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The proposed research program aims at developing a variable-fidelity software tool set for aeroservothermoelastic-propulsive (ASTE-P) modeling that can be routinely applied to the design of aerospace vehicles. The tool set can be applied to conventional vehicle types as well as hypersonic vehicles. The major issues involved in ASTE-P modeling and simulation will be significantly and extensively in ...

This proposal describes an Application Coherency Manager that implements and manages the interdependencies of simulation, data, and platform information. It will also enforce a simulation configuration profile submission that includes the specification of the interdependency requirements. To describe these interdependences, a general-purpose language will serve as the basis for higher-level rule ...

In order to address the NASA lunar mission, DESC proposes to develop a proton exchange membrane (PEM) closed-loop pure oxygen fuel cell for application to lunar surface exploration, building upon DESC's expertise and fundamental demonstrations in closely related technology. Building upon the recent NASA SBIR Phase II and Navy SBIR Phase I work, the static feed URFC hardware will be converted for ...

Heat shield technology is a critical component of manned spaceflight. In particular, the new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) requires thermal protection systems (TPS) beyond the current state of the art. While new TPS shields are under development, a key difficulty is the ability to diagnose TPS performance. Technology demonstrator missions are being planned, but designing instrumentation capabl ...

The recent performance increases in graphics processing units (GPUs) have made graphics cards an attractive platform for implementing computationally intense applications. With their numerous parallel computational pipelines and SIMD architecture, modern GPUs can outperform high-end microprocessors by one to three orders of magnitude, depending on the problem. Most work to date at EM Photonics a ...

Active flow control to prevent or delay boundary layer separation dramatically improves the performance of air vehicles in critical regions of the flight envelope. FlexSys Inc. has designed a compact, efficient, electromechanical High-Frequency Micro-Vortex Generator system (HiMVG) and tested it a subsonic speeds, proving that, when tuned to the boundary layer, it is as effective at promoting flow ...

The objective is to develop and demonstrate the use of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) for computations of gas turbine combustor flow and transport processes, using the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations on Cartesian grids with local mesh refinement and multigrid acceleration. The basic software for the coupled multigrid algorithm will be developed and demonstrated on simple flows. A Cartesian grid gene ...

The structural design during the early development of an aircraft focuses on strength, fatigue, corrosion, maintenance, inspection, and manufacturing. Usually the acoustic requirements are met after the design of the fuselage structure has been completed. Ideally the structural-acoustic concerns should enter the design cycle early and they should be considered along with other main design discip ...

Constellation Program, the next frontier of NASA's space exploration plan, targets for manned mission to Moon and Mars. The missions under this program will be of long-duration and far more critical than any previous manned mission. Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM), which includes fault detection, diagnosis, and prognosis, has been recognized as one of the critical processes that will e ...

The feasibility of radioisotope thermophotovoltaic (RTPV) power systems has been shown. The best efficiencies reported to date for a TPV module test include front surface spectral control filters. This program will address the technical challenges to developing and qualifying highly efficient spectral control filters that can survive high temperatures(above 150 degrees C)for long periods of time. ...