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Restructuring and Optimizing Reactor Building Lifting Processes & Designing a Solution for an Overhead Door Handling Forklift Attachment

This poster presents two innovative projects aimed at enhancing operational efficiency and safety at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) Complex. The first project focuses on restructuring the existing lift book used for hoisting operations within the ATR Reactor Building. The current lift book, a cumbersome 150+ page document, is being transformed into a more efficient format using charts that allow for quick identification of maximum lift heights based on object footprint and weight. This new method also considers various parameters such as floor integrity and reactor status, dividing entries into four distinct charts to improve usability and safety during lifts. The second project involves designing a specialized forklift attachment for handling an overhead door at the ATR Reactor Building. The attachment is engineered to securely lift and lower a 1200lb, 14ft long door, ensuring safe replacement operations. The design process included research on forklift attachment codes, modeling in Autodesk Inventor, and testing through Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and hand calculations to confirm the attachment's structural integrity. Future work includes completing detailed drawings and an Engineering Calculations Analysis and Review (ECAR) document to proceed with manufacturing and assembly. Together, these projects demonstrate a commitment to optimizing reactor building operations through innovative engineering solutions and safety considerations.

42 - ENGINEERING

Feasibility study of modern airships, phase 2. Volume 1: Heavy lift airship vehicle. Book 1: Overall study results

A Heavy Lift Airship combining buoyant lift derived from a conventional helium-filled non-rigid airship hull with propulsive lift derived from conventional helicopter rotors was investigated. The buoyant lift essentially offsets the empty weight of the vehicle; thus the rotor thrust is available for useful load and to maneuver and control the vehicle. Such a vehicle is capable of providing a quantum increase in current vertical lifting capability. Certain critical deficiencies of past airships are significantly minimized or eliminated.

Source record

Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story

Wingless Flight tells the story of the most unusual flying machines ever flown, the lifting bodies. It is my story about my friends and colleagues who committed a significant part of their lives in the 1960s and 1970s to prove that the concept was a viable one for use in spacecraft of the future. This story, filled with drama and adventure, is about the twelve-year period from 1963 to 1975 in which eight different lifting-body configurations flew. It is appropriate for me to write the story, since I was the engineer who first presented the idea of flight-testing the concept to others at the NASA Flight Research Center. Over those twelve years, I experienced the story as it unfolded day by day at that remote NASA facility northeast of los Angeles in the bleak Mojave Desert. Benefits from this effort immediately influenced the design and operational concepts of the winged NASA Shuttle Orbiter. However, the full benefits would not be realized until the 1990s when new spacecraft such as the X-33 and X-38 would fully employ the lifting-body concept. A lifting body is basically a wingless vehicle that flies due to the lift generated by the shape of its fuselage. Although both a lifting reentry vehicle and a ballistic capsule had been considered as options during the early stages of NASA's space program, NASA initially opted to go with the capsule. A number of individuals were not content to close the book on the lifting-body concept. Researchers including Alfred Eggers at the NASA Ames Research Center conducted early wind-tunnel experiments, finding that half of a rounded nose-cone shape that was flat on top and rounded on the bottom could generate a lift-to-drag ratio of about 1.5 to 1. Eggers' preliminary design sketch later resembled the basic M2 lifting-body design. At the NASA Langley Research Center, other researchers toyed with their own lifting-body shapes. Meanwhile, some of us aircraft-oriented researchers at the, NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California were experiencing our own fascination with the lifting-body concept. A model-aircraft builder and private pilot on my own time, I found the lifting-body idea intriguing. I built a model based on Eggers' design, tested it repeatedly, made modifications in its control and balance characteristics along the way, then eventually presented the concept to others at the Center, using a film of its flights that my wife, Donna and I had made with our 8-mm home camera.

Reed, R. Dale

Wind tunnel wall interference in V/STOL and high lift testing: A selected, annotated bibliography

This bibliography, with abstracts, consists of 260 citations of interest to persons involved in correcting aerodynamic data, from high lift or V/STOL type configurations, for the interference arising from the wind tunnel test section walls. It provides references which may be useful in correcting high lift data from wind tunnel to free air conditions. References are included which deal with the simulation of ground effect, since it could be viewed as having interference from three tunnel walls. The references could be used to design tests from the standpoint of model size and ground effect simulation, or to determine the available testing envelope with consideration of the problem of flow breakdown. The arrangement of the citations is chronological by date of publication in the case of reports or books, and by date of presentation in the case of papers. Included are some documents of historical interest in the development of high lift testing techniques and wall interference correction methods. Subject, corporate source, and author indices, by citation numbers, have been provided to assist the users. The appendix includes citations of some books and documents which may not deal directly with high lift or V/STOL wall interference, but include additional information which may be helpful.

Tuttle, M. H.

Boundary Layer

The fundamental, practically the most important branch of the modern mechanics of a viscous fluid or a gas, is that branch which concerns itself with the study of the boundary layer. The presence of a boundary layer accounts for the origin of the resistance and lift force, the breakdown of the smooth flow about bodies, and other phenomena that are associated with the motion of a body in a real fluid. The concept of boundary layer was clearly formulated by the founder of aerodynamics, N. E. Joukowsky, in his well-known work "On the Form of Ships" published as early as 1890. In his book "Theoretical Foundations of Air Navigation," Joukowsky gave an account of the most important properties of the boundary layer and pointed out the part played by it in the production of the resistance of bodies to motion. The fundamental differential equations of the motion of a fluid in a laminar boundary layer were given by Prandtl in 1904; the first solutions of these equations date from 1907 to 1910. As regards the turbulent boundary layer, there does not exist even to this day any rigorous formulation of this problem because there is no closed system of equations for the turbulent motion of a fluid. Soviet scientists have done much toward developing a general theory of the boundary layer, and in that branch of the theory which is of greatest practical importance at the present time, namely the study of the boundary layer at large velocities of the body in a compressed gas, the efforts of the scientists of our country have borne fruit in the creation of a new theory which leaves far behind all that has been done previously in this direction. We shall herein enumerate the most important results by Soviet scientists in the development of the theory of the boundary layer.

Loitsianskii. L. G.

Preliminary analysis of STS-1 entry flight data

A preliminary analysis of data acquired during the first shuttle orbiter reentry is presented. Heating levels were higher than predicted. Variations in measured versus predicted lift to drag ratio and trim are discussed, as are plots showing time histories of control surface and jet activity. The confidence felt in the stability and control derivatives is only fair. Confidence in the derivatives extracted for Mach numbers below 3.5 is especially weak, because these derivatives were affected by sideslip data contaminated by wind and turbulence, nonindependent rudder motions, and buffet. The sources of the data used are described. Recommendations are presented for changes to the Aerodynamic Data Book, and for planning future flights.

Source record

The Shuttle Orbiter high resolution accelerometer package experiment - Preliminary flight results

A description of the High Resolution Accelerometer Package (HiRAP) experiment, designed to measure rarefied flow aerodynamic accelerations, is given. The ground test calibration factors, as well as post-flight data processing techniques to extract aerodynamic accelerations, are discussed and applied to the recorded reentry data of the recent STS-6 Shuttle Orbiter flight. The ratio of the measured normal-to-axial aerodynamic accelerations during reentry is used to obtain the first flight measurement of the lift-to-drag ratio (L/D) of a winged entry vehicle in the rarefied flow flight regime. The preliminary result for the free-molecule flow L/D is 0.10 + or - 0.03. The initial flight results on L/D are compared with current predictions which are based upon theoretical and empirical considerations. The measured free-molecule flow L/D value is higher than predicted by a factor of about three, indicating that surface reflection is not completely diffuse as currently assumed. In the rarefied flow transition regime, the Shuttle data book-bridging formula fits the flight data adequately. Upper altitude density profiles are also deduced from the measurements and presented. The density profiles show a wave phenomena with amplitude of about 60 percent, relative to a standard model.

Blanchard, R. C.

A review of preflight estimates of real-gas effects on space shuttle aerodynamic characteristics

Preflight estimates of the hypersonic aerodynamic characteristics of the Shuttle orbiter were based on a diverse series of research studies using state of the art techniques developed by basic research in the 60's and 70's. Real-gas viscous calculations on simple shapes that were used to evaluate correlation parameters indicated that real-gas effects reduce aerodynamic forces and moments. Inviscid calculations on winged lifting shapes indicated reduced forces and a slight nose-up pitch resulted because of real-gas effects. Analysis of the extensive wind tunnel data base indicated viscous correlation parameters provided the most appropriate extrapolation technique for estimating flight aerodynamics. Variations because of changes in the ratio of specific heats, which was the only available experimental tool for evaluating real-gas effects, indicated that reduced loads and nose-up pitching moments would occur at high altitudes and Mach numbers but that the values would not exceed the tolerances and variations established about the aerodynamic design data book values derived from viscous correlations. During STS-1, nose-up pitching moments exceeded the established variations.

Woods, W. C.

Hypersonic and planetary entry flight mechanics

The book treats hypersonic flight trajectories and atmospheric entry flight mechanics in light of their importance for space shuttle entry. Following a review of the structures of planetary atmospheres and aerodynamic forces, equations are derived for flight over a spherical planet, and the performance of long-range hypervelocity vehicles in extra-atmospheric flight is analyzed. Consideration is then given to vehicle trajectories in the powered and atmospheric reentry phases of flight, and several first-order solutions are derived for various planetary entry situations. The second-order theory of Loh for entry trajectories is presented along with the classical theories of Yaroshevskii and Chapman for entry into planetary atmospheres, and the thermal problems encountered in hypersonic flight are analyzed. A unified theory for entry into planetary atmospheres is then introduced which allows the performance of a general type of lifting vehicle to be studied, and applied to the analysis of orbit contraction due to atmospheric drag, flight with lift modulation and lateral maneuvers.

Vinh, N. X.