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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lessons Learned from Large-Scale Aerospace Structural Testing

Large-scale testing of aerospace structures is frequently the final step in a development project to validate the structural performance, and that typically involves a large cost and time investment. In order to ensure that the testing provides the required data, avoiding errors that can result in an unsuccessful test and failure to meet objectives is critical. Presented herein are five lessons learned to provide insight to those conducting tests in order to help them avoid known pitfalls that may result in an unsuccessful test. Five subject large-scale tests are described, and include two composite wing tests, a composite hybrid-wing body center section test, a full-scale 27.5-ft diameter metallic barrel test, and an 8-ft diameter metallic barrel test. Problems identified during the testing and mitigation approaches to solve the problems are presented, then the lessons learned are summarized.

Lessons Learned↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lessons Learned from Large-Scale Aerospace Structural Testing

Large-scale testing of aerospace structures is frequently the final step in a development project to validate the structural performance, and that typically involves a large cost and time investment. In order to ensure that the testing provides the required data, avoiding errors that can result in an unsuccessful test and failure to meet objectives is critical. Presented herein are five lessons learned to provide insight to those conducting tests in order to help them avoid known pitfalls that may result in an unsuccessful test. Five subject large-scale tests are described, and include two composite wing tests, a composite hybrid-wing body center section test, a full-scale 27.5-ft diameter metallic barrel test, and an 8-ft diameter metallic barrel test. Problems identified during the testing and mitigation approaches to solve the problems are presented, then the lessons learned are summarized.

Lessons Learned↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

FEA-Based Failure Analysis of Post-Buckled Composite Multi-Hat Stiffened Panel Under Static Compression

The aerospace industry uses composite multi-hat stiffened panels for skins because of their high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios. However, laminated composites with initial flaws are susceptible to delamination under buckling loads. The goal is to ensure damage initiation occurs past the buckled state, only stable damage progression at loads below the ultimate compressive load, and debonding failure past the ultimate compressive load. This approach reduces weight and addresses a potential design review for future aircraft repairs. The need exists to better understand damage initiation and growth mechanisms in composite structures while assisting in the design, analysis, and sustainment methods. Teflon inserts simulate damage defects during manufacturing, while barely visible impact helps capture human error during manufacturing. This work shows the interaction between the skin-stringer and ply-ply separations at the post-buckled state for both defect events using Abaqus Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT). The initial configuration for the Teflon case was to leave the Teflon region unbonded, and the initial impact damage region approximation came from the experimental data and was considered the initial configuration. When compared against the experimental data produced through the NASA Advanced Composites Project (ACP), the present model captured damage transition from skin-hat to ply1-ply2. The model validations were within ~5% of the experimental data.

composite↗
NASA NTRS1971

An Evaluation of Current NASTRAN Discrete Element Models for Monocoque and Semimonocoque Structures

The current discrete element analysis models in NASTRAN, Levels 8. 1.0 and 11. 1. 0, are evaluated for semi-rnonocoque and monocoque structures. Comparative results are presented with the FORMAT-I11 general-purpose code for a swept wing statics analysis and a Skylab substructure vibration analysis. Good agreement between Level i I. 1.0 and FORMAT-111 is demonstrated; however, a major error in Level 8. 1.0 was discovered on the Skylab vibration problem. The computational performance of NASTRAN was superior to FORMAT, but the vibration rigid format was found to have several inefficiencies. Comparative results are also presented between Level 11. 1. 0 and STACUSS, SLADE, BOND, UNIVALVE, and another special-purpose code. Results for two of the structures analyzed, a cylindrical shell and an elliptic plate, indicate curved discrete elements are significantly more accurate than the plate elements in NASTRAN for the same number of degrees of freedom.

Edward L. Stanton↗
NASA NTRS1994

First Order Reliability Application and Verification Methods for Semistatic Structures

Escalating risks of aerostructures stimulated by increasing size, complexity, and cost should no longer be ignored by conventional deterministic safety design methods. The deterministic pass-fail concept is incompatible with probability and risk assessments, its stress audits are shown to be arbitrary and incomplete, and it compromises high strength materials performance. A reliability method is proposed which combines first order reliability principles with deterministic design variables and conventional test technique to surmount current deterministic stress design and audit deficiencies. Accumulative and propagation design uncertainty errors are defined and appropriately implemented into the classical safety index expression. The application is reduced to solving for a factor that satisfies the specified reliability and compensates for uncertainty errors, and then using this factor as, and instead of, the conventional safety factor in stress analyses. The resulting method is consistent with current analytical skills and verification practices, the culture of most designers, and with the pace of semistatic structural designs.

Verderaime, Vincent↗
NASA NTRS2012

Structural Verification of the First Orbital Wonder of the World - The Structural Testing and Analysis of the International Space Station (ISS)

The International Space Station (ISS) can be considered one of the structural engineering wonders of the world. On par with the World Trade Center, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Pyramids, the Petronas towers and the Burj Khalifa skyscraper of Dubai, the ambition and scope of the ISS structural design, verification and assembly effort is a truly global success story. With its on-orbit life projected to be from its beginning in 1998 to the year 2020 (and perhaps beyond), all of those who participated in its development can consider themselves part of an historic engineering achievement representing all of humanity. The structural design and verification of the ISS could be the subject of many scholarly papers. Several papers have been written on the structural dynamic characterization of the ISS once it was assembled on-orbit [1], but the ground-based activities required to assure structural integrity and structural life of the individual elements from delivery to orbit through assembly and planned on-orbit operations have never been totally summarized. This paper is intended to give the reader an overview of some of the key decisions made during the structural verification planning for the elements of the U.S. On-Orbit Segment (USOS) as well as to summarize the many structural tests and structural analyses that were performed on its major elements. An effort is made for this paper to be summarily comprehensive, but as with all knowledge capture efforts of this kind, there are bound to be errors of omission. Should the reader discover any of these, please feel free to contact the principal author. The ISS (Figure 1) is composed of pre-integrated truss segments and pressurized elements supplied by NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (RSA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Each of these elements was delivered to orbit by a launch vehicle and connected to one another either robotically or autonomously. The primary structure of each element was assembled and verified by teams of responsible structural engineers within and among their respective agencies and agency contractors.

Zipay, John J.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Maximum likelihood techniques applied to quasi-elastic light scattering

There is a necessity of having an automatic procedure for reliable estimation of the quality of the measurement of particle size from QELS (Quasi-Elastic Light Scattering). Getting the measurement itself, before any error estimates can be made, is a problem because it is obtained by a very indirect measurement of a signal derived from the motion of particles in the system and requires the solution of an inverse problem. The eigenvalue structure of the transform that generates the signal is such that an arbitrarily small amount of noise can obliterate parts of any practical inversion spectrum. This project uses the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) as a framework to generate a theory and a functioning set of software to oversee the measurement process and extract the particle size information, while at the same time providing error estimates for those measurements. The theory involved verifying a correct form of the covariance matrix for the noise on the measurement and then estimating particle size parameters using a modified histogram approach.

Edwards, Robert V.↗
NASA NTRS1972

On the elastic properties of fiber composite laminates with statistically dispersed ply orientations

Structural application of advanced composite filamentary materials requires lamination of the basic orthotropic plies into angle-ply laminates. The resulting elastic and strength properties depend on the pattern of orientation and are influenced by inevitable errors and inaccuracy in placement of the angle plies. Reviewed is the effect on elastic properties of orientation dispersion. The conventional constitutive relations are recast in a homologous form to account for orientation dispersion by addition of a single parameter. Graphical results are presented to show the behavior of the most important advanced composite materials. The results are directly useful for estimating effects of manufacturing inaccuracy and for design of partially oriented reinforced structures.

Robinson, E. Y.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Adaptive grid methods for RLV environment assessment and nozzle analysis

Rapid access to highly accurate data about complex configurations is needed for multi-disciplinary optimization and design. In order to efficiently meet these requirements a closer coupling between the analysis algorithms and the discretization process is needed. In some cases, such as free surface, temporally varying geometries, and fluid structure interaction, the need is unavoidable. In other cases the need is to rapidly generate and modify high quality grids. Techniques such as unstructured and/or solution-adaptive methods can be used to speed the grid generation process and to automatically cluster mesh points in regions of interest. Global features of the flow can be significantly affected by isolated regions of inadequately resolved flow. These regions may not exhibit high gradients and can be difficult to detect. Thus excessive resolution in certain regions does not necessarily increase the accuracy of the overall solution. Several approaches have been employed for both structured and unstructured grid adaption. The most widely used involve grid point redistribution, local grid point enrichment/derefinement or local modification of the actual flow solver. However, the success of any one of these methods ultimately depends on the feature detection algorithm used to determine solution domain regions which require a fine mesh for their accurate representation. Typically, weight functions are constructed to mimic the local truncation error and may require substantial user input. Most problems of engineering interest involve multi-block grids and widely disparate length scales. Hence, it is desirable that the adaptive grid feature detection algorithm be developed to recognize flow structures of different type as well as differing intensity, and adequately address scaling and normalization across blocks. These weight functions can then be used to construct blending functions for algebraic redistribution, interpolation functions for unstructured grid generation, forcing functions to attract/repel points in an elliptic system, or to trigger local refinement, based upon application of an equidistribution principle. The popularity of solution-adaptive techniques is growing in tandem with unstructured methods. The difficultly of precisely controlling mesh densities and orientations with current unstructured grid generation systems has driven the use of solution-adaptive meshing. Use of derivatives of density or pressure are widely used for construction of such weight functions, and have been proven very successful for inviscid flows with shocks. However, less success has been realized for flowfields with viscous layers, vortices or shocks of disparate strength. It is difficult to maintain the appropriate mesh point spacing in the various regions which require a fine spacing for adequate resolution. Mesh points often migrate from important regions due to refinement of dominant features. An example of this is the well know tendency of adaptive methods to increase the resolution of shocks in the flowfield around airfoils, but in the incorrect location due to inadequate resolution of the stagnation region. This problem has been the motivation for this research.

Thornburg, Hugh J.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Supervised Autonomous Assembly to Create and Evolve Persistent Assets

Supervised autonomous assembly (SAA) will create a paradigm shift in the planning and design of future persistent assets (PAs), both in near zero-g environments and on planetary surfaces. SAA refers to an autonomy approach that has the benefits of autonomous assembly as well as the benefits provided by a supervisor (operator) who is available to resolve unexpected situations. SAA provides both increased design freedom as well as reduced programmatic risk. SAA enables evolution of future PAs over decades as in-space operations transition from single purpose missions to creation of PAs, such as laboratories and experimental stations which more closely resembling terrestrial laboratories that can easily adapt and evolve to new missions leveraging repeated visits to the PA. The ability to evolve enables PAs to rapidly respond to changing objectives resulting from new questions as our understanding improves. A recently initiated National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project in the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Game Changing Development (GCD) Program called the Precision Assembled Space Structure (PASS), leverages the advantages of SAA to develop technologies that enable efficient creation and evolution of hexagonal topologies; both planar (example: fuel depots) and curved (examples: telescopes and shelters). PASS will be used to provide context for the philosophy and concepts discussed as well as the decision and selections made. PASS objectives are: a) Develop confidence in SAA and on-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing (OSAM) technologies by executing a test campaign that uses a path-to-flight autonomous precision assembly process directly applicable to future space telescopes. b) Test autonomous technologies including automated path planning and error recovery, to emphasize a robust approach that relies on generic robots and special purpose tools. c) Validate critical component models using a digital twin that includes the assembled primary mirror support structure and assembly process. A digital twin is a high-fidelity simulation of the asset capable of predicting the on-orbit performance. The paper concludes after identifying the critical need for a modest assembly flight experiment to validate and develop confidence in the SAA paradigm, thus accelerating adoption of the benefits described. SAA is a game changing paradigm that enhances the ability of an organization to infuse new technology through rapid evolution of PAs while leveraging OSAM technologies.

Structural Modeling↗
NASA NTRS2019

Fast Steering Mirror Disturbance Effects on Overall System Optical Performance for the Large Ultraviolet/optical/infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) Concept Using a Non-Contact Vibration Isolation and Precision Pointing System

As the optical performance requirements of space telescopes get more stringent, the need to analyze all possible error sources early in the mission design becomes critical. One large telescope with tight performance requirements is the Large Ultraviolet / Optical / Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) concept. The LUVOIR concept includes a 15-meter-diameter segmented-aperture telescope with a suite of serviceable instruments operating over a range of wavelengths between 100nm to 2.5um. Using an isolation architecture that involves no mechanical contact between the telescope and the host spacecraft structure allows for tighter performance metrics than current space-based telescopes being flown. Because of this separation, the spacecraft disturbances can be greatly reduced and disturbances on the telescope payload contribute more to the optical performance error. A portion of the optical performance error comes from the disturbances generated from the motion of the Fast Steering Mirror (FSM) on the payload. Characterizing the effects of this disturbance gives insight into the specifications on the FSM needed to achieve the tight optical performance requirements of the overall system. Through analysis of the LUVOIR finite element model and linear optical model given a range of input disturbances at the FSM, the optical performance of the telescope and recommendations for FSM specifications can be determined. The LUVOIR observatory control strategy consists of a multi-loop control architecture including the spacecraft Attitude Control System (ACS), Vibration Isolation and Precision Pointing System (VIPPS), and FSM. This paper focuses on the control loop containing the FSM disturbances and their effects on the telescope optical performance.

Sacks, Lia W.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Composition, Structure and Formation of Low-Density Planets Within 0.5 AU of Their Star

Kepler has discovered that tens of percent of sunlike stars possess one or more planets larger than Earth within 0.5 AU. Masses of dozens of small and mid-sized exoplanets have been measured using radial velocity or transit timing variations. Few transiting planets larger than 1.6 Earth radii are rocky. Rather, the planetary mass-radius diagram for planetary radius between 1.6 and 8 times that of Earth shows a tendency for mass to increase slowly with size. The scatter is larger than can be explained by observational errors and correlations with temperature, implying that the population is heterogeneous. Many Neptune-size planets have very low densities and must have a substantial fraction of their volumes occupied by hydrogen and/or helium. Models of the structure, growth and evolution of planets made of mixtures of rock and light gases will be presented and compared with observations of both individual bodies and of the characteristics of the population as a whole.

radial velocity↗
DOE OSTI2019

Exactly and Easily Applying Experimental Boundary Conditions in Computational Structural Dynamics

Most experimental setups and environment specifications define acceleration loads on the component. However, Sierra Structural Dynamics cannot apply acceleration boundary conditions in modal transient analysis. Modal analysis of these systems and environments must be done through the application of a huge artificial force to a large fictitious point mass. Introducing a large mass into the analysis is a common source of numerical error. In this report we detail a mathematical procedure to directly apply acceleration boundary conditions in modal analyses without the requirement of adding a non-physical mass to the system. We prototype and demonstrate this procedure in Matlab and scope the work required to integrate this procedure into Sierra Structural Dynamics.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2017

Twin Telescope Tests: Assessing Station Oriented Systematic Errors

Each of NASA’s three Deep Space Network sites has multiple large antennas capable of acquiring VLBI data. The long range plan is to have four 34-meter beam waveguide antennas at each site. At present Goldstone has three, Canberra has three, and Madrid has two with two more under construction. These antennas offer the opportunity to do connected element interferometry (CEI) over the few hundred meter baselines within each complex. Given that all antennas within a site are of nominally the same structural design, are run off the same clock, observe through almost the same atmosphere, and are subject to almost the same geophysics, doing CEI experiments is an excellent way to probe the limits of VLBI accuracy and expose station-specific systematic errors. This paper will report the results of just such tests which achieved about 0.2 mm baseline precision per pass. Some stations exhibit more than 1 mm systematics. Based on this data we will discuss the implications for whether the IAG’s goal of 1 mm station stability in VLBI geodesy is possible for large antennas.

Jacobs, Christopher↗
DOE OSTI2021

Fast and accurate metagenotyping of the human gut microbiome with GT-Pro

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in metagenomics are used to quantify population structure, track strains and identify genetic determinants of microbial phenotypes. However, existing alignment-based approaches for metagenomic SNP detection require high-performance computing and enough read coverage to distinguish SNPs from sequencing errors. To address these issues, we developed the GenoTyper for Prokaryotes (GT-Pro), a suite of methods to catalog SNPs from genomes and use unique k-mers to rapidly genotype these SNPs from metagenomes. Compared to methods that use read alignment, GT-Pro is more accurate and two orders of magnitude faster. Here, using high-quality genomes, we constructed a catalog of 104 million SNPs in 909 human gut species and used unique k-mers targeting this catalog to characterize the global population structure of gut microbes from 7,459 samples. GT-Pro enables fast and memory-efficient metagenotyping of millions of SNPs on a personal computer.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1994

The ensemble variability properties of faint QSOs

A refined sample of 64 variable objects with stellar image structure has been identified in SA 57 to B approximately = 22.5, over a time baseline of 15 yr, sampled at 11 distinct epochs. The photometric data typically have a root-mean-square (rms) error at B = 22 of only 0.05 mag. Thirty-five quasars in this field have already been spectroscopically confirmed, 34 of which are among the sample of variables. Of the other variables, six are known spectroscopically to be stars, 10 additional objects are stars based on reliable detection of proper motion, and one is spectroscopically a narrow emission line galaxy. Of the 13 remaining variables, it is argued that they are a mixture of distant halo subdwarfs and quasars with starlike colors. We compute the ensemble average structure function and autocorrelation function from the light curves in the respective quasar rest frames, which are used to investigate the general dependences on apparent magnitude, absolute magnitude, and redshift.

Trevese, Dario↗
DOE OSTI2022

Resolving glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) in response to modern and future ice loss at marine grounding lines in West Antarctica

Accurate glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) modelling in the cryosphere is required for interpreting satellite, geophysical and geological records and for assessing the feedbacks of Earth deformation and sea-level change on marine ice-sheet grounding lines. GIA modelling in areas of active ice loss in West Antarctica is particularly challenging because the ice is underlain by laterally varying mantle viscosities that are up to several orders of magnitude lower than the global average, leading to a faster and more localised response of the solid Earth to ongoing and future ice-sheet retreat and necessitating GIA models that incorporate 3-D viscoelastic Earth structure. Improvements to GIA models allow for computation of the viscoelastic response of the Earth to surface ice loading at sub-kilometre resolution, and ice-sheet models and observational products now provide the inputs to GIA models at comparably unprecedented detail. However, the resolution required to accurately capture GIA in models remains poorly understood, and high-resolution calculations come at heavy computational expense. We adopt a 3-D GIA model with a range of Earth structure models based on recent seismic tomography and geodetic data to perform a comprehensive analysis of the influence of grid resolution on predictions of GIA in the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) in West Antarctica. Through idealised sensitivity testing down to sub-kilometre resolution with spatially isolated ice loading changes, we find that a grid resolution of ~$\frac{1}{3}$ of the radius of the load or higher is required to accurately capture the elastic response of the Earth. However, when we consider more realistic, spatially coherent ice loss scenarios based on modern observational records and future ice-sheet model projections and adopt a viscoelastic Earth, we find that predicted deformation and sea-level change along the grounding line converge to within 5 % with grid resolutions of 7.5 km or higher, and to within 2% for grid resolutions of 3.75 km and higher, even when the input ice model is on a 1 km grid. Furthermore, we show that low mantle viscosities beneath the ASE lead to viscous deformation that contributes to the instrumental record on decadal timescales and equals or dominates over elastic effects by the end of the 21st century. Our findings suggest that for the range of resolutions of 1.9–15 km that we considered, the error due to adopting a coarser grid in this region is negligible compared to the effect of neglecting viscous effects and the uncertainty in the adopted mantle viscosity structure.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

..delta..-Learning of High-Fidelity Electronic Structure Using Graph Neural Networks with Modified Node-Level Features

In this work, we present a ..delta..-learning approach for predicting the eigenvalues calculated with the hybrid functional HSE06 (..epsilon..nkHSE) for a set of metal and nitrogen doped graphene catalysts (MNCs) from Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) inputs. The model presented here incorporates electronic scalar features along with structural information in a graph neural network (GNN). In particular, the PBE eigenvalues for different bands and k-points and orbital-resolved projectors are combined with the applied potential as node-level features along with structural information within the Atomistic Line Graph Neural Network (ALIGNN) architecture. These features enable flexibility for systems with electrified interfaces, such as in electrocatalysts and achieves mean absolute error (MAE) of less than 0.1 eV. The machine learning model reported here achieves a strong generalization to left-out adsorbates (MAE = 0.074 eV) and leave-one-chemical-space-out (MAE = 0.08 eV) and completely left-out metals (MAE = 0.072 eV), confirming the robustness of the machine learning (ML) model in predicting ..epsilon..nkHSE.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗