reports the status of the development of the data acquisition system. We have already achieved simultaneous readout through 120 channels using a direct down-conversion method to decode the signal. A variety of software has been developed and tested using the functionalities of the system and actual detectors.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

NASA Data Acquisition System Software Development for Rocket Propulsion Test Facilities

Current NASA propulsion test facilities include Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Plum Brook Station in Ohio, and White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. Within and across these centers, a diverse set of data acquisition systems exist with different hardware and software platforms. The NASA Data Acquisition System (NDAS) is a software suite designed to operate and control many critical aspects of rocket engine testing. The software suite combines real-time data visualization, data recording to a variety formats, short-term and long-term acquisition system calibration capabilities, test stand configuration control, and a variety of data post-processing capabilities. Additionally, data stream conversion functions exist to translate test facility data streams to and from downstream systems, including engine customer systems. The primary design goals for NDAS are flexibility, extensibility, and modularity. Providing a common user interface for a variety of hardware platforms helps drive consistency and error reduction during testing. In addition, with an understanding that test facilities have different requirements and setups, the software is designed to be modular. One engine program may require real-time displays and data recording; others may require more complex data stream conversion, measurement filtering, or test stand configuration management. The NDAS suite allows test facilities to choose which components to use based on their specific needs. The NDAS code is primarily written in LabVIEW, a graphical, data-flow driven language. Although LabVIEW is a general-purpose programming language; large-scale software development in the language is relatively rare compared to more commonly used languages. The NDAS software suite also makes extensive use of a new, advanced development framework called the Actor Framework. The Actor Framework provides a level of code reuse and extensibility that has previously been difficult to achieve using LabVIEW. The

Herbert, Phillip W., Sr.↗

A pointable, helicopter-based remote sensing data acquisition system for collecting bidirectional reflectance data

Discussed here is a new configuration of a helicopter-borne remote sensing system to support field measurements programs such as studies of forest decline damage associated with atmospheric deposition and the Forest Ecosystems Dynamics project. In this new configuration, the sensor payload is mounted externally on a hinged pallet located on the starboard side of the Bell Iroquois UH-1B (HUEY) helicopter. The sensor payload includes a set of bore-sighted instruments consisting of a Barnes Modular Multiband Radiometer (MMR), a Spectron Engineering (SE) 590 spectroradiometer, an Everest infrared temperature sensor, and a Sony CCD video camera with a 10x zoom lens. The system was tested and excellent data was acquired in 1990.

Williams, Darrel L.↗

Data Acquisition System for Multi-Frequency Radar Flight Operations Preparation

A three-channel data acquisition system was developed for the NASA Multi-Frequency Radar (MFR) system. The system is based on a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) industrial PC (personal computer) and two dual-channel 14-bit digital receiver cards. The decimated complex envelope representations of the three radar signals are passed to the host PC via the PCI bus, and then processed in parallel by multiple cores of the PC CPU (central processing unit). The innovation is this parallelization of the radar data processing using multiple cores of a standard COTS multi-core CPU. The data processing portion of the data acquisition software was built using autonomous program modules or threads, which can run simultaneously on different cores. A master program module calculates the optimal number of processing threads, launches them, and continually supplies each with data. The benefit of this new parallel software architecture is that COTS PCs can be used to implement increasingly complex processing algorithms on an increasing number of radar range gates and data rates. As new PCs become available with higher numbers of CPU cores, the software will automatically utilize the additional computational capacity.

Leachman, Jonathan↗

Development of a simple, self-contained flight test data acquisition system

The system concepts and the flight test program results for a NASA designed in-flight data acquisition system are described. The system draws power from a rechargeable battery pack and intrudes on the aircraft systems only with a total pressure probe, a static pressure probe, and control position transducers, which are simply taped to the frame. A 4000 byte microcomputer forms the heart of the data recording system for cassette tape storage, and is expansion coupled to an eight-bit interactive microcomputer which interfaces with a transducer package for 16-channel demultiplexing. The transducers, ranges, and accuracies are listed, and a five/sec data acquisition rate minimum requirement is noted, although a 10/sec rate is used. The system components are detailed, along with the control and data processing procedures, and the results of dynamic flight testing are presented.

Renz, R. R. L.↗

The Data Acquisition System for Phase-III of the BeEST Experiment

The BeEST experiment is a precision laboratory search for physics beyond the standard model that measures the electron capture decay of 7 Be implanted into superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) detectors. For Phase-III of the experiment, we constructed a continuously sampling data acquisition system to extract pulse shape and timing information from 16 STJ pixels offline. Four additional pixels are read out with a fast list-mode digitizer, and one with a nuclear MCA already used in the earlier limit-setting phases of the experiment. Here, we present the performance of the data acquisition system and discuss the relative advantages of the different digitizers.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Enhanced Data-Acquisition System

Time-consuming, costly digitization of analog signals on magnetic tape eliminated. Proposed data-acquisition system provides nearly immediate access to data in incoming signals by digitizing and recording them both on magnetic tape and on optical disk. Tape and/or disk later played back to reconstruct signals in analog or digital form for analysis. Of interest in industrial and scientific applications in which necessary to digitize, store, and/or process large quantities of experimental data.

Mustain, Roy W.↗

MODAQ-BB (Modular Offshore Data Acquisition System - Blackbox) [SWR-24-72]

MODAQ-BB is a compact, rapid deployment data acquisition system that can withstand water depths up to 400m. Codenamed "BlackBox" (or simply BB), since its initial purpose was to track marine assets and record vital data streams that could later be recovered in the event of a mishap - much like a traditional black box used in aviation and shipping, the name has stuck. MODAQ BlackBox is a battery-operable microcontroller platform with internal inertial sensing, GPS, satellite communications, and additional I/O (input/output) support in a depth-rated pressure enclosure. Since BB is self-contained and relatively compact, it can be quickly deployed with minimal effort. The enclosure can be clamped to a tube (such as part of a railing) or mast in a location with unobstructed view of the sky using the available clamp accessory or a common hose clamp. While BB is designed to operate unattended, users can configure what data are uploaded and the frequency of satellite transmissions. Once data are uploaded, they can be relayed to an email distribution list, the MODAQ:Web operational dashboard, or a custom destination. BB has found utility in the National Laboratory of the Rockies' (NLR's) Waterpower projects beyond its original vision and has been configured and successfully deployed in more traditional data-gathering applications where a simple, battery-operated solution was indicated. As part of the MODAQ family, BB fills a space in the spectrum of missions that can be supported that were previously impractical using the traditional MODAQ hardware architecture due to factors such as weight, size, and cost.

Raye, Robert↗

Contour Detector and Data Acquisition System for the Left Ventricular Outline

A real-time contour detector and data acquisition system is described for an angiographic apparatus having a video scanner for converting an X-ray image of a structure characterized by a change in brightness level compared with its surrounding into video format and displaying the X-ray image in recurring video fields. The real-time contour detector and data acqusition system includes track and hold circuits; a reference level analog computer circuit; an analog compartor; a digital processor; a field memory; and a computer interface.

Reiber, J. H. C.↗

MODAQ 2.0 (Modular Ocean Data AcQuisition System v2.0) [SWR-24-138]

MODAQ 2.0 is the continuation of the Modular Ocean/Offshore Data AcQuisition system which offers new benefits of being based on generally available hardware and open-source development tools. The MODAQ 2.0 project is the amalgamation of ROS packages, tools, and guidance for developing data acquisition and control applications for marine energy devices using a ROS2 based architecture. The MODAQ 2.0 Reference Design includes several packages that are targeted for the marine energy sector and allow most developers with a basic background in programming to spin up a high-quality DAQ and control system. It is comprised of multiple software repositories which can be found at the MODAQ2 GitHub Organization: https://github.com/NREL-MODAQ2

Nichols, Casey↗

Moire patterns and two-dimensional aliasing in line scanner data acquisition systems

The basic mechanism underlying the generation of Moire patterns in line scanner data acquisition systems is examined. A general expression is developed in terms of typical system parameters for the reproduced image of such systems and the interaction of the image spectrum; the raster frequency and digital sampling frequency of the A/D conversion process are discussed and examples given. Systems design requirements for avoiding Moire pattern generation and two-dimensional aliasing are discussed.

Mcgillem, C. D.↗