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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

Wave pressure in stellar atmospheres due to shock wave trains

Analytic expressions for the wave pressure of propagating shock wave trains in stellar atmospheres or winds are derived. Applications to weak shocks and stronger shocks with sawtooth profiles are discussed in detail. The shocks are treated as discontinuities. The results provide insight in the momentum balance of time-dependent stellar wind flows. The analytic expressions can be used as an independent test of hydrodynamic codes.

Gail, H.-P.↗

The impact of land-surface wetness heterogeneity on mesoscale heat fluxes

Vertical heat fluxes associated with mesoscale circulations generated by land-surface wetness discontinuities are often stronger than turbulent fluxes, especially in the upper part of the atmospheric planetary boundary layer. As a result, they contribute significantly to the subgrid-scale fluxes in large-scale atmospheric models. Yet they are not considered in these models. To provide some insights into the possible parameterization of these fluxes in large-scale models, a state-of-the-art mesoscale numerical model was used to investigate the relationships between mesoscale heat fluxes and atmospheric and land-surface characteristics that play a key role in the generation of mesoscale circulations. The distribution of land-surface wetness, the wavenumber and the wavelength of the land-surface discontinuities, and the large-scale wind speed have a significant impact on the mesoscale heat fluxes. Empirical functions were derived to characterize the relationships between mesoscale heat fluxes and the spatial distribution of land-surface wetness. The strongest mesoscale heat fluxes were obtained for a wavelength of forcing corresponding approximately to the local Rossby deformation radius. The mesoscale heat fluxes are weakened by large-scale background winds but remain significant even with moderate winds.

Chen, Fei↗

MESSENGER Observation of Mercury's Magnetopause: Structure and Dynamics

MESSENGER'S 14 January 2008 encounter with Mercury has provided new observations of the magnetopause of this small magnetosphere, particularly concerning the effect of the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) on the structure and dynamics of this boundary. The IMF was northward immediately prior to and following the passage of the MESSENGER spacecraft through Mercury's magnetosphere. However, several-minute episodes of southward IMF were observed in the magnetosheath during the inbound portion of the encounter. Evidence for reconnection at the dayside magnetopause in the form of well-developed flux transfer events (FTEs) was observed in the magnetosheath following some of these southward-B, intervals. The inbound magnetopause crossing seen in the magnetic field measurements is consistent with a transition from the magnetosheath into the plasma sheet. Immediately following MESSENGER'S entry into the magnetosphere, rotational perturbations in the magnetic field similar to those seen at the Earth in association with large-scale plasma sheet vortices driven by Kelvin-Helmholtz waves along the magnetotail boundary at the Earth were observed. The outbound magnetopause occurred during northward IMF B(sub z) and had the characteristics of a tangential discontinuity. These new observations by MESSENGER may be combined and compared with the magnetopause measurements collected by Mariner 10 to derive new understanding of the response of Mercury's magnetopause to IMF direction and its effect on the rate of solar wind energy and mass input to this small magnetosphere.

Slavin, J. A.↗

Performance, Inflow, and Tip Loss Characteristics of Rotors with Discontinuous Steps in Twist and Lift at the Blade-Tips

This paper examines the inflow and tip-loss characteristics of rotors incorporating indexed blade-tips that have discontinuous steps in twist or lift distribution. An extension of the classic two-dimensional Prandtl tip loss analysis is derived for indexed-tip rotors and proprotors. Additionally, parametric analysis of tip span and indexed-tip twist-steps was performed using computational fluid dynamics for hover and high-speed axial-flow conditions for proprotors. The intent of this work is to define a new class of active-rotor-twist-control designs for proprotors that avoids unnecessary aeroperformance compromises for rotor twist distributions for proprotors in all phases of flight.

rotors↗

Discontinuous transitions in a current-carrying plasma

The properties of 'discontinuous' transitions in a current-carrying plasma are investigated by adopting an approach based on the two-fluid equations for a plasma. Braginskii's (1965) transport equations for a two-fluid plasma carrying a current are presented, and allowance is made for collisions with a background neutral gas as well as for effects of reflected particles. The speed of sound in a current-carrying plasma is derived so that the Mach number can be defined correctly as the ratio of the flow speed to the wave phase velocity in such a plasma. The various types of discontinuities permitted by the relevant jump relations in the absence of reflected particles are classified, the effect of reflected particles on such discontinuities is examined, and it is shown that the degree of indeterminacy of a discontinuity can be changed by the presence of reflected particles. Consideration of shocks containing a population of reflected particles and adiabatic transitions indicates that the pressure of reflected particles alone can give rise to both weak and strong transitions. The construction of discontinuous periodic flow solutions is also discussed.

Lee, H.-J.↗

An extension of MacCormack's method for flows with higher-order equations and in different configurations

The numerical scheme for the computation of a shock discontinuity developed by MacCormack has been extended to solve a number of differential equations, including cases explicitly containing higher-order derivatives: (1) Korteweg-de Vries equation with a term of third-order derivative, (2) a system of nonlinear equations governing nonsteady one-dimensional plasma flow in cylindrical coordinate, (3) equations of solar wind. Comparisons with previous results are made, if available, to illustrate the advantages of the present method. The question of convergence of the numerical calculation is discussed.

Ying, S. J.↗

Centrifugally driven diffusion of Iogenic plasma

The plasma distribution around Io as measured by Voyager 1 displays an asymmetric discontinuity at Io's orbit that has been suggested to be the signature of centrifugally driven interchange diffusion fed by plasma derived from Io. This hypothesis is explored further and found to be valid. The particular form for the diffusion coefficient appropriate to centrifugally driven turbulence is derived. The nonlinear character of this kind of diffusion is thereby made explicit. Solutions to the nonlinear, time-independent and linearized, time-dependent diffusion equations are given. These display a markedly conservative behavior. The nonlinear, steady state solutions are identical in form to the solutions of the previously studied equation of linear, atmospherically driven diffusion. The linearized, time-dependent solutions exhibit a negative feed-back quality that buffers the response of the density to changes in the source strength. Estimates of the source strength, the diffusion coefficient, and the signal propagation speed are also given.

Siscoe, G. L.↗

Analysis of High Order Difference Methods for Multiscale Complex Compressible Flows

Accurate numerical simulations of complex multiscale compressible viscous flows, especially high speed turbulence combustion and acoustics, demand high order schemes with adaptive numerical dissipation controls. Standard high resolution shock-capturing methods are too dissipative to capture the small scales and/or long-time wave propagations without extreme grid refinements and small time steps. An integrated approach for the control of numerical dissipation in high order schemes with incremental studies was initiated. Here we further refine the analysis on, and improve the understanding of the adaptive numerical dissipation control strategy. Basically, the development of these schemes focuses on high order nondissipative schemes and takes advantage of the progress that has been made for the last 30 years in numerical methods for conservation laws, such as techniques for imposing boundary conditions, techniques for stability at shock waves, and techniques for stable and accurate long-time integration. We concentrate on high order centered spatial discretizations and a fourth-order Runge-Kutta temporal discretizations as the base scheme. Near the bound-aries, the base scheme has stable boundary difference operators. To further enhance stability, the split form of the inviscid flux derivatives is frequently used for smooth flow problems. To enhance nonlinear stability, linear high order numerical dissipations are employed away from discontinuities, and nonlinear filters are employed after each time step in order to suppress spurious oscillations near discontinuities to minimize the smearing of turbulent fluctuations. Although these schemes are built from many components, each of which is well-known, it is not entirely obvious how the different components be best connected. For example, the nonlinear filter could instead have been built into the spatial discretization, so that it would have been activated at each stage in the Runge-Kutta time stepping. We could think of a mechanism that activates the split form of the equations only at some parts of the domain. Another issue is how to define good sensors for determining in which parts of the computational domain a certain feature should be filtered by the appropriate numerical dissipation. For the present study we employ a wavelet technique introduced in as sensors. Here, the method is briefly described with selected numerical experiments.

Sjoegreen, Bjoern↗

A Cubic Radial Basis Function in the MLPG Method for Beam Problems

A non-compactly supported cubic radial basis function implementation of the MLPG method for beam problems is presented. The evaluation of the derivatives of the shape functions obtained from the radial basis function interpolation is much simpler than the evaluation of the moving least squares shape function derivatives. The radial basis MLPG yields results as accurate or better than those obtained by the conventional MLPG method for problems with discontinuous and other complex loading conditions.

Raju, I. S.↗

Local error estimates for discontinuous solutions of nonlinear hyperbolic equations

Let u(x,t) be the possibly discontinuous entropy solution of a nonlinear scalar conservation law with smooth initial data. Suppose u sub epsilon(x,t) is the solution of an approximate viscosity regularization, where epsilon greater than 0 is the small viscosity amplitude. It is shown that by post-processing the small viscosity approximation u sub epsilon, pointwise values of u and its derivatives can be recovered with an error as close to epsilon as desired. The analysis relies on the adjoint problem of the forward error equation, which in this case amounts to a backward linear transport with discontinuous coefficients. The novelty of this approach is to use a (generalized) E-condition of the forward problem in order to deduce a W(exp 1,infinity) energy estimate for the discontinuous backward transport equation; this, in turn, leads one to an epsilon-uniform estimate on moments of the error u(sub epsilon) - u. This approach does not follow the characteristics and, therefore, applies mutatis mutandis to other approximate solutions such as E-difference schemes.

Tadmor, Eitan↗

Statistical characterization of sea surface geometry for a wave slope field discontinuous in the mean square

Statistics of two-dimensional wave groups, of steep wave events, and of a cascade pattern manifested in the surface geometry in a developed sea state are derived. A systematic view is presented of the spectral moment problem, highlighting its physical meaning and showing its relationship with the theory of random fields. A solution of this problem is suggested that is appropriate to the case of wind-generated surface waves. The solution method treats the surface elevation field as specified on a spatial (temporal) running grid, developing an averaging procedure which employs the Taylor microscale as the mesh size. The technique is illustrated by first exposing errors in direct calculations of the effective surface impedance for a coherently reflected L-band radio wave. The technique is then used to study wave groups and steep waves for a Gaussian, two-dimensional, time-varying surface. Finally, the theory is applied to estimate breaking wave statistics,

Glazman, R. E.↗

Thermal infrared opacity of the Mars atmosphere

An analytical technique is presented for the deriving Mars atmosphere opacity from data furnished by the IR Thermal Mapper (IRTM) instruments on the Viking landers. Each IRTM features four telescopes for viewing Mars in six spectral bands and seven spatial fields of view. The present study focuses on 20 microns measurements of the thermal inertia, 0.3-3.0 microns data for the surface albedo, and, finally, the 7, 9, and 15 microns data for the actual opacity derivations. The model takes into account the atmospheric temperature profile, scattering by dust, the surface emissivity and the variation of the surface/atmosphere temperature discontinuity. Analyses are carried out of the possible error factors and the model is used to generate opacity histories for the two Viking Lander sites. The results, when compared with other astronomical data, indicate that the method is sufficiently accurate to use opacity data to analyze the processes of storm genesis and to study local storms.

Martin, T. Z.↗

Improvements to GOES Twilight Cloud Detection over the ARM SGP

The current ARM satellite cloud products derived from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data provide continuous coverage of many cloud properties over the ARM Southern Great Plains domain. However, discontinuities occur during daylight near the terminator, a time period referred to here as twilight. This poster presentation will demonstrate the improvements in cloud detection provided by the improved cloud mask algorithm as well as validation of retrieved cloud properties using surface observations from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Southern Great Plains (ARM SGP) site.

Yost, c. R.↗

Analysis of Discontinuities in a Rectangular Waveguide Using Dyadic Green's Function Approach in Conjunction with Method of Moments

The dyadic Green's function for an electric current source placed in a rectangular waveguide is derived using a magnetic vector potential approach. A complete solution for the electric and magnetic fields including the source location is obtained by simple differentiation of the vector potential around the source location. The simple differentiation approach which gives electric and magnetic fields identical to an earlier derivation is overlooked by the earlier workers in the derivation of the dyadic Green's function particularly around the source location. Numerical results obtained using the Green's function approach are compared with the results obtained using the Finite Element Method (FEM).

Deshpande, M. D.↗

Frequency modulation at a moving material interface and a conservation law for wave number

An integral conservation law for wave numbers is considered. In order to test the validity of the proposed conservation law, a complete solution for the reflection and transmission of an acoustic wave impinging normally on a material interface moving at a constant speed is derived. The agreement between the frequency condition thus deduced from the dynamic equations of motion and the frequency condition derived from the jump condition associated with the integral equation supports the proposed law as a true conservation law. Additional comparisons such as amplitude discontinuities and Snells' law in a moving media further confirm the stated proposition. Results are stated concerning frequency and wave number relations across a shock front as predicted by the proposed conservation law.

Kleinstein, G. G.↗

Time-domain finite elements in optimal control with application to launch-vehicle guidance

A time-domain finite element method is developed for optimal control problems. The theory derived is general enough to handle a large class of problems including optimal control problems that are continuous in the states and controls, problems with discontinuities in the states and/or system equations, problems with control inequality constraints, problems with state inequality constraints, or problems involving any combination of the above. The theory is developed in such a way that no numerical quadrature is necessary regardless of the degree of nonlinearity in the equations. Also, the same shape functions may be employed for every problem because all strong boundary conditions are transformed into natural or weak boundary conditions. In addition, the resulting nonlinear algebraic equations are very sparse. Use of sparse matrix solvers allows for the rapid and accurate solution of very difficult optimization problems. The formulation is applied to launch-vehicle trajectory optimization problems, and results show that real-time optimal guidance is realizable with this method. Finally, a general problem solving environment is created for solving a large class of optimal control problems. The algorithm uses both FORTRAN and a symbolic computation program to solve problems with a minimum of user interaction. The use of symbolic computation eliminates the need for user-written subroutines which greatly reduces the setup time for solving problems.

Bless, Robert R.↗

De-Aliasing Through Over-Integration Applied to the Flux Reconstruction and Discontinuous Galerkin Methods

High-order methods are quickly becoming popular for turbulent flows as the amount of computer processing power increases. The flux reconstruction (FR) method presents a unifying framework for a wide class of high-order methods including discontinuous Galerkin (DG), Spectral Difference (SD), and Spectral Volume (SV). It offers a simple, efficient, and easy way to implement nodal-based methods that are derived via the differential form of the governing equations. Whereas high-order methods have enjoyed recent success, they have been known to introduce numerical instabilities due to polynomial aliasing when applied to under-resolved nonlinear problems. Aliasing errors have been extensively studied in reference to DG methods; however, their study regarding FR methods has mostly been limited to the selection of the nodal points used within each cell. Here, we extend some of the de-aliasing techniques used for DG methods, primarily over-integration, to the FR framework. Our results show that over-integration does remove aliasing errors but may not remove all instabilities caused by insufficient resolution (for FR as well as DG).

High-Order↗

Supersonic flow about circular cones at large angles of attack - A floating discontinuity approach

The technique of floating shock fitting is adapted to the computation of the inviscid flowfield about circular cones in a supersonic free stream at angles of attack that exceed the cone half-angle. In those regions in which the governing conical equations are mixed elliptic-hyperbolic, the fully hyperbolic form is obtained by the addition of the temporal derivative. The resulting equations are applicable over the complete range of free-stream Mach numbers, angles of attack and cone half-angles for which the bow shock is attached. An explicit finite-difference algorithm is used to obtain the solution by an unsteady relaxation approach. The bow shock, embedded crossflow shock, and vortical singularity in the leeward symmetry plane are all treated as floating discontinuities in a fixed computational mesh. The method yields excellent results for the bow and embedded shocks, however, the solution in the leeward symmetry plane exhibits viscous-like effects and does not appear to adequately predict the behavior of the vortical singularity.

Daywitt, J.↗