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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 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1975

The influence of crack closure and elasto-plastic flow on the bending of a cracked plate

The influence of crack closure and elastoplastic flow on the bending behavior of thin cracked plates is investigated using an incremental elastoplastic plate bending finite element computer program. The finite element program was developed using assumptions consistent with Kirchhoff fourth-order plate theory while the material property treatment permits general isotropic work hardening with local elastic unloading. This technique is applied to the problem of a large centrally through cracked plate subject to remote circular bending. Comparison is drawn between two cases of the bending problem. The first neglects the possibility of crack face interference with bending, and the second includes a kinematic prohibition against the crack face from passing through the symmetry plane. Results are reported which isolate the effects of elastoplastic flow and crack closure.

Jones, D. P.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Accuracy Assessment of Response Surface Approximations for Supersonic Turbine Design

There is a growing trend to employ CFD tools to supply the necessary information for design optimization of fluid dynamics components/systems. Such results are prone to uncertainties due to reasons including discretization. errors, incomplete convergence of computational procedures, and errors associated with physical models such as turbulence closures. Based on this type of information, gradient-based optimization algorithms often suffer from the noisy calculations, which can seriously compromise the outcome. Similar problems arise from the experimental measurements. Global optimization techniques, such as those based on the response surface (RS) concept are becoming popular in part because they can overcome some of these barriers. However, there are also fundamental issues related to such global optimization technique such as RS. For example, in high dimensional design spaces, typically only a small number of function evaluations are available due to computational and experimental costs. On the other hand, complex features of the design variables do not allow one to model the global characteristics of the design space with simple quadratic polynomials. Consequently a main challenge is to reduce the size of the region where we fit the RS, or make it more accurate in the regions where the optimum is likely to reside. Response Surface techniques using either polynomials or and Neural Network (NN) methods offer designers alternatives to conduct design optimization. The RS technique employs statistical and numerical techniques to establish the relationship between design variables and objective/constraint functions, typically using polynomials. In this study, we aim at addressing issues related to the following questions: (1) How to identify outliers associated with a given RS representation and improve the RS model via appropriate treatments? (2) How to focus on selected design data so that RS can give better performance in regions critical to design optimization? (3) How to combine NN and polynomial techniques for improving the accuracy of the RS model?

Papila, Nilay↗
NASA NTRS1999

Design Study for a Global Magnetospheric Dynamics Mission

A successful design was developed, one with many advantages over the original mission. The time spent in orbit was more evenly spread over the region being investigated. The radiation close was significantly lower and the mission did not rely on gravity assist at the moon and thus did not have to make measurements that far out in the tail. A spacecraft design was developed that keeps interference from the engines to a minimum. The design however was quite specific for four spacecraft. It could not be easily scaled to five spacecraft for example. One problem was discovered that is a concern for all similar missions. Inter- spacecraft communication can determine the spacing of the vehicles easily and to the accuracy required. However, the orientation of the polyhedron with the spacecraft at its vertices is not well known for small separations. Ground station range measurements give the line of sight location well but not the angle around that vector. This is a problem any such mission needs to solve. Neither the navigation teams at Goddard nor at Lewis were willing to attempt to solve this problem. At the completion of the study a report was made to the AGU meeting in San Francisco and a paper published in the volume "Science Closure and Enabling Technologies for Constellation Class Missions". This paper is attached.

Russell, C. T.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Polymer Macrocycles: A novel topology to control dynamics of rubbery materials (Final Report)

One of the current challenges in polymer physics and engineering is to understand the behavior of circular macromolecules. Though such molecules have been made by dilute solution ring closure methods in the past, such procedures have been limited to relatively small, unentangled rings as well as to small sample quantities. Initial studies were also hampered by issues surrounding purity of the rings, though this problem has been somewhat overcome by the use of liquid chromatography at critical conditions (LCCC) methods that separate rings and linear chains. Furthermore, in spite of the continued progress a full understanding of ring dynamics remains elusive. The present work has addressed multiple aspects of the behavior of ring molecules by using a novel synthetic route: reversible radical recombination redox polymerization (R3P) to produce poly(3,6-dioxa-1,8-octanedithiol) (PolyDODT) molecules. The synthesis conditions were chosen to produce linear (LDODT), cyclic (RDODT) and linear-cyclic mixtures (LRDODT) in order to investigate dilute solution and rheological responses of the materials. Importantly, the R3P synthesis makes larger quantities and higher molecular weights than do the dilute solution ring closure methods and also has the potential to be scaled to industrial quantities, thus becoming commercializable. We emphasize two important outcomes of the work. The first is that the rheological investigation shows that very large molecular weight the PolyDODT rings permitted the investigation of ring dynamics from glassy towards terminal flow for molecular sizes corresponding to approximately 300 entanglements of the linear counterpart. At the same time, these very large sized rings could be diluted in a solvent in order to reduce the molecular entanglement density to less than unity. The results demonstrate that ring viscosity follows a Rouse-like linear dependence on molecular weight or entanglement number to approximately 15 entanglements. This range of "Rouse-like" response is greater than what was achieved in all prior works where synthesis conditions have limited the molecular sizes achievable. After the entanglement number $Z_w$ increases beyond approximately 15, we find that the viscosity-molecular weight scaling undergoes a rapid change from the Rouse-like $η\sim{Z}^1_w$ to a very strong power-law scaling that is approximately $η\sim{Z}^{5.8}_w$. This aspect of the work strongly suggests that prior investigations on highly pure rings have invariably been performed on unentangled systems simply because ring molecules have very high entanglement thresholds. The results are further supported by plateau modulus measurements that show that in the "Rouse-like" viscosity regime, for the RDODT samples there is a corresponding lack of a rubbery entanglement plateau and once entanglement coupling is seen, the rubbery plateau also appears in the dynamic modulus data. Furthermore, upon appropriate scaling, we show that the unentangled polyDODT rings (i.e., the diluted high molecular weight rings) show virtually identical dynamics (upon appropriate scaling to account for the chain dilutions) to the dynamics of similarly unentangled LCCC fractionated polystyrene rings.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Atwood effects on nonlocality of the scalar transport closure in Rayleigh-Taylor mixing

The importance of nonlocality is assessed in modeling mean scalar transport for turbulent Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) mixing at different Atwood numbers. Building on the two-dimensional incompressible work of Lavacot et al. [J. Fluid Mech. 985, A47 (2024)], the present work extends the macroscopic forcing method to variable density problems in three-dimensional space to measure moments of the generalized eddy diffusivity kernel in RT mixing for increasing Atwood numbers (𝐴 = 0.05, 0.3, 0.5, 0.8). It is found that as 𝐴 increases, (1) the eddy diffusivity moments become asymmetric and (2) the higher-order eddy diffusivity moments become larger relative to the leading-order diffusivity, indicating that nonlocality becomes more important at higher 𝐴. There is a particularly strong temporal nonlocality at higher 𝐴, suggesting stronger history effects. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for closure modeling for finite-Atwood RT are discussed.

general physics↗
NASA NTRS1995

Analytical and phenomenological studies of rotating turbulence

A framework, which combines mathematical analysis, closure theory, and phenomenological treatment, is developed to study the spectral transfer process and reduction of dimensionality in turbulent flows that are subject to rotation. First, we outline a mathematical procedure that is particularly appropriate for problems with two disparate time scales. The approach which is based on the Green's method leads to the Poincare velocity variables and the Poincare transformation when applied to rotating turbulence. The effects of the rotation are now reflected in the modifications to the convolution of a nonlinear term. The Poincare transformed equations are used to obtain a time-dependent analog of the Taylor-Proudman theorem valid in the asymptotic limit when the non-dimensional parameter mu is identical to Omega(t) approaches infinity (Omega is the rotation rate and t is the time). The 'split' of the energy transfer in both direct and inverse directions is established. Secondly, we apply the Eddy-Damped-Quasinormal-Markovian (EDQNM) closure to the Poincare transformed Euler/Navier-Stokes equations. This closure leads to expressions for the spectral energy transfer. In particular, an unique triple velocity decorrelation time is derived with an explicit dependence on the rotation rate. This provides an important input for applying the phenomenological treatment of Zhou. In order to characterize the relative strength of rotation, another non-dimensional number, a spectral Rossby number, which is defined as the ratio of rotation and turbulence time scales, is introduced. Finally, the energy spectrum and the spectral eddy viscosity are deduced.

Mahalov, Alex↗
NASA NTRS1988

Elevated temperature crack growth

A study was performed to examine the applicability of path-independent (P-I) integrals to crack growth problems in hot section components of gas turbine aircraft engines. Alloy 718 was used and the experimental parameters included combined temperature and strain cycling, thermal gradients, elastic-plastic strain levels, and mean strains. A literature review was conducted of proposed P-I integrals, and those capable of analyzing hot section component problems were selected and programmed into the postprocessor of a finite element code. Detailed elastic-plastic finite element analyses were conducted to simulate crack growth and crack closure of the test specimen, and to evaluate the P-I integrals. It was shown that the selected P-I integrals are very effective for predicting crack growth for isothermal conditions.

Kim, K. S.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Realizability-preserving discontinuous Galerkin method for spectral two-moment radiation transport in special relativity

Here we present a realizability-preserving numerical method for solving a spectral two-moment model to simulate the transport of massless, neutral particles interacting with a steady background material moving with relativistic velocities. The model is obtained as the special relativistic limit of a four-momentum-conservative general relativistic two-moment model. Using a maximum-entropy closure, we solve for the Eulerian-frame energy and momentum. The proposed numerical method is designed to preserve moment realizability, which corresponds to moments defined by a nonnegative phase-space density. The realizability-preserving method is achieved with the following key components: (i) a discontinuous Galerkin phase-space discretization with specially constructed numerical fluxes in the spatial and energy dimensions; (ii) a strong stability-preserving implicit-explicit time-integration method; (iii) a realizability-preserving conserved to primitive moment solver; (iv) a realizability-preserving implicit collision solver; and (v) a realizability-enforcing limiter. Component (iii) is necessitated by the closure procedure, which closes higher order moments nonlinearly in terms of primitive moments. The nonlinear conserved to primitive and the implicit collision solves are formulated as fixed-point problems, which are solved with custom iterative solvers designed to preserve the realizability of each iterate. With a series of numerical tests, we demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of this discontinuous-Galerkin-implicit-explicit method.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1991

Investigations of turbulent scalar fields using probability density function approach

Scalar fields undergoing random advection have attracted much attention from researchers in both the theoretical and practical sectors. Research interest spans from the study of the small scale structures of turbulent scalar fields to the modeling and simulations of turbulent reacting flows. The probability density function (PDF) method is an effective tool in the study of turbulent scalar fields, especially for those which involve chemical reactions. It has been argued that a one-point, joint PDF approach is the one to choose from among many simulation and closure methods for turbulent combustion and chemically reacting flows based on its practical feasibility in the foreseeable future for multiple reactants. Instead of the multi-point PDF, the joint PDF of a scalar and its gradient which represents the roles of both scalar and scalar diffusion is introduced. A proper closure model for the molecular diffusion term in the PDF equation is investigated. Another direction in this research is to study the mapping closure method that has been recently proposed to deal with the PDF's in turbulent fields. This method seems to have captured the physics correctly when applied to diffusion problems. However, if the turbulent stretching is included, the amplitude mapping has to be supplemented by either adjusting the parameters representing turbulent stretching at each time step or by introducing the coordinate mapping. This technique is still under development and seems to be quite promising. The final objective of this project is to understand some fundamental properties of the turbulent scalar fields and to develop practical numerical schemes that are capable of handling turbulent reacting flows.

Gao, Feng↗
NASA NTRS2019

Program Promotion Can Distort Space Systems Engineering and Deny Risk

NASA's spectacular success in the Apollo moon landings was achieved against the odds by an obsessive dedication to reducing the great risk. But risk analysis predicted so many astronaut fatalities that it was thought to be unreasonably pessimistic and potentially damaging to the Apollo program. Risk analysis was discontinued, risk was neglected in space shuttle engineering, and so the space shuttle design was unnecessarily dangerous. Since the Apollo era it has been understood that long human space missions would recycle oxygen and water to avoid the very high launch cost of directly supplying them. The development of recycling systems was justified by the need to increase material closure and reduce launch mass. When it was recognized that increasing closure leads to rapidly diminishing returns, the program goal was changed to reducing launch mass and reliability, cost, and risk were considered irrelevant. Systems engineering and especially the discouraging problems of risk and cost have been deliberately ignored because they detract from program promotion, with unfortunate results. Current human launch system design does account for risk and the result strongly resembles Apollo. Current life support design continues to assume recycling, even though the recent great reduction in launch cost now allows direct supply of oxygen and water with significantly better quality, reliability, cost, and risk.

Advocacy↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Recent Advancements in the PATO Material Response Code

Introduction: Predicting the complicated multiphysics phenomena during atmospheric entry requires high-fidelity modeling tools to refine estimates of mission risks during entry. To this end, new capabilities are being added to the Porous-material Analysis Toolbox based on OpenFOAM (PATO). PATO is an open-source software for Computational Material Response (CMR) of reactive porous materials submitted to high-temperature environments. The objective of this work is to highlight current efforts to add to and improve upon the modeling capabilities of PATO. These include efforts to loosely couple PATO with other discipline specialized codes including hypersonic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), to assess the interaction effects between pyrolysis gas blowing and the boundary layer, and Computational Solid Mechanics (CSM), to address modeling of mechanical erosion. Other refinements include surface phenomena modeling capabilities to address the effects of silicone-based coatings applied to the TPS during flight preparation, and a unified multiphase solver for a mixed porous-material and plain-fluid domain. Coupling CMR with CFD (CMR/CFD): A loose coupling between PATO and the Data Parallel Line Relaxation (DPLR) CFD code has been achieved by making use of a blowing boundary condition at the heatshield surface available in DPLR. Starting with heat flux estimates with no pyrolysis gas blowing at the surface, blowing gases are computed by the CMR and passed to the CFD such that aerothermal properties of the environment can be recomputed for a new CMR computation. This leads to an iterative process which is supplemented with an estimate of the radiative heat flux using the Nonequilibrium air radiation (NEQAIR) program. The entire iterative process is illustrated in Figure 1. This coupling strategy has been utilized in computing the MSL material response. The goal is to compare the coupled CMR/CFD results with material response results obtained using traditional blowing corrections. Coupling CMS with CMR: A mechanical erosion model is currently being implemented in PATO to account for the additional mass removal induced by high shear conditions. The modeling process at each timestep consists of updating the mechanical properties as a function of temperature and computing the stress tensor and displacement fields of the material. Then, a failure criteria model determines the regions in which the stress exceeds the ultimate strength values resulting in mesh movement to account for mass removal. This model allows the material response simulation to compute the recession due to both oxidation and shear-induced erosion. The model is demonstrated by computing material response of sphere-cone arc jet samples. Surface Modeling Capabilities: NuSil, a silicone-based coating, was sprayed onto the MSL and Mars 2020 heatshields to mitigate shedding of phenolic dust. To better understand the effects of the NuSil coating on the material response, a novel model has been implemented in PATO. In this model, the equilibrium of the charred NuSil surface is modeled as pure silica, and a constant offset, inspired by the classical spallation model, is added to the the char blowing rate and wall enthalpy to reproduce HyMETS experimental results. The model has also been used to estimate the 3D material response of the MSL heatshield. Unified Solver: In addition to the iterative loose coupling approach mentioned above, a multiphase unified solver is being developed to couple the environment (plain-fluid phase) and the porous-material phase. The solver is based on the volume averaged conservation of mass, momentum, and energy for the macroscale with closure models which include microscale effects through effective physicochemical properties. The unified solver has been used to compute flow through a porous plug and solve the Beavers and Joseph problem. Since the strong coupling between phases is inherent to this solver, modeling assumptions present in other coupling methods of material response are mitigated. This strategy also makes it feasible to capture the competition between surface and volume ablation in the same computational domain, which is usually not possible with other coupling approaches.

Material Response↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Recent Advancements in the PATO Material Response Code

Introduction: Predicting the complicated multiphysics phenomena during atmospheric entry requires high-fidelity modeling tools to refine estimates of mission risks during entry. To this end, new capabilities are being added to the Porous-material Analysis Toolbox based on OpenFOAM (PATO) [1,2,3]. PATO is an open-source software for Computational Material Response (CMR) of reactive porous materials submitted to high-temperature environments. The objective of this work is to highlight current efforts to add to and improve upon the modeling capabilities of PATO. These include efforts to loosely couple PATO with other discipline specialized codes including hypersonic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), to assess the interaction effects between pyrolysis gas blowing and the boundary layer, and Computational Solid Mechanics (CSM), to address modeling of mechanical erosion. Other refinements include surface phenomena modeling capabilities to address the effects of silicone-based coatings applied to the TPS during flight preparation, and a unified multiphase solver for a mixed porous-material and plain-fluid domain. Coupling CMR with CFD (CMR/CFD): A loose coupling between PATO and the Data Parallel Line Relaxation (DPLR) [4] CFD code has been achieved by making use of a blowing boundary condition at the heatshield surface available in DPLR. Starting with heat flux estimates with no pyrolysis gas blowing at the surface, blowing gases are computed by the CMR and passed to the CFD such that aerothermal properties of the environment can be recomputed for a new CMR computation. This leads to an iterative process which is supplemented with an estimate of the radiative heat flux using the Nonequilibrium air radiation (NEQAIR) [5] program. The entire iterative process is illustrated in Figure 1. This coupling strategy has been utilized in computing the MSL material response. The goal is to compare the coupled CMR/CFD results with material response results obtained using traditional blowing corrections. Coupling CMS with CMR: A mechanical erosion model is currently being implemented in PATO to account for the additional mass removal induced by high shear conditions. The modeling process at each timestep consists of updating the mechanical properties as a function of temperature and computing the stress tensor and displacement fields of the material. Then, a failure criteria model determines the regions in which the stress exceeds the ultimate strength values resulting in mesh movement to account for mass removal. This model allows the material response simulation to compute the recession due to both oxidation and shear-induced erosion. The model is demonstrated by computing material response of sphere-cone arc jet samples. Surface Modeling Capabilities: NuSil, a silicone-based coating, was sprayed onto the MSL and Mars 2020 heatshields to mitigate shedding of phenolic dust. To better understand the effects of the NuSil coating on the material response, a novel model has been implemented in PATO. In this model, the equilibrium of the charred NuSil surface is modeled as pure silica, and a constant offset, inspired by the classical spallation model, is added to the the char blowing rate and wall enthalpy to reproduce HyMETS experimental results. The model has also been used to estimate the 3D material response of the MSL heatshield [6]. Unified Solver: In addition to the iterative loose coupling approach mentioned above, a multiphase unified solver is being developed to couple the environment (plain-fluid phase) and the porous-material phase. The solver is based on the volume averaged conservation of mass, momentum, and energy for the macroscale with closure models which include microscale effects through effective physicochemical properties. The unified solver has been used to compute flow through a porous plug and solve the Beavers and Joseph problem [7]. Since the strong coupling between phases is inherent to this solver, modeling assumptions present in other coupling methods of material response are mitigated. This strategy also makes it feasible to capture the competition between surface and volume ablation in the same computational domain, which is usually not possible with other coupling approaches.

Thermal Protection Systems↗
NASA NTRS1990

Fatigue crack propagation in aerospace aluminum alloys

This paper reviews fracture mechanics based, damage tolerant characterizations and predictions of fatigue crack growth in aerospace aluminum alloys. The results of laboratory experimentation and modeling are summarized in the areas of: (1) fatigue crack closure, (2) the wide range crack growth rate response of conventional aluminum alloys, (3) the fatigue behavior of advanced monolithic aluminum alloys and metal matrix composites, (4) the short crack problem, (5) environmental fatigue, and (6) variable amplitude loading. Remaining uncertainties and necessary research are identified. This work provides a foundation for the development of fatigue resistant alloys and composites, next generation life prediction codes for new structural designs and extreme environments, and to counter the problem of aging components.

Gangloff, R. P.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Turbulent transport modelling of separating and reattaching shear flows

The improvement of capabilities for computer simulation of turbulent recirculating flows was investigated. Attention has been limited to two dimensional flows and principally to statistically stationary motion. Improvement of turbulence modeling explored the treatment of the near wall sublayer and of the exterior fully turbulent region, working within the framework of turbulence closures requiring the solution of transport equations for the turbulence energy and its dissipation rate. The work on the numerical procedure, based on the Gosman-Pun program TEACH, addressed the problems of incorporating the turbulence model as well as the extension to time dependent flows, the incorporation of a third order approximation of convective transport, and the treatment of non-orthogonal boundaries.

Launder, B. E.↗
NASA NTRS1992

A study of hypersonic swept shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interactions using a conical Navier-Stokes code

A computational study has been performed of sharp fin-induced swept shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interactions at low hypersonic Mach numbers. The objective was to determine if results obtained using a conical Navier-Stokes code, particularly the peak heating and pressure, are adequate for engineering predictions. The advantage of the conical approach is that the problem becomes two-dimensional and requires much less computational effort than a fully three-dimensional calculation. In this code, the standard Baldwin-Lomax model is used for turbulent closure and its performance is studied in some detail. To assess the approach interactive flowfields generated by unswept sharp fins at two angles of attack at each of three hyprsonic freestream Mach numbers (5, 6, 11) have been calculated and the results compared with experimental wall pressure and heat transfer data. Although the conical Navier-Stokes/Baldwin-Lomax approach is reasonably successful at Mach numbers up to 5, the performance deteriorates as the Mach number is increased. Nevertheless, the approach could be a valuable tool in preliminary parametric design studies.

Rodi, Patrick E.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Fast parallel algorithms that compute transitive closure of a fuzzy relation

The notion of a transitive closure of a fuzzy relation is very useful for clustering in pattern recognition, for fuzzy databases, etc. The original algorithm proposed by L. Zadeh (1971) requires the computation time O(n(sup 4)), where n is the number of elements in the relation. In 1974, J. C. Dunn proposed a O(n(sup 2)) algorithm. Since we must compute n(n-1)/2 different values s(a, b) (a not equal to b) that represent the fuzzy relation, and we need at least one computational step to compute each of these values, we cannot compute all of them in less than O(n(sup 2)) steps. So, Dunn's algorithm is in this sense optimal. For small n, it is ok. However, for big n (e.g., for big databases), it is still a lot, so it would be desirable to decrease the computation time (this problem was formulated by J. Bezdek). Since this decrease cannot be done on a sequential computer, the only way to do it is to use a computer with several processors working in parallel. We show that on a parallel computer, transitive closure can be computed in time O((log(sub 2)(n))2).

Kreinovich, Vladik YA.↗
NASA NTRS1981

Theory of inhomogeneous fluids

A theory of nonuniform liquids is presented which is based on the Yvon-Born-Green equation for the one-particle density and the Ornstein-Zernike equation of an inhomogeneous system. The necessary closure is effected by exploiting the solution of a modified hypernetted-chain equation and making a local approximation on the (highly universal) bridge function. The theory is successfully applied to model problems that have also been studied by direct-simulation methods. A brief generalization to quantum liquids is also given.

Nieminen, R. M.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Multirate digital control system design

Methods for multirate digital control system design are discussed. A simple method for sampling rate selection based on control bandwidths is proposed. Methods for generating a discrete-time state model of a sampled-data plant and a discrete-time equivalent to an analog cost function for a sampled-data plant are described. The succesive loop closures and linear quadratic Gaussian synthesis methods are reviewed, and a constrained optimization synthesis method is introduced. The proposed sampling rate selection, discretization, and synthesis methods are applied to two example design problems. Multirate and single-rate compensators synthesized by the different methods are compared, based on closed-loop responses, with compensators having the same real-time computation load.

Berg, Martin C.↗