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Journal Article

Testing of a Plastic Melt Waste Compactor Designed for Human Space Exploration Missions

2009-07-12
2009-01-2363
Significant progress has been made at NASA Ames Research Center in the development of a heat melt compaction device called the Plastic Melt Waste Compactor (PMWC). The PMWC was designed to process wet and dry wastes generated on human space exploration missions. The wastes have a plastic content typically greater than twenty percent. The PMWC removes the water from the waste, reduces the volume, and encapsulates it by melting the plastic constituent of the waste. The PMWC is capable of large volume reductions. The final product is compacted waste disk that is easy to manage and requires minimal crew handling. This paper describes the results of tests conducted using the PMWC with a wet and dry waste composite that was representative of the waste types expected to be encountered on long duration human space exploration missions.
Journal Article

Modeling Weather Impact on Airport Arrival Miles-in-Trail Restrictions

2013-09-17
2013-01-2301
When the demand for either a region of airspace or an airport approaches or exceeds the available capacity, miles-in-trail (MIT) restrictions are the most frequently issued traffic management initiatives (TMIs) that are used to mitigate these imbalances. Miles-in-trail operations require aircraft in a traffic stream to meet a specific inter-aircraft separation in exchange for maintaining a safe and orderly flow within the stream. This stream of aircraft can be departing an airport, over a common fix, through a sector, on a specific route or arriving at an airport. This study begins by providing a high-level overview of the distribution and causes of arrival MIT restrictions for the top ten airports in the United States. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the frequency, duration and cause of MIT restrictions impacting the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) from 2009 through 2011.
Journal Article

ECOA - A New Architecture Concept for Complex Military Software Systems

2014-09-16
2014-01-2227
ECOA is an active software architecture research programme conducted by the French Republic and United Kingdom. It is one product of the recent Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty signed between the two nations. This paper provides an overview of the programme goals and progress as well as an introduction to the technology being developed and comparison to related initiatives. The goal of the ECOA programme is to define an open software architecture that enables collaborative development of mission system software. The ECOA programme is needed to reduce development and lifecycle costs of future military air programmes. For this reason the programme has a specific focus on combat-air mission systems but the underlying technology is general purpose, applying to multiple military and civil domains. At present, the programme has defined a concept, delivered a set of initial technical standards and produced a joint demonstrator to validate the technology developed.
Journal Article

Health Ready Components-Unlocking the Potential of IVHM

2016-04-05
2016-01-0075
Health Ready Components are essential to unlocking the potential of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) as it relates to real-time diagnosis and prognosis in order to achieve lower maintenance costs, greater asset availability, reliability and safety. IVHM results in reduced maintenance costs by providing more accurate fault isolation and repair guidance. IVHM results in greater asset availability, reliability and safety by recommending preventative maintenance and by identifying anomalous behavior indicative of degraded functionality prior to detection of the fault by other detection mechanisms. The cost, complexity and effectiveness of the IVHM system design, deployment and support depend, to a great extent, on the degree to which components and subsystems provide the run-time data needed by IVHM and the design time semantic data to allow IVHM to interpret those messages.
Journal Article

Towards Standardising Methods for Reporting the Embodied Energy Content of Aerospace Products

2017-08-29
2017-01-9002
Within the aerospace industry there is a growing interest in evaluating and reducing the environmental impacts of products and related risks to business. Consequently, requests from governments, customers, manufacturers, and other interested stakeholders, for environmental information about aerospace products are becoming widespread. Presently, requests are inconsistent and this limits the ability of the aerospace industry to meet the informational needs of various stakeholders and reduce the environmental impacts of their products in a cost-effective manner. Energy consumption is a significant business cost, risk, and a simple proxy value for overall environmental impact. This paper presents the initial research carried out by an academic and industry consortium to develop standardised methods for calculating and reporting the embodied manufacturing energy content of aerospace products.
Journal Article

Computational Fluid Dynamics Calculations of Turbocharger's Bearing Losses

2010-05-05
2010-01-1537
Fuel consumption in internal combustion engines and their associated CO2 emissions have become one of the major issues facing car manufacturers everyday for various reasons: the Kyoto protocol, the upcoming European regulation concerning CO2 emissions requiring emissions of less than 130g CO2/km before 2012, and customer demand. One of the most efficient solutions to reduce fuel consumption is to downsize the engine and increase its specific power and torque by using turbochargers. The engine and the turbocharger have to be chosen carefully and be finely tuned. It is essential to understand and characterise the turbocharger's behaviour precisely and on its whole operating range, especially at low engine speeds. The characteristics at low speed are not provided by manufacturers of turbochargers because compressor maps cannot be achieve on usual test bench.
Journal Article

A Balanced Approach for Securing the OBD-II Port

2017-03-28
2017-01-1662
The On-Board Diagnostics II (OBD-II) port began as a means of extracting diagnostic information and supporting the right to repair. Self-driving vehicles and cellular dongles plugged into the OBD-II port were not anticipated. Researchers have shown that the cellular modem on an OBD-II dongle may be hacked, allowing the attacker to tamper with the vehicle brakes. ADAS, self-driving features and other vehicle functions may be vulnerable as well. The industry must balance the interests of multiple stakeholders including Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) who are required to provide OBD function, repair shops which have a legitimate need to access the OBD functions, dongle providers and drivers. OEMs need the ability to protect drivers and manage liability by limiting how a device or software application may modify the operation of a vehicle.
Journal Article

Development of a Lube Filter with Controlled Additive Release for Modern Heavy Duty Diesel Engines Utilizing EGR

2008-10-07
2008-01-2644
As on-highway heavy-duty diesel engine designs have evolved to meet tighter emission regulations, the crankcase environment for heavy-duty engine lubricants has become more challenging. The introduction of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) has allowed for significant reductions of exhaust emissions, but has led to increased oxidation and acid build-up in the lubricant. Engine lubricant quality is important to help ensure engine durability, engine performance, and reduce maintenance downtime. Increased acidity and oxidation accelerate the rate at which the lubricant quality is degraded and hence shorten its' useful life. This paper explores the use of a lube filter with a controlled additive release to maintain lubricant quality.
Journal Article

Incorporation of Atmospheric Neutron Single Event Effects Analysis into a System Safety Assessment

2011-10-18
2011-01-2497
Atmospheric Neutron Single Event Effects (SEE) are widely known to cause failures in all electronic hardware, and cause proportionately more failures in avionics equipment due to the use altitude. In digital systems it is easy to show how SEE can contribute several orders of magnitude more faults than random (hard) failures. Unfortunately, current avionics Safety assessment methods do not require consideration of faults from SEE. AVSI SEE Task Group (Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute Committee #72, on Mitigating Radiation Effects in Avionics) is currently coordinating development of an atmospheric Neutron Single Event Effects (SEE) Analysis method. This analysis method is a work in progress, in close collaboration with SAE S-18 and WG-63 Committees (Airplane Safety Assessment Committee). The intent is to include this method as part of current revisions to ARP4761 (Guidelines and Methods for Conducting the Safety Assessment Process on Civil Airborne Systems and Equipment).
Journal Article

Ground and Range Operations for a Heavy-Lift Vehicle: Preliminary Thoughts

2011-10-18
2011-01-2643
This paper discusses the ground and range operations for a Shuttle derived Heavy-Lift Vehicle being launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the Eastern range. Comparisons will be made between the Shuttle and a heavy lift configuration (SLS-ETF MPCV - April 2011) by contrasting their subsystems. The analysis will also describe a simulation configuration with the potential to be utilized for heavy lift vehicle processing/range simulation modeling and the development of decision-making systems utilized by the range. In addition, a simple simulation model is used to provide the required critical thinking foundations for this preliminary analysis.
Journal Article

NASA System-Level Design, Analysis and Simulation Tools Research on NextGen

2011-10-18
2011-01-2716
A review of the research accomplished in 2009 in the System-Level Design, Analysis and Simulation Tools (SLDAST) of the NASA's Airspace Systems Program is presented. This research thrust focuses on the integrated system-level assessment of component level innovations, concepts and technologies of the Next Generation Air Traffic System (NextGen) under research in the ASP program to enable the development of revolutionary improvements and modernization of the National Airspace System. The review includes the accomplishments on baseline research and the advancements on design studies and system-level assessment, including the cluster analysis as an annualization standard of the air traffic in the U.S. National Airspace, and the ACES-Air MIDAS integration for human-in-the-loop analyzes within the NAS air traffic simulation.
Journal Article

Modeling Weather Impact on Ground Delay Programs

2011-10-18
2011-01-2680
Scheduled arriving aircraft demand may exceed airport arrival capacity when there is abnormal weather at an airport. In such situations, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) institutes ground-delay programs (GDP) to delay flights before they depart from their originating airports. Efficient GDP planning depends on the accuracy of prediction of airport capacity and demand in the presence of uncertainties in weather forecast. This paper presents a study of the impact of dynamic airport surface weather on GDPs. Using the National Traffic Management Log, effect of weather conditions on the characteristics of GDP events at selected busy airports is investigated. Two machine learning methods are used to generate models that map the airport operational conditions and weather information to issued GDP parameters and results of validation tests are described.
Journal Article

Durable Design and Maintenance of Military Vehicles -Crack Initiation and Crack Growth Applications

2011-04-12
2011-01-1047
The service life of a military ground vehicle is measured in decades and throughout its life it is expected to see several theaters with severe terrain and complex evolving operating conditions. The core of the vehicle, like the chassis and the hull, are often in continuous use, undergoing routine repair, reset, and re-fielding. Other components attached to the hull and chassis have more limited life spans and by design become damaged, worn-out, or outdated and are repaired, replaced, and/or upgraded. New components like armor, weapons, and sensor packages are frequently added to the existing structure for improved mission performance (survivability, lethality, etc.) as threats and strategies change. Designing military vehicles for durability is therefore very challenging and should not end when the product is designed, validated with hardware tests, manufactured, and sold.
Journal Article

Incorporating Atmospheric Radiation Effects Analysis into the System Design Process

2012-10-22
2012-01-2131
Natural atmospheric radiation effects have been recognized in recent years as key safety and reliability concerns for avionics systems. Atmospheric radiation may cause Single Event Effects (SEE) in electronics. The resulting Single Event Effects can cause various fault conditions, including hazardous misleading information and system effects in avionics equipment. As technology trends continue to achieve higher densities and lower voltages, semiconductor devices are becoming more susceptible to atmospheric radiation effects. To ensure a system meets all its safety and reliability requirements, SEE induced upsets and potential system failures need to be considered. The purpose of this paper is to describe a process to incorporate the SEE analysis into the development like-cycle. Background on the atmospheric radiation phenomenon and the resulting single event effects, including single event upset (SEU) and latch up conditions is provided.
Technical Paper

Options for Transpiration Water Removal in a Crop Growth System Under Zero Gravity Conditions

1991-07-01
911423
The operation of a crop growth system in micro-gravity is an important part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Closed Ecological Life Support System development program. Maintaining densely arrayed plants in a closed environment imposed to induce high growth rates must be expected to result in substantial levels of water transpiration rate. Since the environmental air is recirculated, the transpiration water must be removed. In an operating CELSS, it is expected that this water will provide potable water for use of the crew. There is already considerable knowledge about water removal from crew environmental air during orbital and transfer activities, and the difference between the conditions of the described requirement and the conditions for which experience has been gained is the quantities involved and the reliability implications due to the required periods of operation.
Journal Article

Autonomy and Intelligent Technologies for Advanced Inspection Systems

2013-09-17
2013-01-2092
This paper features a set of advanced technologies for autonomy and intelligence in advanced inspection systems of facility operations. These technologies offer a significant contribution to set a path to establish a system and an operating environment with autonomy and intelligence for inspection, monitoring and safety via gas and ambient sensors, video mining and speech recognition commands on unmanned ground vehicles and other platforms to support operational activities in the Cryogenics Test bed and other facilities and vehicles. These advanced technologies are in current development and progress and their functions and operations require guidance and formulation in conjunction with the development team(s) toward the system architecture.
Journal Article

Time-Varying Loads of Co-Axial Rotor Blade Crossings

2017-09-19
2017-01-2024
The blade crossing event of a coaxial counter-rotating rotor is a potential source of noise and impulsive blade loads. Blade crossings occur many times during each rotor revolution. In previous research by the authors, this phenomenon was analyzed by simulating two airfoils passing each other at specified speeds and vertical separation distances, using the compressible Navier-Stokes solver OVERFLOW. The simulations explored mutual aerodynamic interactions associated with thickness, circulation, and compressibility effects. Results revealed the complex nature of the aerodynamic impulses generated by upper/lower airfoil interactions. In this paper, the coaxial rotor system is simulated using two trains of airfoils, vertically offset, and traveling in opposite directions. The simulation represents multiple blade crossings in a rotor revolution by specifying horizontal distances between each airfoil in the train based on the circumferential distance between blade tips.
Technical Paper

Milestones in Airborne Astronomy: From the 1920's to the Present

1997-10-13
975609
The use of airplanes for astronomical observations began in the 1920's. From then until the early 1960's, almost all of the observations made from aircraft were for the purpose of viewing solar eclipses. Due to advances in technology and increasing interest in infrared astronomy, the use of airplanes for astronomy expanded during the 1960's to include planetary observations and a wide range of other studies. This paper describes some of the major milestones of airborne astronomy, from the1920's to the present.
Technical Paper

Development and Demonstration of a Prototype Free Flight Cockpit Display of Traffic Information

1997-10-01
975554
Two versions of a prototype Free Flight cockpit situational display (Basic and Enhanced) were examined in a simulation at the NASA Ames Research Center. Both displays presented a display of traffic out to a range of 120 NM, and an alert when the automation detected a substantial danger of losing separation with another aircraft. The task for the crews was to detect and resolve threats to separation posed by intruder aircraft. An Enhanced version of the display was also examined. It incorporated two additional conflict alerting levels and tools to aid in trajectory prediction and path planning. Ten crews from a major airline participated in the study. Performance analyses and pilot debriefings showed that the Enhanced display was preferred, and that minimal separation between the intruder and the ownship was larger with the Enhanced display. In addition, the additional information on the Enhanced display did not lead crews to engage in more maneuvering.
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