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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 127 records · Page 7

Predictions of the glass transition temperature and viscosity of organic aerosols from volatility distributions

Abstract. Volatility and viscosity are important properties of organic aerosols (OA), affecting aerosol processes such as formation, evolution, and partitioning of OA. Volatility distributions of ambient OA particles have often been measured, while viscosity measurements are scarce. We have previously developed a method to estimate the glass transition temperature (Tg) of an organic compound containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Based on analysis of over 2400 organic compounds including oxygenated organic compounds, as well as nitrogen- and sulfur-containing organic compounds, we extend this method to include nitrogen- and sulfur-containing compounds based on elemental composition. In addition, parameterizations are developed to predict Tg as a function of volatility and the atomic oxygen-to-carbon ratio based on a negative correlation between Tg and volatility. This prediction method of Tg is applied to ambient observations of volatility distributions at 11 field sites. The predicted Tg values of OA under dry conditions vary mainly from 290 to 339 K and the predicted viscosities are consistent with the results of ambient particle-phase-state measurements in the southeastern US and the Amazonian rain forest. Reducing the uncertainties in measured volatility distributions would improve predictions of viscosity, especially at low relative humidity. We also predict the Tg of OA components identified via positive matrix factorization of aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) data. The predicted viscosity of oxidized OA is consistent with previously reported viscosity of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) derived from α-pinene, toluene, isoprene epoxydiol (IEPOX), and diesel fuel. Comparison of the predicted viscosity based on the observed volatility distributions with the viscosity simulated by a chemical transport model implies that missing low volatility compounds in a global model can lead to underestimation of OA viscosity at some sites. The relation between volatility and viscosity can be applied in the molecular corridor or volatility basis set approaches to improve OA simulations in chemical transport models by consideration of effects of particle viscosity in OA formation and evolution.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Technology requirements for advanced earth orbital transportation system. Volume 1: Executive summary

Normal technology requirements applicable to Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) systems were projected to the 1985 time period. These technology projections were then incorporated in a vehicle design analysis of three different operational concepts resulting in four configurations of a Single Stage to Orbit system. The resultant performance, weights and costs of each concept were then compared and a system concept selected. A figure of merit was developed for advanced technology programs based on a cost/performance basis. The selected advanced technology programs were then used to reassess the vehicle to determine the impact on performance, weight and cost. Based on study results, recommendations are provided in technology areas associated with earth orbit transportation systems. The recommendations address advanced space transportation system design considerations, both hardware and software technolgoy program requirements.

Hepler, A. K.↗

NASA overview

The history of NASA efforts at Ames Research Center in researching the performance and application of thrusting augmentors is reviewed. Current objectives include: (1) parametric description of thrust augmentor application to STOL and V/STOL; (2) the use of theoretical and empirical data; (3) aircraft-augmentor integration; and (4) key design considerations for STOL transport and V/STOL fighter aircraft. Test facilities are described and ejector development and performance are assessed.

Koenig, D. G.↗

In depth review of the 1979 AIAA Lighter-Than-Air Systems Technology Conference

The lighter than air (LTA) systems technology conference is reviewed. Highlights of the conference were: (1) the interest shown in patrol and surveillance airships, particularly for coastal patrol missions; (2) the session devoted to overviews of foreign activity; and (3) heavy lift and long range transport aircraft design considerations.

Ardema, M. D.↗

The earth's ring current - Present situation and future thrusts

Particle distributions, currents, and the ring current situation prior to the August 1984 launch of the AMPTE Charge Composition Explorer (CCE) are discussed. CCE results which demonstrate the capability of these new measurements to pursue questions of ring current sources, energization, and transport are presented. Consideration is given to various ring current generation mechanisms which have been discussed in the literature, and a two-step generation process which to a certain extent unifies the previous mechanisms is presented. The first in-situ global observations of ring current decay as obtained through the detection of energetic neutral atoms generated by charge exchange interactions between the ring current and hydrogen geocorona are discussed, as well as the possibility of using the detection of energetic neutral atoms to obtain global images of the earth's ring current.

Williams, D. J.↗

GPS Sounding Rocket Developments

Sounding rockets are suborbital launch vehicles capable of carrying scientific payloads several hundred miles in altitude. These missions return a variety of scientific data including; chemical makeup and physical processes taking place In the atmosphere, natural radiation surrounding the Earth, data on the Sun, stars, galaxies and many other phenomena. In addition, sounding rockets provide a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices used on satellites and other spacecraft prior to their use in more expensive activities. The NASA Sounding Rocket Program is managed by personnel from Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia. Typically around thirty of these rockets are launched each year, either from established ranges at Wallops Island, Virginia, Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska; White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico or from Canada, Norway and Sweden. Many times launches are conducted from temporary launch ranges in remote parts of the world requi6ng considerable expense to transport and operate tracking radars. An inverse differential GPS system has been developed for Sounding Rocket. This paper addresses the NASA Wallops Island history of GPS Sounding Rocket experience since 1994 and the development of a high accurate and useful system.

Bull, Barton↗

A Real Time Differential GPS Tracking System for NASA Sounding Rockets

Sounding rockets are suborbital launch vehicles capable of carrying scientific payloads to several hundred miles in altitude. These missions return a variety of scientific data including: chemical makeup and physical processes taking place in the atmosphere, natural radiation surrounding the Earth, data on the Sun, stars, galaxies and many other phenomena. In addition, sounding rockets provide a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices to be used on satellites and other spacecraft prior to their use in these more expensive missions. Typically around thirty of these rockets are launched each year, from established ranges at Wallops Island, Virginia; Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska; White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico and from a number of ranges outside the United States. Many times launches are conducted from temporary launch ranges in remote parts of the world requiring considerable expense to transport and operate tracking radars. In order to support these missions, an inverse differential GPS system has been developed. The flight system consists of a small, inexpensive receiver, a preamplifier and a wrap-around antenna. A rugged, compact, portable ground station extracts GPS data from the raw payload telemetry stream, performs a real time differential solution and graphically displays the rocket's path relative to a predicted trajectory plot. In addition to generating a real time navigation solution, the system has been used for payload recovery, timing, data timetagging, precise tracking of multiple payloads and slaving of optical tracking systems for over the horizon acquisition. This paper discusses, in detail, the flight and ground hardware, as well as data processing and operational aspects of the system, and provides evidence of the system accuracy.

Bull, Barton↗

Solar Energetic Particle Spectrometer (SEPS)

An outstanding problem of solar and heliospheric physics is the transport of solar energetic particles. The more energetic particles arriving early in the event can be used to probe the transport processes. The arrival direction distribution of these particles carries information about scattering during their propagation to Earth that can be used to test models of interplanetary transport. Also, of considerable importance to crewed space missions is the level of ionizing radiation in the interplanetary medium, and the dose that the crew experiences during an intense solar particle event, as well as the risk to space systems. A recent study concludes that 90% of the absorbed dose results from particles in the energy range 20-550 MeV. We will describe a new compact instrument concept, SEPS, that can cover the energy range from 50-600 MeV with a single compact detector. This energy range has been difficult to cover. There are only limited data, generally available only in broad energy bins, from a few past and present instruments outside Earth s magnetosphere. The SEPS concept can provide improved measurements for this energy range and its simple light-weight design could be easily accommodated on future missions.

Christl, Mark J.↗

Effects of Meteoroid Erosion in Planetary Rings

This grant supported continuing studies of the effects of ballistic transport on the evolution of Saturn's rings. Ballistic transport, as used in this context, refers to the net transport of mass and angular momentum caused by the exchange of meteoroid impact ejecta between neighboring ring regions (Ip 1983, 1984, Morfill et al. 1983, Lissauer 1984, Durisen 1984a,b). The characteristic time scale associated with this process is the gross erosion time t(sub g) the time it would take a ring region to be completed eroded if all impact ejecta were lost. This time scale is estimated to be about 10(exp 5) to 10(exp 6) years for a ring region with normal optical depth tau approximately 1. Earlier work by myself and collaborators developed the physical theory and simulation techniques to model this process (Durisen et al. 1989, Cuzzi and Durisen 1990). Detailed simulations, supported in part by this grant, have demonstrated that ballistic transport can produce observed structures in Saturn's rings, especially at and near the inner edges of the A and B Rings (Durisen et al. 1992, 1996). The structures of interest in the real rings are illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. Most of these structures were previously unexplained. The computational results plus analytic treatments place useful constraints on fundamental ring properties, including the indication of a relatively young ring age less than or equal 10(exp 8) years (see reviews by Nicholson and Dones 1991, Esposito 1993, Cuzzi 1995, and Porco 1995). This grant also supported development of the faster computational algorithms necessary to permit longer evolutions. Resulting simplications in the ballistic transport equations permitted an analytic linear stability analysis (Durisen 1995), which has provided considerable insight into ballistic transport processes and applications to Saturn's rings. All these accomplishments are described in more detail below.

Durisen, Richard H.↗

Highly reusable space transportation: Approaches for reducing ETO launch costs to $100 - $200 per pound of payload

The Commercial Space Transportation Study (CSTS) suggests that considerable market expansion in earth-to-orbit transportation would take place if current launch prices could be reduced to around $400 per pound of payload. If these low prices can be achieved, annual payload delivered to low earth orbit (LEO) is predicted to reach 6.7 million pounds. The primary market growth will occur in communications, government missions, and civil transportation. By establishing a cost target of $100-$200 per pound of payload for a new launch system, the Highly Reusable Space Transportation (HRST) program has clearly set its sights on removing the current restriction on market growth imposed by today's high launch costs. In particular, achieving the goal of $100-$200 per pound of payload will require significant coordinated efforts in (1) marketing strategy development, (2) business planning, (3) system operational strategy, (4) vehicle technical design, and (5) vehicle maintenance strategy.

Olds, John R.↗

A Multicomponent Reactive Transport Model for Integrated Surface‐Subsurface Hydrology Problems

Abstract Despite the widespread use of integrated hydrology models in a variety of applications, consideration of multicomponent reactive transport is still not common. The implementation of these processes requires coupling transport at the surface‐subsurface interface and efficient solution of the non‐linear geochemical model that is consistent with the integrated hydrology solution. The Advanced Terrestrial Simulator provides a flexible multiphysics framework that facilitated this process. In this work, the integrated reactive transport process kernel (PK) was weakly coupled to the integrated hydrology PK. In turn, integrated transport and reactions were coupled using an operator splitting approach. This splitting enabled an explicit solution of the integrated transport problem, including a novel algorithm to calculate exchange fluxes across the surface‐subsurface interface and a point‐by‐point solution of the geochemical problem. Geochemical capabilities were added using well‐established external codes, but rather than using a custom interface to each, a generic interface was used that clearly specifies the variables and operations used by the chemistry PK. The implementation is demonstrated with two example simulations: transport of a tracer in a soil column as it saturates over time and water ponds on the surface and reactive transport in a hillslope driven by successive wet‐dry cycles that result in infiltration, runoff and exfiltration processes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Operational considerations for the airship in short-haul transportation

The airship's problems and the possibilities for their solution in a short-haul transportation environment are surveyed. The problems are derived from both past experience and envisioned operation. Problems relative to both fully buoyant and semi-buoyant configurations are considered and their origins in principle discussed. Also addressed in this paper are the state-of-the-art technologies with the potential of providing answers to the airship's operational difficulties.

Walker, C. D.↗

NASA's Subsonic Jet Transport Noise Reduction Research

Although new jet transport airplanes in today s fleet are considerably quieter than the first jet transports introduced about 40 years ago, airport community noise continues to be an important environmental issue. NASA s Advanced Subsonic Transport (AST) Noise Reduction program was begun in 1994 as a seven-year effort to develop technology to reduce jet transport noise 10 dB relative to 1992 technology. This program provides for reductions in engine source noise, improvements in nacelle acoustic treatments, reductions in the noise generated by the airframe, and improvements in the way airplanes are operated in the airport environs. These noise reduction efforts will terminate at the end of 2001 and it appears that the objective will be met. However, because of an anticipated 3-8% growth in passenger and cargo operations well into the 21st Century and the slow introduction of new the noise reduction technology into the fleet, world aircraft noise impact will remain essentially constant until about 2020 to 2030 and thereafter begin to rise. Therefore NASA has begun planning with the Federal Aviation Administration, industry, universities and environmental interest groups in the USA for a new noise reduction initiative to provide technology for significant further reductions.

Powell, Clemans A.↗

Transport-induced shifts in condensate dew-point and composition in multicomponent systems with chemical reaction

Partial heterogeneous condensation phenomena in multicomponent reacting systems are analyzed taking into consideration the chemical element transport phenomena. It is demonstrated that the dew-point surface temperature in chemically reactive systems is not a purely thermodynamic quantity, but is influenced by the multicomponent diffusion and Soret-mass diffusion phenomena. Several distinct dew-points are shown to exist in such systems and, as a result of transport constraints, the 'sharp' locus between two chemically distinct condensates is systematically moved to a difference mainstream composition.

Rosner, D. E.↗

Operation and Security Considerations for Heat Pipe Cooled Microreactors

Microreactors and small modular reactors (SMRs) are anticipated to be key elements in the United States' carbon-free energy portfolio, serving as reliable power sources for remote communities, disaster relief zones, extraterrestrial deployments, and backup power needs. Microreactors employ technologies that are substantially more advanced and recent compared to conventional reactors. Furthermore, they are of a drastically smaller scale and are designed to be operated in a diverse set of locations, offering operational flexibility and mobility. In addition, the autonomous or semi-autonomous operation of microreactors with minimal or no on-site staff is anticipated. These factors give rise to specific challenges with regards to their safety and security. The present work investigates considerations related to heat pipe operation, reactor transport, and cyber/cyberphysical security to ensure the indirect and direct consequences of nefarious actors’ actions are understood and can be mitigated by design or through physical security measures. In addition, future directions are proposed for consideration by both HPMR designers and for regulators.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

An air-breathing ballistic space transporter for Europe

With increasing transport requirements, reusable space transporters again receive serious consideration in Europe as successors to the Ariane family. The paper deals with a hydrogen-ramjet-propelled, 1-1/2-stage reusable ballistic space transporter with vertical take-off and landing and using liquid hydrogen/oxygen rockets. This novel concept was developed in a theoretical study at the University of Stuttgart. The results are compared with recently published studies of several other European space transporter concepts. The data derived for the Istra - concept are: 15.4 Mg payload into low Earth-orbit, 155 Mg gross lift-off mass, 10% payload ratio, which represents a 57% propellant saving, and 44% reduction in dry mass (structure and engines) compared with comparable two-stage pure rocket concepts.

Kramer, P. A.↗

Design considerations for application of laminar flow control systems to transport aircraft

The current status of the laminar-flow control LFC technology is summarized. Factors that have previously inhibited the application of LFC are first reviewed. Involved are the effects of atmospheric ice crystals, surface irregularities, acoustical environment, and off-design operating conditions. Aircraft design trends that are different from turbulent aircraft are discussed as are various design requirements unique to the LFC systems. Current design approaches for the principal LFC systems are reviewed. These include the system for protection of the leading-edge region from surface contamination and icing and the system for removal of a portion of the boundary-layer air. The latter includes consideration of both multiple spanwise suction slots and distributed perforations and required differences between the wing-box and leading-edge box regions.

Braslow, A. L.↗

Crystal growth of CdTe in space and thermal field effects on mass flux and morphology

The primary, long-range goals are the development of vapor phase crystal growth experiments, and the growth of technologically useful crystals in space. The necessary ground-based studies include measurements of the effects of temperature variations on the mass flux and crystal morphology in vapor-solid growth processes. For in-situ mass flux measurements dynamic microbalance techniques will be employed. Crystal growth procedures and equipment will be developed to be compatible with microgravity conditions and flight requirements. Emphasis was placed on the further development of crystal growth and the investigation of relevant transport properties of CdTe. The dependence of the mass flux on source temperature was experimentally established. The CdTe synthesis and pretreatment procedures are being developed that yield considerable improvements in mass transport rates, and mass fluxes which are independent of the amount of source material. A higher degree of stoichiometric control of CdTe than before was achieved during this period of investigation. Based on this, a CdTe crystal growth experiment, employing physical vapor transport, yielded very promising results. Optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction studies revealed that the boule contained several large sized crystal grains of a high degree of crystallinity. Further characterization studies of CdTe crystals are in progress. The reaction chamber, furnace dimensions, and ampoule location of the dynamic microbalance system were modified in order to minimize radiation effects on the balance performance.

Wiedemeier, H.↗