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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 1,243 records · Page 69

Optimal controls for an advanced turbofan engine

Linear optimal control theory is applied to the control synthesis of a high bypass ratio, variable pitch, turbofan engine. The basic control philosophy is to use only a low order dynamic model of the plant coupled with the concept of integral-output states so as to maintain control simplicity yet guarantee integral control of thrust, turbine temperature and other important engine outputs. Linear simulation results indicate that the control system developed provides rapid control of small thrust perturbations and quickly eliminates the effect of unmodelled thrust and temperature disturbances. Large thrust accelerations are obtained in about one half second while the control maintains negligible overshoot in temperature and stall margins.

Slater, G. L.↗

Investigation of Thermal High Cycle and Low Cycle Fatigue Mechanisms of Thick Thermal Barrier Coatings

Thick thermal barrier coating systems in a diesel engine experience severe thermal low cycle fatigue (LCF) and high cycle fatigue (HCF) during engine operation. In this paper, the mechanisms of fatigue crack initiation and propagation in a ZrO2-8wt% Y2O3 thermal barrier coating, under simulated engine thermal LCF and HCF conditions, are investigated using a high power CO2 laser. Experiments showed that the combined LCF-HCF tests induced more severe coating surface cracking, microspallation and accelerated crack growth, as compared to the pure LCF test. Lateral crack branching and the ceramic/bond coat interface delaminations were also facilitated by HCF thermal loads, even in the absence of severe interfacial oxidation. Fatigue damage at crack wake surfaces, due to such phenomena as asperity/debris contact induced cracking and splat pull-out bending during cycling, was observed especially for the combined LCF-HCF tests. It is found that the failure associated with LCF is closely related to coating sintering and creep at high temperatures, which induce tensile stresses in the coating after cooling. The failure associated with HCF process, however, is mainly associated with a surface wedging mechanism. The interaction between the LCF, HCF and ceramic coating creep, and the relative importance of LCF and HCF in crack propagation are also discussed based on the experimental evidence.

Zhu, Dongming↗

Design of a Flush Airdata System (FADS) for the Hypersonic Air Launched Option (HALO) Vehicle

This paper presents a design study for a pressure based Flush airdata system (FADS) on the Hypersonic Air Launched Option (HALO) Vehicle. The analysis will demonstrate the feasibility of using a pressure based airdata system for the HALO and provide measurement uncertainty estimates along a candidate trajectory. The HALO is a conceived as a man-rated vehicle to be air launched from an SR-71 platform and is proposed as a testbed for an airbreathing hydrogen scramjet. A feasibility study has been performed and indicates that the proposed trajectory is possible with minimal modifications to the existing SR71 vehicle. The mission consists of launching the HALO off the top of an SR-71 at Mach 3 and 80,000 ft. A rocket motor is then used to accelerate the vehicle to the test condition. After the scramjet test is completed the vehicle will glide to a lakebed runway landing. This option provides reusability of the vehicle and scramjet engine. The HALO design will also allow for various scramjet engine and flowpath designs to be flight tested. For the HALO flights, measurements of freestream airdata are considered to be a mission critical to perform gain scheduling and trajectory optimization. One approach taken to obtaining airdata involves measurement of certain parameters such as external atmospheric winds, temperature, etc to estimate the airdata quantities. This study takes an alternate approach. Here the feasibility of obtaining airdata using a pressure-based flush airdata system (FADS) methods is assessed. The analysis, although it is performed using the HALO configuration and trajectory, is generally applicable to other hypersonic vehicles. The method to be presented offers the distinct advantage of inferring total pressure, Mach number, and flow incidence angles, without stagnating the freestream flow. This approach allows for airdata measurements to be made using blunt surfaces and significantly diminishes the heating load at the sensor. In the FADS concept a matrix of flush ports is placed in the vicinity of the aircraft nose, and the airdata are inferred indirectly from the measured pressures.

Whitmore, Stephen A.↗

Overview of the Research Aircraft for eVTOL Enabling techNologies (RAVEN) Activity

The Research Aircraft for eVTOL Enabling techNologies (RAVEN) activity is a collaboration between Georgia Tech and NASA to design and develop a 1,000 lb gross weight class eVTOL research aircraft. The vision for RAVEN is that the aircraft will serve as a “flying laboratory” for enduring research and technology development applications across the realm of eVTOL technologies. A major goal of RAVEN is to disseminate the aircraft design geometry and data from flight tests for the benefit of the broader aeronautics community. Initial research applications will include flight dynamics, controls, acoustics, and automation/autonomy. The aircraft is based on the airframe of a fixed-wing experimental homebuilt airplane that will be modified to incorporate a distributed propulsion system, battery system, fly-by-wire flight control system, and avionics to enable remotely piloted operation. The aircraft is being designed to use commercial off-the-shelf components to the maximum extent practicable to save costs and to accelerate the development schedule without compromising the goal of publishing design geometry and test data. The RAVEN activity is also focused on workforce development by training the next generation of aerospace engineers in eVTOL technologies.

eVTOL↗

Modeling Freight Traffic Demand and Highway Networks for Hydrogen Fueling Station Planning: A Case Study of U.S. Interstate 75 Corridor

The use of hydrogen as an alternative transportation fuel has gained much interest in recent years. Hydrogen can be utilized in electric vehicles equipped with hydrogen powertrains (including hydrogen internal combustion engines or fuel cells). Given that most of the freight in the U.S. is transported via diesel trucks, transition to hydrogen fuel would help achieve significant environmental benefits as well as accelerate the decarbonization of the freight transportation sector. This paper presents the methodology and results of a case study on modeling freight traffic demand and highway networks based on publicly available data for the Interstate 75 freight corridor. The purpose of this study is to prepare input traffic and network data that can support the planning of a hydrogen fueling station infrastructure. In particular, the data can be used for siting and characterizing an optimized framework of hydrogen fueling stations from candidate diesel stations along the Interstate 75 corridor. The methodologies developed and presented in this paper may be readily expanded and applied to any transport corridor given the data availability. This paper is the first in a series that will build out a comprehensive model to optimize a consolidated national hydrogen refueling infrastructure eco-system targeted at commercial vehicles.

Uddin, Majbah↗

Methods of controllable interstitial oxygen doping in niobium

A method for vacuum heat treating Nb, such as is used in superconducting radio frequency cavities, to engineer the interstitial oxygen profile with depth into the surface to conveniently optimize the low-temperature rf surface resistance of the material. An example application is heating of 1.3 GHz accelerating structures between 250-400° C. to achieve a very high quality factor of 5×1010 at 2.0 K. With data supplied by secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements, application of oxide decomposition and oxygen diffusion theory was applied to quantify previously unknown parameters crucial in achieving the oxygen alloy concentration profiles required to optimize the rf surface resistance. RF measurements of vacuum heat treated Nb superconducting radio frequency cavities confirmed the minimized surface resistance (higher Q0) previously expected only from 800° C. diffusive alloying with nitrogen.

Palczewski, Ari D.↗

Chapter 12: Materials for Liquid Propulsion Systems

Earth to orbit launch vehicles are propelled by rocket engines and motors, both liquid and solid. This chapter will discuss liquid engines. The heart of a launch vehicle is its engine. The remainder of the vehicle (with the notable exceptions of the payload and guidance system) is an aero structure to support the propellant tanks which provide the fuel and oxidizer to feed the engine or engines. The basic principle behind a rocket engine is straightforward. The engine is a means to convert potential thermochemical energy of one or more propellants into exhaust jet kinetic energy. Fuel and oxidizer are burned in a combustion chamber where they create hot gases under high pressure. These hot gases are allowed to expand through a nozzle. The molecules of hot gas are first constricted by the throat of the nozzle (de-Laval nozzle) which forces them to accelerate; then as the nozzle flares outwards, they expand and further accelerate. It is the mass of the combustion gases times their velocity, reacting against the walls of the combustion chamber and nozzle, which produce thrust according to Newton's third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Solid rocket motors are cheaper to manufacture and offer good values for their cost. Liquid propellant engines offer higher performance, that is, they deliver greater thrust per unit weight of propellant burned. They also have a considerably higher thrust to weigh ratio. Since liquid rocket engines can be tested several times before flight, they have the capability to be more reliable, and their ability to shut down once started provides an extra margin of safety. Liquid propellant engines also can be designed with restart capability to provide orbital maneuvering capability. In some instances, liquid engines also can be designed to be reusable. On the solid side, hybrid solid motors also have been developed with the capability to stop and restart. Solid motors are covered in detail in chapter 11. Liquid rocket engine operational factors can be described in terms of extremes: temperatures ranging from that of liquid hydrogen (-423 F) to 6000 F hot gases; enormous thermal shock (7000 F/sec); large temperature differentials between contiguous components; reactive propellants; extreme acoustic environments; high rotational speeds for turbo machinery and extreme power densities. These factors place great demands on materials selection and each must be dealt with while maintaining an engine of the lightest possible weight. This chapter will describe the design considerations for the materials used in the various components of liquid rocket engines and provide examples of usage and experiences in each.

Halchak, John A.↗

Dynamic wind-tunnel tests of an aeromechanical gust-alleviation system using several different combinations of control surfaces

Some experimental results are presented from wind tunnel studies of a dynamic model equipped with an aeromechanical gust alleviation system for reducing the normal acceleration response of light airplanes. The gust alleviation system consists of two auxiliary aerodynamic surfaces that deflect the wing flaps through mechanical linkages when a gust is encountered to maintain nearly constant airplane lift. The gust alleviation system was implemented on a 1/6-scale, rod mounted, free flying model that is geometrically and dynamically representative of small, four place, high wing, single engine, light airplanes. The effects of flaps with different spans, two size of auxiliary aerodynamic surfaces, plain and double hinged flaps, and a flap elevator interconnection were studied. The model test results are presented in terms of predicted root mean square response of the full scale airplane to atmospheric turbulence. The results show that the gust alleviation system reduces the root mean square normal acceleration response by 30 percent in comparison with the response in the flaps locked condition. Small reductions in pitch-rate response were also obtained. It is believed that substantially larger reductions in normal acceleration can be achieved by reducing the rather high levels of mechanical friction which were extant in the alleviation system of the present model.

Stewart, E. C.↗

Invited: Software defined accelerators from learning tools environment

Next generation systems, such as edge devices, will need to provide efficient processing of machine learning (ML) algorithms along several metrics, including energy, performance, area, and latency. However, the quickly evolving field of ML makes it extremely difficult to generate accelerators able to support a wide variety of algorithms. At the same time, designing accelerators in hardware description languages (HDLs) by hand is hard and time consuming, and does not allow quick exploration of the design space. In this paper we present the Software Defined Accelerators From Learning Tools Environment (SODALITE), an automated open source high-level ML framework-to-verilog compiler targeting ML Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) chiplets. The SODALITE approach will implement optimal designs by seamlessly combining custom components generated through high-level synthesis (HLS) with templated and fully tunable Intellectural Properties (IPs) and macros, integrated in an extendable resource library. Through a closed loop design space exploration engine, developers will be able to quickly explore their hardware designs along different dimensions.

High-Level Synthesis, Accelerators, Hardware-Softw↗

Highly transferable atomistic machine-learning potentials from curated and compact datasets across the periodic table

Machine learning atomistic potentials trained using density functional theory (DFT) datasets allow for the modeling of complex material properties with near-DFT accuracy while imposing a fraction of its computational cost. The curation of the DFT datasets can be extensive in size and time-consuming to train and refine. In this study, we focus on addressing these barriers by developing minimalistic and flexible datasets for many elements in the periodic table regardless of their mass, electronic configuration, and ground state lattice. These DFT datasets have on average, ~4000 different structures and 27 atoms per structure, which we found sufficient to maintain the predictive accuracy of DFT properties and notably with high transferability. We envision these highly curated training sets as starting points for the community to expand, modify, or use with other machine learning atomistic potential models, whatever may suit individual needs, further accelerating the utilization of machine learning as a tool for material design and discovery.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Multiply accelerated ReaxFF molecular dynamics: coupling parallel replica dynamics with collective variable hyper dynamics

To address the time scales required to study complex chemical reactions, methods performing accelerated molecular dynamics are necessary even with the recent advancement in high-performance computing. A number of different acceleration techniques are available. Here we explore potential synergies between two popular acceleration methods – Parallel Replica Dynamics (PRD) and Collective Variable Hyperdynamics (CVHD), by analysing the speedup obtained for the pyrolysis of n-dodecane. We determine that PRD + CVHD provides additional speedup to CVHD by reaching the required time scales for the reaction at an earlier wall-clock time. Although some speedup is obtained with the additional replicas, we found that the effectiveness of the inclusion of PRD is depreciated for systems where there is a dramatic increase in reaction rates induced by CVHD. Similar observations were made in the simulation of ethylene-carbonate/Li system, which is inherently more reactive than pyrolysis, suggest that the speedup obtained via the combination of the two acceleration methods can be generalised to most practical chemical systems.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Risk Assessment of EIC Central Detector (ePIC) Solenoid Magnet (MARCO)

As part of the BNL-JLab-CEA Electron Ion Collider (EIC) collaboration, the design of a 2 T, 2.8 m bore diameter, 3.8 m long conduction cooled superconducting detector magnet design is completed. Such magnet will be employed at the interaction region of ePIC for physics experiment. The magnet is a passive shielded solenoidal magnet system consisting of 3 coils wound with specially designed conductor using NbTi Rutherford type cable in copper stabilized channel. This paper describes the risk analysis as the part of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) that was carried out as a team to identify their various failure modes and risks associated with the magnets system. In conclusion, this FMEA is intended to become the content of the designed document as an integral part of the engineering assessment and the statement of work for the potential vendors towards design and built.

Ghoshal, Probir K. [Thomas Jefferson National Acce↗

Study on high-flux laser ion source with applying magnetic field

The laser ion source is a technology where by irradiating a solid target with a pulsed laser of high intensity (10 8 W/cm 2 ~), ablation plasma is generated, and by applying there an external electric field for extracting and accelerating ions, high brightness ion beams are produced. This paper introduced the basic features of laser ion source and recent movement of the control of laser ion source using magnetic field. In the development of heavy ion inertial fusion (HIF) driver, engineers are challenging new tasks of supplying low valence, large current, and low emittance beams. In order to respond to the requirements of large current beams in HIF driver, attempts have been made to control the plasma via magnetic field to further increase the flux. The current of the laser ion source with application of solenoid magnetic field is dramatically improved and its amplification magnification can be adjusted by changing the position, length, and magnetic flux density of the solenoid. In order to further control the laser ion source toward HIF, the authors propose the guiding of plasma via multiple cusp magnetic field, and the guiding effect is being demonstrated through examination. According to the studies so far, the laser ion source can supply ion beams using a simple configuration, so it is suitable for miniaturization and may be adopted at many accelerator facilities. (A.O.)

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Installation and commissioning of the ion source systems for the new spallation neutron source 2.5 MeV injector

The U.S. Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is a state-of-the-art neutron scattering facility delivering the world’s most intense pulsed neutron beams to a wide array of instruments, which are used to conduct investigations in many fields of engineering, physics, chemistry, material science, and biology. Neutrons are produced by spallation of liquid Hg by the bombardment of short (∼1 µs), intense (∼35 A) pulses of protons delivered at 60 Hz by an accumulator ring which is fed by a high-intensity, 1 GeV, H− LINAC (linear accelerator). This facility has operated nearly continuously since 2006 but has recently undergone a 4-month maintenance period, which featured a complete replacement of the 2.5 MeV injector feeding the LINAC. The new injector was developed at ORNL in an off-line beam test facility and consists of an ion source, low energy beam transport, and a Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ). This report first describes the installed configuration of the new injector detailing the ion source system. The first beam current, RFQ transmission, emittance, and energy measurements from the injector installed on the SNS are reported. These data not only show a significant performance improvement for our existing facility but will also make accessible the higher beam current requirements for future SNS upgrade projects: the proton power upgrade and second target station.

Welton, R. F.↗

Unveiling the Fatigue Behavior of 2D Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Perovskites: Insights for Long-Term Durability

2D hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites (HOIPs) are commonly found under subcritical cyclic stresses and suffer from fatigue issues during device operation. However, their fatigue properties remain unknown. Here, the fatigue behavior of (C 4 H 9 -NH 3 ) 2 (CH 3 NH 3 ) 2 Pb 3 I 10 , the archetype 2D HOIP, is systematically investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). It is found that 2D HOIPs are much more fatigue resilient than polymers and can survive over 1 billion cycles. 2D HOIPs tend to exhibit brittle failure at high mean stress levels, but behave as ductile materials at low mean stress levels. These results suggest the presence of a plastic deformation mechanism in these ionic 2D HOIPs at low mean stress levels, which may contribute to the long fatigue lifetime, but is inhibited at higher mean stresses. The stiffness and strength of 2D HOIPs are gradually weakened under subcritical loading, potentially as a result of stress-induced defect nucleation and accumulation. The cyclic loading component can further accelerate this process. The fatigue lifetime of 2D HOIPs can be extended by reducing the mean stress, stress amplitude, or increasing the thickness. These results can provide indispensable insights into designing and engineering 2D HOIPs and other hybrid organic–inorganic materials for long-term mechanical durability.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗