Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “surface engineering”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,279 records · Page 71
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

From Regolith to Living Off the Land: Formulating a Data Model to Catalog Lunar Construction Materials

Artemis Program objectives for sustainable, long-term presence on the Moon and more distant planetary surfaces will require learning to “Live off the Land”, relying on in-situ resource utilization to produce infrastructure and building materials from lunar regolith, icy subsurface deposits, and residual waste materials. Meeting demand for consumables while scaling development with resources found within the landing zone will require detailed data on the geology and environment of the lunar surface. Lunar infrastructure development will generate vast amounts of new engineering data regarding availability of processed feedstocks and their performance in building materials. Lunar engineering data accessible to program partners, research institutions and industry may help situate processes and specifications within the in-situ GIS context. Lunar missions to date have generated geological and ice favorability maps of the lunar surface, and recent technology studies have tested automated construction systems and novel material formulations using regolith simulants and binders. Current discussions focus on identifying key feedstocks, quantities required for nominal mission scenarios and infrastructure plans, and mapping the value chain from regolith to feedstock to consumables and construction materials.

lunar construction↗
DOE OSTI2019

Nanoparticle surface charge influences translocation and leaf distribution in vascular plants with contrasting anatomy

Root uptake and translocation of engineered nanoparticles (NPs) by plants are dependent on both plant species and NP physicochemical properties. To evaluate the influence of NP surface charge and differences in root structure and vasculature on cerium distribution and spatial distribution within plants, two monocotyledons (corn and rice) and two dicotyledons (tomato and lettuce) were exposed hydroponically to positively-charged, negatively-charged, and neutral ~4 nm CeO 2 NPs. Here, leaves were analyzed using synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy to provide lateral Ce spatial distribution. Surface charge mediated CeO 2 NP interactions with roots for all plant species. Positively charged CeO 2 NPs associated to the roots more than the negatively charged NPs due to electrostatic attraction/repulsion to the negatively charged root surfaces, with the highest association for the tomato, likely due to higher root surface area. The positive NPs remained primarily adhered to the roots untransformed, while the neutral and negative NPs were more efficiently translocated from the roots to shoots. This translocation efficiency was highest for the tomato and lettuce compared to corn and rice. Across all plant species, the positive and neutral treatments resulted in the formation of Ce clusters outside of the main vasculature in the mesophyll, while the negative treatment resulted in Ce primarily in the main vasculature of the leaves. Comparing leaf vasculature, Ce was able to move much further outside of the main vasculature in the dicot plants than monocot plants, likely due to the larger airspace volume in dicot leaves compared to monocot leaves. These results provide valuable insight into the influence of plant structure and NP properties on metal transport and distribution of NPs in plants.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS2015

Techniques for Measuring Surface Potentials in Space

Materials exposed to the space plasma environment charge to a net potential relative to the ambient plasma. The charging process is due to differential currents to the material surface that results in a net surface charge density. While this process is termed "spacecraft surface charging" when applied to aerospace hardware, it also applies to the surfaces of astronomical objects in direct contact with the space plasma environment including a number of planetary bodies, asteroids, and dust particles. The ability to measure surface potentials is important to many techniques used in conducting fundamental heliospheric science, spacecraft engineering operations, and space technology development activities. This presentation provides a survey of current technologies used to measure surface potentials of spacecraft and planetary bodies with examples of their application to space science and technology programs.

Minow, Joseph I.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Developing a Medical System Concept of Operations for Level of Care IV: Long-Duration Lunar Orbital and Surface Operations

A goal of the Human Research Program (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element Systems Engineering (SE) team is to define the technical system needed to support crew medical system capabilities for future exploration missions, including a mission with lunar orbital and long duration surface operations. The medical system concept of operations (ConOps) is the starting point of creating a foundation for a medical system that meets Level of Care IV requirements, as defined by NASA’s space flight human-system standards. This ConOps illustrates how NASA can provide a Level of Care IV medical system for crews within the various cis-lunar orbit and lunar surface habitat environments. The use case scenarios included in this ConOps illustrate required medical system capabilities for Level of Care IV and enable the ExMC SE team to develop integrated medical system requirements and identify capabilities required to meet those requirements. This discussion will focus on how this concept of operations was constructed – by utilizing the lessons learned from ExMC’s existing Short-Duration Lunar Orbit Medical System Concept of Operations, by employing Model-Based Systems Engineering, and by collaborating with stakeholders in order to ensure the necessary assumptions were made.

M. Kaetzer↗
NASA NTRS1972

An analysis of the booster plume impingement environment during the space shuttle nominal staging maneuver

An experimental study of the plume impingement heating on the space shuttle booster afterbody resulting from the space shuttle orbiter engine plumes was conducted. The 1/100-scale model tests consisted of one and two orbiter engine firings on a flat plate, a flat plate with a fin, and a cylinder model. The plume impingement heating rates on these surfaces were measured using thin film heat transfer gages. Results indicate the engine simulation is a reasonable approximation to the two engine configuration, but more tests are needed to verify the plume model of the main engine configuration. For impingment, results show models experienced laminar boundary layer convective heating. Therefore, tests at higher Reynolds numbers are needed to determine impingment heating.

Wojciechowski, C. J.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Relating a Jet-Surface Interaction Experiment to a Commercial Supersonic Transport Aircraft Using Numerical Simulations

NASA and industry partners desire to reintroduce commercial supersonic airliners to the air transportation system. There are a number of technical challenges that must be overcome by future commercial supersonic airliners to make them viable solutions in society. NASA is specifically concerned with the challenges of reducing boom during supersonic cruise, maximizing range, and reducing airport community noise to acceptable levels. Concepts for commercial supersonic transports, such as the concept aircraft by Lockheed Martin pictured in Figure 1, place the engine nozzles in close proximity to wing and tail surfaces. However, the effects of noise shielding and noise radiation are not fully understood for installed propulsion systems. A series of acoustic tests were conducted on the NASA Glenn Research Centers Nozzle Acoustic Test Rig (NATR) to address the challenge of reducing airport community noise, which is often dominated by jet noise. To best represent the conceptual aircraft in the acoustic tests, noise measurements were taken of the jet in close proximity of simulated aerodynamic surfaces, not simply of an isolated jet.

nozzle flow↗
NASA NTRS1958

Origin and Prevention of Crash Fires in Turbojet Aircraft

The tendency for the jet engine rotor to continue to rotate after crash presents the probability that crash-spilled combustibles suspended in the air or puddled on the ground at the engine inlet may be sucked into the engine. Studies with jet engines operating on a test stand and full-scale crashes of turbojet-powered airplanes showed that combustibles drawn into the engine in this way ignite explosively within the engine. Experiment showed that the gas flow through the engine is too rapid to permit the ignition of ingested combustibles on the hot metal in contact with the main gas stream. Ignition will occur on those hot surfaces not in the main gas stream. The portion of the engine airflow is diverted for cooling and ventilation to these zones where the gas moves slowly enough for ignition to occur.

Pinkel, I. Irvin↗
NASA NTRS2013

Project Morpheus: Lessons Learned in Lander Technology Development

NASA's Morpheus Project has developed and tested a prototype planetary lander capable of vertical takeoff and landing, that is designed to serve as a testbed for advanced spacecraft technologies. The lander vehicle, propelled by a LOX/Methane engine and sized to carry a 500kg payload to the lunar surface, provides a platform for bringing technologies from the laboratory into an integrated flight system at relatively low cost. Designed, developed, manufactured and operated in-house by engineers at Johnson Space Center, the initial flight test campaign began on-site at JSC less than one year after project start. After two years of testing, including two major upgrade periods, and recovery from a test crash that caused the loss of a vehicle, flight testing will evolve to executing autonomous flights simulating a 500m lunar approach trajectory, hazard avoidance maneuvers, and precision landing, incorporating the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance (ALHAT) sensor suite. These free-flights are conducted at a simulated planetary landscape built at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility. The Morpheus Project represents a departure from recent NASA programs and projects that traditionally require longer development lifecycles and testing at remote, dedicated testing facilities. This paper expands on the project perspective that technologies offer promise, but capabilities offer solutions. It documents the integrated testing campaign, the infrastructure and testing facilities, and the technologies being evaluated in this testbed. The paper also describes the fast pace of the project, rapid prototyping, frequent testing, and lessons learned during this departure from the traditional engineering development process at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Olansen, Jon B.↗
NASA NTRS1978

A computer program to calculate the longitudinal aerodynamic characteristics of upper-surface-blown wing-flap configurations

A user's manual is presented for a computer program in which a vortex-lattice lifting-surface method is used to model the wing and multiple flaps. The engine wake model consists of a series of closely spaced vortex rings with rectangular cross sections. The jet wake is positioned such that the lower boundary of the jet is tangent to the wing and flap upper surfaces. The two potential flow models are used to calculate the wing-flap loading distribution including the influence of the wakes from up to two engines on the semispan. The method is limited to the condition where the flow and geometry of the configurations are symmetric about the vertical plane containing the wing root chord. The results include total configuration forces and moments, individual lifting-surface load distributions, pressure distributions, flap hinge moments, and flow field calculation at arbitrary field points. The use of the program, preparation of input, the output, program listing, and sample cases are described.

Mendenhall, M. R.↗
NASA NTRS1987

The 757 NLF glove flight test results

A major concern in the application of a laminar flow wing design to commercial transports is whether laminar flow can be sustained in the presence of the noise environment due to wing mounted turbofan engines. To investigate this issue, a flight test program was conducted using the Boeing 757 flight research airplane with a portion of the wing modified to obtain natural laminar flow. The flight test had two primary objectives. The first was to measure the noise levels on the upper and lower surface of the wing for a range of flight conditions. The second was to investigate the effect of engine noise on laminar boundary layer transition. The noise field on the wing and transition location on the glove were then measured as a function of the engine power setting at a given flight condition. The transition and noise measurement on the glove show that there is no apparent effect of engine noise on the upper surface transition location. On the lower surface, the transition location moved forward 2 to 3 percent chord. A boundary layer stability analysis to the flight data showed that cross flow disturbances were the dominant cause of transition at most flight conditions.

Runyan, L. Jim↗
NASA NTRS2001

MOLA-Based Landing Site Characterization

The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data provide the basis for site characterization and selection never before possible. The basic MOLA information includes absolute radii, elevation and 1 micrometer albedo with derived datasets including digital image models (DIM's illuminated elevation data), slopes maps and slope statistics and small scale surface roughness maps and statistics. These quantities are useful in downsizing potential sites from descent engineering constraints and landing/roving hazard and mobility assessments. Slope baselines at the few hundred meter level and surface roughness at the 10 meter level are possible. Additionally, the MOLA-derived Mars surface offers the possibility to precisely register and map project other instrument datasets (images, ultraviolet, infrared, radar, etc.) taken at different resolution, viewing and lighting geometry, building multiple layers of an information cube for site characterization and selection. Examples of direct MOLA data, data derived from MOLA and other instruments data registered to MOLA arc given for the Hematite area.

Duxbury, T. C.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Breaking the passivation barrier via d-p orbital optimization for stable hydrogen production and sulfion upgrading

The development of energy-efficient hydrogen production technologies represents a critical pathway toward achieving global carbon neutrality objectives. This work provides fundamental insights into overcoming catalyst passivation challenges in sulfide oxidation reaction (SOR)-coupled hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) systems through precise orbital hybridization engineering. Our theoretical simulations reveal that sulfur-passivated ruthenium surfaces can effectively modulate d-p orbital hybridization, significantly reduce d-electron activity while stabilizing long-chain S 8 species and decreasing intermediate adsorption energies. Furthermore, metal carbides/ruthenium heterostructure (MC/Ru, M = V, Mo, W) was designed to achieve simultaneous optimization of both HER (∆G H* = −0.11 eV) and SOR (∆G RDS = 1.51 eV) via work-function-mediated interfacial electron transfer, which effectively tailors surface electronic states. Guided by theoretical predictions, we successfully synthesized a series of metal carbides/ruthenium/nitrogen-doped carbon catalysts based on a solid-phase reaction and designated as MC/Ru@NC (M = V, Mo, W). The optimized VC/Ru@NC catalyst exhibits exceptional performance in a membrane-free two-electrode system, achieving an ultralow cell voltage of 0.76 V at 200 mA cm −2 with outstanding stability over 1600 h, while maintaining 97.5 % Faradaic efficiency for hydrogen production and 73.8 % sulfur recovery efficiency.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS1975

Photoelectron emission analysis of surface elements of the International Sun Earth Explorer

The photoemission was measured of engineering materials (aluminum; copper, plain; copper, abraded; copper-beryllium; magnesium; silver; In2O3 on silica; reflective coating on silica; teflon; kapton; and Pyre ML) associated with the International Sun Earth Explorer (ISEE) Satellite. The procedures used are described, including the experimental equipment; results of the program, the conclusions reached, and areas for further work are presented. Data regarding the measured yield of the 11 materials whose surface emission was determined is included in the form of plots of photoelectric yield versus incident light wavelength.

Spencer, W. T.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Smart connected worker edge platform for smart manufacturing: Part 2—Implementation and on‐site deployment case study

Abstract In this paper, we describe specific deployments of the Smart Connected Worker (SCW) Edge Platform for Smart Manufacturing through implementation of four instructive real‐world use cases that illustrate the role of people in a Smart Manufacturing paradigm through which affordable, scalable, accessible, and portable (ASAP) information technology (IT) acquires and contextualizes data into information for transmission to operation technologies (OT). For case one, the platform captures the relationships between energy consumption and human workflows for improved energy productivity while workers interact with machines during semiconductor manufacturing. The platform utilizes human cognition to identify anomalous machine behavior for root cause analysis of system faults via neural network (NN) that recognize alarm postures of workers with cameras. For case two, a smart assembly line is demonstrated for state monitoring and fault detection. Machine learning (ML) models are used to recognize system states and identify fault scenarios with human intervention. For case three, the platform monitors human–machine interactions to classify manufacturing machine states for proper operations and energy productivity. Internal energy states of individual or collections of manufacturing equipment are determined via NN based algorithms that disaggregate signals associated with smart metering typically deployed at manufacturing facilities. These methods predict the real time energy profile of each machine from the total energy profile of a manufacturing site. For case four, a software defined sensor system built with scientific workflow engines is demonstrated for contextualizing data from laser surface refraction for characterization, and diagnostics in the processing of additively manufactured titanium alloy.

Donovan, Richard P.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Propagation of Noise Uncertainty Through Virtual Strain Gauge Formulations for 2D Digital Image Correlation

The effect of displacement uncertainty is examined on 2-dimensional strain, calculated using linear surfaces fitted to the displacement field. A classical engineering error propagation method is used to calculate uncertainty in Green-Lagrangian strain calculations. The derived uncertainty is compared to a Monte Carlo simulation and discrepancies under 2% are seen between these two methods. The effect of virtual strain gauge size, displacement uncertainty, and boundaries on the region of interest on the strain uncertainty are considered. Here, an exponential decay relationship is observed between strain uncertainty and virtual strain gauge size, while a linear relationship is seen between strain and displacement uncertainty. For boundaries in the region of interest, strain uncertainty is affected by the reduced number of points available to perform the regression.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Reticular Chemistry for Highly Porous Metal–Organic Frameworks: The Chemistry and Applications

Current global crises related to clean energy and the environment entail the development of materials that are capable of addressing these challenges. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of functional materials assembled from metal-containing nodes and organic ligands via coordination bonds, have been successfully developed for various applications, including catalysis, toxic chemical removal, and gas storage and separation, as a result of their highly tailorable nature and precisely engineered pore structures. In particular, the exceptionally high surface areas and porosities of MOFs are two of their most attractive characteristics and place them among the best porous materials for the storage of clean energy gases, such as hydrogen and methane. Reticular chemistry stands out as a prominent approach to the design of MOFs as this strategy allows for the rational top-down design of frameworks guided by topological nets to afford extended framework structures with precise architectural arrangements at the molecular level. Furthermore, bridging the gap between reticular chemistry design strategies and highly porous MOFs can facilitate the development of next-generation high-performance materials through state-of-the-art chemical design.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

A mechanism for reduced compression in indirectly driven layered capsule implosions

High-yield implosions on the National Ignition Facility rely on maintaining low entropy in the deuterium–tritium fuel, quantified by its adiabat, in order to efficiently couple energy to the hot spot through high compression of the fuel layer. We present very-high-resolution xRAGE simulation results that study the impacts of interfacial mixing and the jetting of materials due to surface defects, defects on internal interfaces, voids, and engineering features on fuel layer compression. Defects and voids are typically neglected in implosion simulations due to their small size and three-dimensional geometry. Our results showed that supersonic jets of material arise through weak spots in the shell at peak implosion velocity that prevent uniform compression of the fuel layer even when they do not introduce contaminant into the hot spot. This occurs despite maintaining low fuel entropy, since the formation of the weak spots involves nonradial displacement of fuel mass. In contrast, simulations show that fuel–ablator mixing due to interfacial instabilities has a much smaller impact on compression. We show that defects on interior interfaces of plastic capsules decrease compression by 15% to 25% and interfacial mixing between the ablator and fuel decreases compression by less than 1% for implosions with plastic or high-density carbon (HDC) ablators. For low adiabat implosions, the impact of jetting seeded by the support tent can also decrease the compression by 25%. We demonstrate that the inclusion of interior defects in simulations can explain the inferred compression in two fielded plastic capsule implosions and that the inclusion of voids, for which available characterization has large uncertainties, in simulations of HDC capsule implosions has a qualitatively consistent impact. This mechanism offers a potential explanation for persistently overestimated fuel compression in design simulations of layered implosions on the National Ignition Facility.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

High-performance strategies for the recent MRSF-TDDFT in GAMESS

Multiple ERI (Electron Repulsion Integral) tensor contractions (METC) with several matrices are ubiquitous in quantum chemistry. In response theories, the contraction operation, rather than ERI computations, can be the major bottleneck, as its computational demands are proportional to the multiplicatively combined contributions of the number of excited states and the kernel pre-factors. Here, this paper presents several high-performance strategies for METC. Optimal approaches involve either the data layout reformations of interim density and Fock matrices, the introduction of intermediate ERI quartet buffer, and loop-reordering optimization for a higher cache hit rate. The combined strategies remarkably improve the performance of the MRSF (mixed reference spin flip)-TDDFT (time-dependent density functional theory) by nearly 300%. The results of this study are not limited to the MRSF-TDDFT method and can be applied to other METC scenarios.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗