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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 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1984

Flight test results for the Digital Integrated Automatic Landing Systems (DIALS): A modern control full-state feedback design

The Digital Integrated Automatic Landing System (DIALS) is discussed. The DIALS is a modern control theory design performing all the maneuver modes associated with current autoland systems: localizer capture and track, glideslope capture and track, decrab, and flare. The DIALS is an integrated full-state feedback system which was designed using direct-digital methods. The DIALS uses standard aircraft sensors and the digital Microwave Landing System (MLS) signals as measurements. It consists of separately designed longitudinal and lateral channels although some cross-coupling variables are fed between channels for improved state estimates and trajectory commands. The DIALS was implemented within the 16-bit fixed-point flight computers of the ATOPS research aircraft, a small twin jet commercial transport outfitted with a second research cockpit and a fly-by-wire system. The DIALS became the first modern control theory design to be successfully flight tested on a commercial-type aircraft. Flight tests were conducted in late 1981 using a wide coverage MLS on Runway 22 at Wallops Flight Center. All the modes were exercised including the capture and track of steep glidescopes up to 5 degrees.

Hueschen, R. M.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Unsteady laminar boundary-layer calculations on oscillating configurations including backflow. Part 2: Airfoil in high-amplitude pitching motion. Dynamic stall

A previously developed finite-difference procedure for calculating unsteady, incompressible, laminar boundary layers on an oscillating flat plate is applied to a wing section undergoing high-amplitude pitching oscillations about various mean incidences. To start the entire boundary-layer calculation, appropriate initial conditions and outer boundary conditions are specified, using a stagnation-point fixed frame of reference. The breakdown of the numerical calculation procedure in the x,t-domain is interpreted to coincide with unsteady separation. Details of the boundary-layer behavior in the vicinity of separation are investigated, and a close analogy between the present results and those for a three-dimensional steady separation is found.

Geissler, W.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Centimeter-level relative positioning with GPS

Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) was designed primarily for real-time navigation and positioning applications at the decameter level of accuracy, the GPS has been used to determine all three relative position coordinates of fixed points with centimeter-level accuracy, when the distance between the points has been of the order of 10 km. For intersite distances less than 1 km the uncertainty is about 3 mm, and for distances greater than 10 km the uncertainty in each coordinate is about 1-2 ppm of the distance. These results have been obtained with commercially available production equipment (Macrometer model V-1000 interferometric surveyors) operated by regular surveying personnel under real field conditions, not just by university scientists under ideal laboratory conditions. Techniques that promise to reduce the uncertainty to 0.1 ppm for distances greater than 10 km are being developed.

Counselman, C. C., III↗
NASA NTRS1982

Numerical analysis of Weyl's method for integrating boundary layer equations

A fast method for accurate numerical integration of Blasius equation is proposed. It is based on the limit interchange in Weyl's fixed point method formulated as an iterated limit process. Each inner limit represents convergence to a discrete solution. It is shown that the error in a discrete solution admits asymptotic expansion in even powers of step size. An extrapolation process is set up to operate on a sequence of discrete solutions to reach the outer limit. Finally, this method is extended to related boundary layer equations.

Najfeld, I.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Flight tests of the Digital Integrated Automatic Landing System (DIALS)

The design, development, implementation and flight tests of the Digital Integrated Automatic Landing System (DIALS) are discussed. The system was implemented and flight tested on the Transport Systems Research Vehicle (TSRV), a Boeing 737-100. The design uses modern optimal control methods. The direct digital design obtained uses a 10 Hz rate for the sampling of sensors and the control commands. The basic structure of the control law consists of a steady state Kalman filter followed by a control gain matrix. The sensor information used includes Microwave Landing System (MLS) position, attitude, calibrated airspeed, and body accelerations. The phases of the final approach considered are localized and steep glideslope capture (which may be performed simultaneously or independently), localizer and glideslope track, crab/decrab, and flare to touchdown. The system can capture, track, and flare from conventional, as well as steep, glideslopes ranging from 2.5 deg to 5.5 deg. All of the modes of the control law including the Kalman filters were implemented on the TSRV flight computers which use fixed point arithmetic with 16 bit words. The implementation considerations are described as well as an analysis of the flight test results.

Halyo, N.↗
NASA NTRS1984

GPS-based certification for the microwave landing system

An MLS (microwave landing system) certification system based on the Global Positioning System (GPS) is described. To determine the position history of the flight inspection aircraft during runway approach, signals from the GPS satellites, together with on-board radar altimetry, are used. It is shown that the aircraft position relative to a fixed point on the runway at threshold can be determined to about 30 cm vertically and 1 m horizontally. A requirement of the system is that the GPS receivers be placed on each flight inspection aircraft and at selected ground sites. The effects of different error sources on the determination of aircraft instantaneous position and its dynamics are analyzed.

Thornton, C. L.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Accuracy of wind measurements using an airborne Doppler lidar

Simulated wind fields and lidar data are used to evaluate two sources of airborne wind measurement error. The system is sensitive to ground speed and track angle errors, with accuracy required of the angle to within 0.2 degrees and of the speed to within 1 knot, if the recovered wind field is to be within five percent of the correct direction and 10 percent of the correct speed. It is found that errors in recovered wind speed and direction are dependent on wind direction relative to the flight path. Recovery of accurate wind fields from nonsimultaneous sampling errors requires that the lidar data be displaced to account for advection so that the intersections are defined by air parcels rather than fixed points in space.

Carroll, J. J.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Analysis of implicit local linearization techniques for upwind and TVD algorithms

An attempt is made to investigate local time linearization techniques for implicit flux-difference splitting and flux-vector splitting schemes in the simplest settings (i.e., first-order spatial schemes and one-dimensional Euler flows). It is noted that first-order spatial schemes provide the simplest examples of schemes which are collective extensions of scalar TVD schemes. Simple analytical results concerning the local linearizations are highlighted and subsequently verified using a numerical fixed-point analysis on selected problems. It is noted that while primary emphasis is on asymptotic behavior, many of the results have implications for time-accurate calculations as well.

Barth, Timothy J.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Sinusoidal transform coding

It has been shown that an analysis/synthesis system based on a sinusoidal representation of speech leads to synthetic speech that is essentially perceptually indistinguishable from the original. Strategies for coding the amplitudes, frequencies and phases of the sine waves have been developed that have led to a multirate coder operating at rates from 2400 to 9600 bps. The encoded speech is highly intelligible at all rates with a uniformly improving quality as the data rate is increased. A real-time fixed-point implementation has been developed using two ADSP2100 DSP chips. The methods used for coding and quantizing the sine-wave parameters for operation at the various frame rates are described.

Mcaulay, Robert J.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Controlling basins of attraction in a neural network-based telemetry monitor

The size of the basins of attraction around fixed points in recurrent neural nets (NNs) can be modified by a training process. Controlling these attractive regions by presenting training data with various amount of noise added to the prototype signal vectors is discussed. Application of this technique to signal processing results in a classification system whose sensitivity can be controlled. This new technique is applied to the classification of temporal sequences in telemetry data.

Bell, Benjamin↗
NASA NTRS1987

A learning controller for nonrepetitive robotic operation

A practical learning control system is described which is applicable to complex robotic and telerobotic systems involving multiple feedback sensors and multiple command variables. In the controller, the learning algorithm is used to learn to reproduce the nonlinear relationship between the sensor outputs and the system command variables over particular regions of the system state space, rather than learning the actuator commands required to perform a specific task. The learned information is used to predict the command signals required to produce desired changes in the sensor outputs. The desired sensor output changes may result from automatic trajectory planning or may be derived from interactive input from a human operator. The learning controller requires no a priori knowledge of the relationships between the sensor outputs and the command variables. The algorithm is well suited for real time implementation, requiring only fixed point addition and logical operations. The results of learning experiments using a General Electric P-5 manipulator interfaced to a VAX-11/730 computer are presented. These experiments involved interactive operator control, via joysticks, of the position and orientation of an object in the field of view of a video camera mounted on the end of the robot arm.

Miller, W. T., III↗
NASA NTRS1988

Iterates of maps with symmetry

Fixed-point bifurcation, period doubling, and Hopf bifurcation (HB) for iterates of equivariant mappings are investigated analytically, with a focus on HB in the presence of symmetry. An algebraic formulation for the hypotheses of the theorem of Ruelle (1973) is derived, and the case of standing waves in a system of ordinary differential equations with O(2) symmetry is considered in detail. In this case, it is shown that HB can lead directly to motion on an invariant 3-torus, with an unexpected third frequency due to drift of standing waves along the torus.

Chossat, Pascal↗
NASA NTRS1988

Local flow structures defined by kinematic events in isotropic turbulence

The spatial structure of turbulent motion in incompressible isotropic turbulence is investigated using a conditional average in which the conditional event specifies the local deformation tensor in addition to the local velocity vector. This average gives the best estimate of the flow field around a fixed point x given the kinematic state at x. Estimates are calculated for various kinematic states in isotropic turbulence, including pure translation, pure shear, plane strain, axisymmetric strain, and pure rotation. It is demonstrated that the large-scale motion is dominated by a vortex ring structure associated with the translational component, except at critical points of the velocity vector field.

Adrian, R. J.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Adaptive clutter rejection filters for airborne Doppler weather radar applied to the detection of low altitude windshear

An optimum adaptive clutter rejection filter for use with airborne Doppler weather radar is presented. The radar system is being designed to operate at low-altitudes for the detection of windshear in an airport terminal area where ground clutter returns may mask the weather return. The coefficients of the adaptive clutter rejection filter are obtained using a complex form of a square root normalized recursive least squares lattice estimation algorithm which models the clutter return data as an autoregressive process. The normalized lattice structure implementation of the adaptive modeling process for determining the filter coefficients assures that the resulting coefficients will yield a stable filter and offers possible fixed point implementation. A 10th order FIR clutter rejection filter indexed by geographical location is designed through autoregressive modeling of simulated clutter data. Filtered data, containing simulated dry microburst and clutter return, are analyzed using pulse-pair estimation techniques. To measure the ability of the clutter rejection filters to remove the clutter, results are compared to pulse-pair estimates of windspeed within a simulated dry microburst without clutter. In the filter evaluation process, post-filtered pulse-pair width estimates and power levels are also used to measure the effectiveness of the filters. The results support the use of an adaptive clutter rejection filter for reducing the clutter induced bias in pulse-pair estimates of windspeed.

Keel, Byron M.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Absence of first-order unbinding transitions of fluid and polymerized membranes

Unbinding transitions of fluid and polymerized membranes are studied by renormalization-group (RG) methods. Two different RG schemes are used and found to give rather consistent results. The fixed-point structure of both RG's exhibits a complex behavior as a function of the decay exponent tau for the fluctuation-induced interaction of the membranes. For tau greater than tau(S2) interacting membranes can undergo first-order transitions even in the strong-fluctuation regime. These estimates for tau(S2) imply, however, that both fluid and polymerized membranes unbind in a continuous way in the absence of lateral tension.

Grotehans, Stefan↗
NASA NTRS1991

Turbulent boundary layer separation over a rearward facing ramp and its control through mechanical excitation

A vane oscillating about a fixed point at the inlet to a two-dimensional 20 degree rearward facing ramp has proven effective in delaying the separation of a turbulent boundary layer. Measurements of the ramp surface static pressure coefficient obtained under the condition of vane oscillation and constant inlet velocity revealed that two different effects occurred with surface distance along the ramp. In the vicinity of the oscillating vane, the pressure coefficients varied as a negative function of the vane's trailing edge rms velocity; the independent variable on which the rms velocity depends are the vane's oscillation frequency and its displacement amplitude. From a point downstream of the vane to the exit of the ramp; however, the pressure coefficient varied as a more complex function of the two independent variables. That is, it was found to vary as a function of the vane's oscillation frequency throughout the entire range of frequencies covered during the test, but over only a limited range of the trailing edge displacement amplitudes covered. More specifically, the value of the pressure coefficient was independent of increases in the vane's displacement amplitude above approximately 35 inner wall units of the boundary layer. Below this specific amplitude it varied as a function of the vane's trailing edge rms velocity. This height is close to the upper limit of the buffer layer. A parametric study was made to determine the variation of the maximum static pressure recovery as a function of the vane's oscillation frequency, for several ramp inlet velocities and a constant displacement amplitude of the vane's trailing edge. The results indicate that the phenomenon producing the optimum delay of separation may be Strouhal number dependent. Corona anemometer measurements obtained in the inner wall regions of the boundary layer for the excited case reveal a large range of unsteadiness in the local velocities. These measurements imply the existence of inflections in the profiles, which provide a mechanism for resulting inviscid flow instabilities to produce turbulence in the near wall region, thereby delaying separation of the boundary layer.

Mckinzie, Daniel J., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Efficient numerical simulation of electron states in quantum wires

A new algorithm is presented for the numerical simulation of electrons in a quantum wire as described by a two-dimensional eigenvalue problem for Schroedinger's equation coupled with Poisson's equation. Initially, the algorithm employs an underrelaxed fixed point iteration to generate an approximation which is reasonably close to the solution. Subsequently, this approximate solution is employed as an initial guess for a Jacobian-free implementation of an approximate Newton method. In this manner the nonlinearity in the model is dealt with effectively. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated in a set of numerical experiments which study the electron states on the cross section of a quantum wire structure based on III-V semiconductors at 4.2 and 77 K.

Kerkhoven, Thomas↗
NASA NTRS1991

Turbulent boundary layer separation over a rearward facing ramp and its control through mechanical excitation

A vane which oscillates about a fixed point at the inlet to a two-dimensional, 20-deg rearward-facing ramp has been noted to effectively delay the separation of a turbulent boundary layer. A parametric study has been conducted to determine the variation of the maximum values of the static pressure recovery, measured close to the ramp exit as a function of the oscillation frequency of the vane. The resulting curves show a peak value in the maximum static pressure recovery as a function of the vane's oscillation frequency. For the excited cases, corona anemometer measurements in the inner wall regions of the boundary layer along the surface of the ramp show a large range of unsteadiness in the local velocities. Finally, a qualitative explanation of the phenomena of delay of separation is discussed which appears to be supported by the surface static pressure and flow field measurements obtained.

Mckinzie, Daniel J., Jr.↗