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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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This paper describes a VLSI design that permits such networks to be executed in real time as well as the application, misfire detection, that served as a focus for the collaborative effort.
As part of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (EPHTN), the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is leading a project in collaboration with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA/MSFC) called Health and Environment Linked for Information Exchange (HELIX-Atlanta). HELIX-Atlanta's goal is to examine the feasibility of building an integrated electronic health and environmental data network in five counties of metropolitan Atlanta, GA. Under HELIX-Atlanta, pilot projects are being conducted to develop methods to characterize exposure; link health and environmental data; analyze the relationship between health and environmental factors; and communicate findings. There is evidence in the research literature that asthmatic persons are at increased risk of developing asthma exacerbations with exposure to environmental factors, including PM(sub 2.5). Thus, HELIX-Atlanta is focusing on methods for characterizing population exposure to PM(sub 2.5) for the Atlanta metropolitan area that could be used in ongoing surveillance. NASA/MSFC is working with CDC to combine NASA earth science satellite observations related to air quality and environmental monitoring data to model surface estimates of fine particulate matter (PM(sub 2.5)) concentrations in a Geographic Information System (GIS) that can be linked with clinic visits for asthma on the aggregated grid level as well as the individual level at the geographic locations of the patients' residences.
The Object Oriented Modeling and Design seminar is intended for software professionals and students, it covers the concepts and a language-independent graphical notation that can be used to analyze problem requirements, and design a solution to the problem. The seminar discusses the three kinds of object-oriented models class, state, and interaction. The class model represents the static structure of a system, the state model describes the aspects of a system that change over time as well as control behavior and the interaction model describes how objects collaborate to achieve overall results. Existing knowledge of object oriented programming may benefit the learning of modeling and good design. Specific expectations are: Create a class model, Read, recognize, and describe a class model, Describe association and link, Show abstract classes used with multiple inheritance, Explain metadata, reification and constraints, Group classes into a package, Read, recognize, and describe a state model, Explain states and transitions, Read, recognize, and describe interaction model, Explain Use cases and use case relationships, Show concurrency in activity diagram, Object interactions in sequence diagram.
This paper describes a testing methodology undertaken on the Facilities Development and Operations Contract (FDOC) by Lockheed Martin. The methodology was defined with the intent of reducing project schedule time to enable NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) to be able to deliver the Mission Control Center (MCC) 21 project as quickly as possible. 21 represents the 21st century where NASA JSC is updating its control center with new technology and operational concepts in order to support NASA customers wanting to use control center assets to support space vehicle operations. In collaboration with the NASA customer, a new test concept was conceived early during MCC21 project planning with the goal of reducing project delivery time. One enabler that could help reduce delivery time was testing. Within the project, testing was performed by two entities, software development responsible for subsystem testing and system test responsible for system integration testing. The MCC21 project took a deliberate review of testing to determine how it could be performed differently to realize an overall reduction in test time to support the goal of a more rapid project delivery.
Electrified Aircraft Propulsion (EAP) is a growing topic of research with the potential to shape the future of commercial air travel. Here, detailed mathematical models serve an essential role in developing understanding and evaluating different technologies and design concepts. The Advanced Geared Turbofan 30,000 lb f – electrified (AGTF30-e) is an open-source software package developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The AGTF30-e provides a realistic propulsion system model of a conceptual electrified advanced geared turbofan engine suitable for propelling a single-aisle commercial aircraft. Included with the engine model is a controller that provides representative dynamic performance across a full operating envelop. The model is meant to facilitate research studies and promote collaboration. It is envisioned for use in concept exploration studies, technology impact studies, and dynamics and controls studies. The engine model can be run in various modes of operation including boost and power extraction. It also has options for other electrification features and methods for engine shaft and electric machine integration. This paper documents the AGTF30-e and illustrates its use through various simulation scenarios.
Electrified Aircraft Propulsion (EAP) is a growing topic of research with the potential to shape the future of commercial air travel. Here, detailed mathematical models serve an essential role in developing understanding and evaluating different technologies and design concepts. The Advanced Geared Turbofan 30,000 lbf – electrified (AGTF30-e) is an open-source software package developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The AGTF30-e provides a realistic propulsion system model of a conceptual electrified advanced geared turbofan engine suitable for propelling a single-aisle commercial aircraft. Included with the engine model is a controller that provides representative dynamic performance across a full operating envelop. The model is meant to facilitate research studies and promote collaboration. It is envisioned for use in concept exploration studies, technology impact studies, and dynamics and controls studies. The engine model can be run in various modes of operation including boost and power extraction. It also has options for other electrification features and methods for engine shaft and electric machine integration. This paper documents the AGTF30-e and illustrates its use through various simulation scenarios.
Surface operations at airports in the US are based on tactical operations, where departure aircraft primarily queue up and wait at the departure runways. NASA's Spot And Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) tool was developed to address these inefficiencies through Air Traffic Control Tower advisories. The SARDA system is being updated to include collaborative gate hold, either tactically or strategically. This paper presents the results of the human-in-the-loop evaluation of the tactical gate hold version of SARDA in a 360 degree simulated tower setting. The simulations were conducted for the east side of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. The new system provides gate hold, ground controller and local controller advisories based on a single scheduler. Simulations were conducted with SARDA on and off, the off case reflecting current day operations with no gate hold. Scenarios based on medium (1.2x current levels) and heavy (1.5x current levels) traffic were explored. Data collected from the simulation was analyzed for runway usage, delay for departures and arrivals, and fuel consumption. Further, Traffic Management Initiatives were introduced for a subset of the aircraft. Results indicated that runway usage did not change with the use of SARDA, i.e., there was no loss in runway throughput as compared to baseline. Taxiing delay was significantly reduced with the use of advisory by 45% in medium scenarios and 60% in heavy. Arrival delay was unaffected by the use of advisory. Total fuel consumption was also reduced by 23% in medium traffic and 33% in heavy. TMI compliance appeared unaffected by the advisory
Ground systems operations at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Payload Operations and Integration Function (POIF) is increasing, via the High Operations Tempo (HOT) initiative, its ability to support more science activities with a fourth crew member on the International Space Station (ISS). The Flight Control Team's need to support this increased crew presence mandated the need for a series of software tools to better handle the increasing pace of payload science operations. The overall need was clear from the outset, but the full scope and user experience for each tool, were not as well understood, so establishing a fixed set of initial requirements was not feasible. An Agile Software Development (ASD) paradigm takes advantage of uncertainty, and plans for it, so it was deemed the most appropriate approach to create room for exploring novel concepts, and to mount a rapid and flexible response to inevitiably changing requirements. It facilitated the need for unprecedented collaboration between the Product Team (i.e. users from the Flight Control Team) and the Development Team (i.e. POIC systems engineers, developers, testers). This is a process shift in the development, test, and release of software from one that is prescriptive to one that is adaptive, which is necessary for these tools to have longevity. The application of ASD to the product development lifecycle permitted the timely incorporation of customer feedback, and, allowed for continuous quality improvements. This resulted in a suite of tools that are efficient, user-friendly, and enable POIF ground systems to support the increasing pace of payload science operations. ASD is not as much a set of prescriptive processes as it is a shift in mindset; one that moves from planning against change, to planning for change, thereby iteratively growing software towards user-defined value.
Surface operations at airports in the US are based on tactical operations, where departure aircraft primarily queue up and wait at the departure runways. NASAs Spot And Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) tool was developed to address these inefficiencies through Air Traffic Control Tower advisories. The SARDA system is being updated to include collaborative gate hold, either tactically or strategically. This paper presents the results of the human-in-the-loop evaluation of the tactical gate hold version of SARDA in a 360 degree simulated tower setting. The simulations were conducted for the east side of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The new system provides gate hold, ground controller and local controller advisories based on a single scheduler. Simulations were conducted with SARDA on and off, the off case reflecting current day operations with no gate hold. Scenarios based on medium (1.2x current levels) and heavy (1.5x current levels) traffic were explored. Data collected from the simulation was analyzed for runway usage, delay for departures and arrivals, and fuel consumption. Further, Traffic Management Initiatives were introduced for a subset of the aircraft. Results indicated that runway usage did not change with the use of SARDA, i.e., there was no loss in runway throughput as compared to baseline. Taxiing delay was significantly reduced with the use of advisory by 45 in medium scenarios and 60 in heavy. Arrival delay was unaffected by the use of advisory. Total fuel consumption was also reduced by 23 in medium traffic and 33 in heavy. TMI compliance appeared unaffected by the advisory.
Objectives and research challenges of this effort include: 1. Need to establish Human Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex protein crystals; 2. Need to test value of microgravity for improving crystal quality of Human Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex protein crystals; 3. Need to improve flight hardware in order to control and understand the effects of microgravity on crystallization of Human Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex proteins; 4. Need to integrate sets of national collaborations with the restricted and specific requirements of flight experiments; 5. Need to establish a highly controlled experiment in microgravity with a rigor not yet obtained; 6. Need to communicate both the rigor of microgravity experiments and the scientific value of results obtained from microgravity experiments to the national community; and 7. Need to advance the understanding of Human Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex structures so that scientific and commercial advance is identified for these proteins.
In order to respond to the increasing demand on limited airspace system resources, a number of applications of information technology have been proposed, or are under investigation, to improve the efficiency, capacity and reliability of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) operations. Much of the attention in advanced ATM technology has focused on advanced automation systems or decision aiding systems to improve the performance of individual Pilots or Controllers. However, the most significant overall potential for information technology appears to he in increasing the shared information between human agents such as Pilots, Controllers or between interacting Controllers or traffic flow managers. Examples of proposed shared information systems in the US include; Controller Pilot Databank Communication (CPDLC), Traffic Management Advisor (TMA); Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS); Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) and NAS Level Common Information Exchange. Air Traffic Management is fundamentally a human centered process consisting of the negotiation, execution and monitoring of contracts between human agents for the allocation of limited airspace, runway and airport surface resources. The decision processes within ATM tend to be Semistructured. Many of the routine elements in ATM decision making on the part of the Controllers or Pilots are well Structured and can be represented by well defined rules or procedures. However in disrupted conditions, the ATM decision processes are often Unstructured and cannot be reduced to a set of discrete rules. As a consequence, the ability to automate ATM processes will be limited and ATM will continue to be a human centric process where the responsibility and the authority for the negotiation will continue to rest with human Controllers and Pilots. The use of information technology to support the human decision process will therefore be an important aspect of ATM modernization. The premise of many of the proposed shared information systems is that the performance of ATM operations will improve with an increase in Shared Situation Awareness between agents (Pilots, Controller, Dispatchers). This will allow better informed control decisions and an improved ability to negotiate between agents. A common information basis may reduce communication load and may increase the level of collaboration in the decision process. In general, information sharing is expected to have advantages for all agents within the system. However there are important questions which remain to be,addressed. For example: What shared information is most important for developing effective Shared Situation Awareness? Are there issues of information saturation? Does information parity create ambiguity in control authority? Will information sharing induce undesirable or unstable gaming behavior between agents? This paper will explore the effect of current and proposed information sharing between different ATM agents. The paper will primarily concentrate on bilateral tactical interactions between specific agents (Pilot/Controller; Controller/Controller; Pilot/Dispatcher; Controller/Dispatcher) however it will also briefly discuss multilateral interaction and more strategic interactions.
We use the term "Grid" to refer to distributed, high performance computing and data handling infrastructure that incorporates geographically and organizationally dispersed, heterogeneous resources that are persistent and supported. This infrastructure includes: (1) Tools for constructing collaborative, application oriented Problem Solving Environments / Frameworks (the primary user interfaces for Grids); (2) Programming environments, tools, and services providing various approaches for building applications that use aggregated computing and storage resources, and federated data sources; (3) Comprehensive and consistent set of location independent tools and services for accessing and managing dynamic collections of widely distributed resources: heterogeneous computing systems, storage systems, real-time data sources and instruments, human collaborators, and communications systems; (4) Operational infrastructure including management tools for distributed systems and distributed resources, user services, accounting and auditing, strong and location independent user authentication and authorization, and overall system security services The vision for NASA's Information Power Grid - a computing and data Grid - is that it will provide significant new capabilities to scientists and engineers by facilitating routine construction of information based problem solving environments / frameworks. Such Grids will knit together widely distributed computing, data, instrument, and human resources into just-in-time systems that can address complex and large-scale computing and data analysis problems. Examples of these problems include: (1) Coupled, multidisciplinary simulations too large for single systems (e.g., multi-component NPSS turbomachine simulation); (2) Use of widely distributed, federated data archives (e.g., simultaneous access to metrological, topological, aircraft performance, and flight path scheduling databases supporting a National Air Space Simulation systems}; (3) Coupling large-scale computing and data systems to scientific and engineering instruments (e.g., realtime interaction with experiments through real-time data analysis and interpretation presented to the experimentalist in ways that allow direct interaction with the experiment (instead of just with instrument control); (5) Highly interactive, augmented reality and virtual reality remote collaborations (e.g., Ames / Boeing Remote Help Desk providing field maintenance use of coupled video and NDI to a remote, on-line airframe structures expert who uses this data to index into detailed design databases, and returns 3D internal aircraft geometry to the field); (5) Single computational problems too large for any single system (e.g. the rotocraft reference calculation). Grids also have the potential to provide pools of resources that could be called on in extraordinary / rapid response situations (such as disaster response) because they can provide common interfaces and access mechanisms, standardized management, and uniform user authentication and authorization, for large collections of distributed resources (whether or not they normally function in concert). IPG development and deployment is addressing requirements obtained by analyzing a number of different application areas, in particular from the NASA Aero-Space Technology Enterprise. This analysis has focussed primarily on two types of users: the scientist / design engineer whose primary interest is problem solving (e.g. determining wing aerodynamic characteristics in many different operating environments), and whose primary interface to IPG will be through various sorts of problem solving frameworks. The second type of user is the tool designer: the computational scientists who convert physics and mathematics into code that can simulate the physical world. These are the two primary users of IPG, and they have rather different requirements. The results of the analysis of the needs of these two types of users provides a broad set of requirements that gives rise to a general set of required capabilities. The IPG project is intended to address all of these requirements. In some cases the required computing technology exists, and in some cases it must be researched and developed. The project is using available technology to provide a prototype set of capabilities in a persistent distributed computing testbed. Beyond this, there are required capabilities that are not immediately available, and whose development spans the range from near-term engineering development (one to two years) to much longer term R&D (three to six years). Additional information is contained in the original.
The communication of this method is being used by NASA in the ongoing collaborations with groups interested in the X-56A flight test program. Model generation for body freedom flutter Addressing issues in: State Consistency, Low frequency dynamics, Unsteady aerodynamics. Applied approach to X-56A MUTT: Comparing to flight test data.
The control of manipulators is seen here as a two-level process. A method is described to convert information available at the programming level into trajectories suitable to be tracked by a servo control system. The goal of the servo is to absorb the unmodeled dynamics. Tracking accuracy will depend mainly on the acceleration demand of the nominal trajectory setpoint, in particular, the actuator output demand must remain bounded. Our scheme adaptively takes into consideration at the trajectory computation level the dynamics of the underlying system, dynamically available information acquired through sensors, various types of constraints, such as path accuracy, and manipulator optimization. This scheme is meant to be implemented on-line, to drive mechanical systems such as manipulators. It is developed in the context of a multi-manipulator programming and control environment for space applications developed as part of a collaborative effort between McGill University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA's ScienceDesk Project at the Ames Research Center is responsible for scientific knowledge management which includes ensuring the capture, preservation, and traceability of scientific knowledge. Other responsibilities include: 1) Maintaining uniform information access which is achieved through intelligent indexing and visualization, 2) Collaborating both asynchronous and synchronous science teamwork, 3) Monitoring and controlling semi-autonomous remote experimentation.
This report summarizes a three-year collaborative effort between researchers at UMPQUA Research Company (URC) and the Chemical Engineering Department at Oregon State University (OSU). The Magnetically Assisted Gasification (MAG) concept was originally conceived as a microgravity and hypogravity compatible means for the decomposition of solid waste materials generated aboard spacecraft, lunar and planetary habitations, and for the recovery of potentially valuable resources. While a number of methods such as supercritical water oxidation (SCW0), fluidized bed incineration, pyrolysis , composting and related biological processes have been demonstrated for the decomposition of solid wastes, none of these methods are particularly well- suited for employment under microgravity or hypogravity conditions. For example, fluidized bed incineration relies upon a balance between drag forces which the flowing gas stream exerts upon the fluidization particles and the opposing force of gravity. In the absence of gravity, conventional fluidization cannot take place. Hypogravity operation can also be problematic for conventional fluidized bed reactors, because the various factors which govern fluidization phenomena do not all scale linearly with gravity. For this reason it may be difficult to design and test fluidized bed reactors in lg, which are intended to operate under different gravitational conditions. However, fluidization can be achieved in microgravity (and hypogravity) if a suitable replacement force to counteract the forces between fluid and particles can be found. Possible alternatives include: centripetal force, electric fields, or magnetic fields. Of these, magnetic forces created by the action of magnetic fields and magnetic field gradients upon ferromagnetic media offer the most practical approach. The goal of this URC-OSU collaborative effort was to develop magnetic hardware and methods to control the degree of fluidization (or conversely consolidation) of granular ferromagnetic media and to employ these innovations in sequential filtration and fluidized bed processes for the segregation and decomposition of solid waste materials, and for the concentration and collection of inorganic residue (ash). This required the development of numerous enabling technologies and tools.
Are those pesky mosquitoes getting more entertainment out of your family picnic than you are? If the answer is yes, then it is time to reclaim your backyard with assistance from an unlikely partner. Nowadays, NASA is developing tools to track and predict the spread of the West Nile Virus on a global scale, but several years ago, the Space Agency carved out some time to collaborate with an outdoor products manufacturer in order to help control mosquito populations on a local level. The technology resulting from this union leveraged a space-age heat blanket to attract mosquitoes, which would then be eliminated without the use of harmful pesticides or chemicals. technical assistance from NASA and is an environmentally safe way to reduce the mosquito population.
To date there has been much discussion about the value of Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) for space missions. Claims of various benefits, based on paper analysis, are good; however a benefits statement with empirical evidence to support is even better. This paper presents potential and actual advantages of using DTN for Earth science missions based on results from multiple demonstrations, conducted by the Communications, Standards, and Technology Laboratory (CSTL) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Demonstrations included two flight demonstrations using the Earth Observing Mission 1 (EO-1) and the Near Earth Network (NEN), a ground based demonstration over satellite links to the Internet Router in Space (IRIS) payload on Intelsat-14, and others using the NASA Tracking Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). Real and potential findings include increased flexibility and efficiency in science campaigns, reduced latency in a collaborative science scenario, and improved scientist-instrument communication and control.