Award Data

NASA's long range goals of reducing the fuel consumption by 30% and increasing fuel efficiency by 35% can be partially accomplished through increasing engine operation temperatures. As a result, the disk section is desired to operate in increasingly higher temperatures, which will subject it to additional degradation mechanisms of oxidation and hot corrosion. One approach to enhance the tem ...

The innovation proposed here is a high-performance, high-fidelity framework in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code called Loci-STREAM to enable accurate, fast and robust simulations of unsteady multiphase flows such as combustion involving liquid-gas phases in liquid rocket injectors and solid-gas phases in solid rocket motors, and cryogenic cavitation in delivery systems of liquid rocket ...

The innovation proposed here is a high performance, high fidelity simulation capability to enable accurate, fast and robust simulation of unsteady turbulent, reacting flows involving cryogenic propellants (such as LOX/LH2 and LOX/LCH4). The key features of this proposed capability are: (a) Hybrid RANS-LES (HRLES) methodology, and (b) flamelet modeling for turbulent combustion incorporated in a pr ...

A spacecraft thermal control system must keep the vehicle, avionics and atmosphere (if crewed) within a defined temperature range. Since water is non-toxic and good for heat transport, it is typically used as the coolant that circulates within the crew cabin boundary. This loop then interfaces with another low freeze point fluid, such as ammonia, for transport of heat to a radiator where the tempe ...

Reducing the allowable concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in spacecraft is a critical need for NASA. The system now used on the International Space Station (ISS) is the carbon dioxide removal assembly (CDRA). While it has performed well on the ISS, managers have concluded that using the device to reach the new ppCO2 limit of 2.0 mm Hg is not practical and a new method is needed.In this projec ...

Technology currently used for terrestrial navigation is extremely limited in the challenging environments on icy moons and ocean worlds such as Europa. Autonomous platforms used to collect data from beneath these ice and ocean surfaces cannot depend on access to satellite or any other electromagnetic communication. Autonomous systems in these environments are required to perform highly-complex tas ...

Opterus proposes to develop braided thin ply composite tapes. The tapes will be braided from ultra-thin spread-tow unidirectional carbon and glass ribbons and will enable a new source and form factor for thin-ply textiles. The resulting tapes will be especially useful for thin high strain composite space deployable structures where they will allow bias plies in long parts without requiring seams. ...

Thermal Stir Welding (TSW) provides advancement over the more conventional Friction Stir Welding (C-FSW) process because it separates the primary processes variables thereby allowing independent control of metal stirring and forging from the stir zone temperature. However, the feedback for precise control of the stir zone temperature, and hence the process parameters to sustain that temperature wi ...

Through the proposed NASA STTR, NanoSonic and Virginia Tech will design and empirically optimize an innovative, commercially scalable additive manufacturing process integrating reactively deposited HybridSil polyimide nanocomposites for next-generation Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) employed on human rated spacecraft. NanoSonicrsquo;s material technology and Virginia Techrsquo;s additive manufac ...

Thegoal is to develop asoftwaretool that implementsa novelapproach applicableto fitgeneral pharmacologic, toxicology, or other biomedical data, that mayexhibita non-monotonic dose-responserelationship for which thecurrent parametricmodels fail. Thesoftwareexplores dose-responserelationships using both monotonicand non-monotonicmodels,and estimates theassociated doseresponsecurves,which can further ...