ALBERT

Description: The effect of varying BATSE trigger parameters on the modeled BATSE detection rate is investigated numerically. Quantitative estimates are obtained of the systematic effects generated by the complex interplay of trigger times, variations in the signal-to-noise ratio for burst detection as well as the time scale over which backgrounds are determined, and the number of required detections above threshold. It is found, in particular that employing a third detection, at a reduced signal-to-noise ratio, to resolve a burst does not increase the detection rate. It is also shown that the BATSE detection rate is insensitive to variations in the time scale over which the background is determined.

Description: Ozone mixing ratios in the vicinity of the 525-K potential temperature surface in January and early February of 1990 were observed to decrease sharply across the edge of the vortex boundary, where the vortex position was estimated from Ertel's potential vorticity. The changes in NO(y) mixing ratio with respect to altitude measured on January 18 and 31 were quite well correlated with those of ozone between 15 and 24 km, indicating that NO(y) also had a large gradient across the edge of the vortex. This is interpreted as being mainly due to the significant denitrification that occurred inside the vortex. The total amount of gas and particulate phase HNO3 was close to the NO(y) amount at the altitude of the 22- to 23-km region, suggesting that the conversion of non-HNO3 reactive nitrogen to HNO3 had occurred with a PSC.

Description: The Center on Materials for Space Structures (CMSS) at Case Western Reserve University is one of seventeen Commercial Centers for the Development of Space. It was founded to: (1) produce and evaluate materials for space structures; (2) develop passive and active facilities for materials exposure and analysis in space; and (3) develop improved material systems for space structures. A major active facility for materials exposure is proposed to be mounted on the exterior truss of the Space Station Freedom (SSF). This Long Duration Space Materials Exposure (LDSE) experiment will be an approximately 6 1/2 ft. x 4 ft. panel facing into the velocity vector (RAM) to provide long term exposure (up to 30 years) to atomic oxygen, UV, micro meteorites, and other low earth orbit effects. It can expose large or small active (instrumented) or passive samples. These samples may be mounted in a removable Materials Flight Experiment (MFLEX) carrier which may be periodically brought into the SSF for examination by CMSS's other SSF facility, the Space Materials Evaluation Facility (SMEF), which will contain a Scanning Electron Microscope, a Variable Angle & Scanning Ellipsometer, a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer, and other analysis equipment. These facilities will allow commercial firms to test their materials in space and promptly obtain information on their materials survivability in the LEO environment.

Description: In order to analyze x ray data, it is nearly always necessary to extract source and background events from a data set. Typically, this is done by defining geometric spatial regions of the data set to describe the source and background. For example, one might wish to extract source events from a circular or elliptical region centered at a particular pixel, and background events from a circular or elliptical annulus whose inner radius matches the source region. At the same time, it might be necessary to exclude one or more nearby sources from the source or background region in question. Thus, it might be necessary to define a pie-shaped region or even an entirely irregularly-shaped region to exclude. A spatial filtering scheme called REGIONS was implemented in IRAF/PROS to support these and other types of spatial region extraction. It allows users to create a spatial mask by specifying one or more ASCII geometric shape descriptors (box, circle, ellipse, pie, point, annulus, and polygon) as regions to be included or excluded in the mask. In addition, two or more shapes can be combined using Boolean algebra to create an infinite variety of sophisticated regions. Each geometric shape has a specific set of parameters that describe that shape. For example, a circle is described by a center and a radius, while a box is described by a center, length, width, and rotation angle. These quantities can be specified in units of pixels or, in cases where the target image contains world coordinate system information, they can be described in units such as RA and Dec. Users can create region mask files by feeding an ASCII region descriptor to the IRAF/PROS plcreate task. Temporary masks can also be created from ASCII region descriptors by individual applications that call the routines in the region creation library. This library implements a yacc-based region parser that compiles the ASCII descriptors into 'software CPU' instructions which are then executed to create the mask. The mask created from these region descriptors is a standard IRAF PLIO mask. It can be combined with other PLIO masks (e.g., exposure masks) to provide complete spatial filtering capabilities. The capabilities of the region filtering scheme are described. It also discusses the design philosophy guiding our work, as well as our plans for the future.

Description: PROS is an IRAF based software package for the reduction and analysis of x-ray data. The use of a standard, portable, integrated environment provides for both multi-frequency and multi-mission analysis. The analysis of x-ray data differs from optical analysis due to the nature of the x-ray data and its acquisition during constantly varying conditions. The scarcity of data, the low signal-to-noise ratio and the large gaps in exposure time make data screening and masking an important part of the analysis. PROS was developed to support the analysis of data from the ROSAT and Einstein missions but many of the tasks have been used on data from other missions. IRAF/PROS provides a complete end-to-end system for x-ray data analysis: (1) a set of tools for importing and exporting data via FITS format -- in particular, IRAF provides a specialized event-list format, QPOE, that is compatible with its IMAGE (2-D array) format; (2) a powerful set of IRAF system capabilities for both temporal and spatial event filtering; (3) full set of imaging and graphics tasks; (4) specialized packages for scientific analysis such as spatial, spectral and timing analysis -- these consist of both general and mission specific tasks; and (5) complete system support including ftp and magnetic tape releases, electronic and conventional mail hotline support, electronic mail distribution of solutions to frequently asked questions and current known bugs. We will discuss the philosophy, architecture and development environment used by PROS to generate a portable, multimission software environment. PROS is available on all platforms that support IRAF, including Sun/Unix, VAX/VMS, HP, and Decstations. It is available on request at no charge.

Description: This paper describes the current status of the repair categorization activities and includes all details about the methodologies developed for determination of the inspection program for the skin on pressurized fuselages. For inspection threshold determination two methods are defined based on fatigue life approach, a simplified and detailed method. The detailed method considers 15 different parameters to assess the influences of material, geometry, size location, aircraft usage, and workmanship on the fatigue life of the repair and the original structure. For definition of the inspection intervals a general method is developed which applies to all concerned repairs. For this the initial flaw concept is used by considering 6 parameters and the detectable flaw sizes depending on proposed nondestructive inspection methods. An alternative method is provided for small repairs allowing visual inspection with shorter intervals.

Description: A conference was held on parallel computational fluid dynamics and produced related papers. Topics discussed in these papers include: parallel implicit and explicit solvers for compressible flow, parallel computational techniques for Euler and Navier-Stokes equations, grid generation techniques for parallel computers, and aerodynamic simulation om massively parallel systems.

Description: The rigid-body degrees of freedom and elastic degrees of freedom of aeroelastic vehicles are typically treated separately in dynamic analysis. Such a decoupling, however, is not always justified and modeling assumptions that imply decoupling must be used with caution. The frequency separation between the rigid-body and elastic degrees of freedom for advanced aircraft may no longer be sufficient to permit the typical treatment of the vehicle dynamics. Integrated, elastic vehicle models must be developed initially and simplified in a manner appropriate to and consistent with the intended application. This paper summarizes key results from past research aimed at developing and implementing integrated aeroelastic vehicle models for flight controls analysis and design. Three major areas will be addressed: (1) the accurate representation of the dynamics of aeroelastic vehicles, (2) properties of several model simplification methods, and (3) the importance of understanding the physics of the system being modeled and of having a model which exposes the underlying physical causes for critical dynamic characteristics.

Description: The steady motion and thermal behavior of an evaporating superheated liquid in a small cavity bounded by isothermal sidewalls is examined. Scaling analyses and a two-dimensional finite element model are used to investigate the influence of thermocapillarity, buoyancy, and temperature-dependent mass flux on flowfield, interfacial heat transfer, and meniscus morphology. Numerical investigations indicate the existence of two counter-rotating cells symmetric about the cavity center. Results also show that evaporation tends to counteract this circulation by directing flow toward the hotter sidewalls. Although thermocapillarity and evaporation yield different flowfield distributions, both effects tend to increase interfacial temperature and heat transfer.

Description: This paper presents the theoretical development of a modified optimal control pilot model based upon the optimal control model (OCM) of the human operator developed by Kleinman, Baron, and Levison. This model is input compatible with the OCM and retains other key aspects of the OCM, such as a linear quadratic solution for the pilot gains with inclusion of control rate in the cost function, a Kalman estimator, and the ability to account for attention allocation and perception threshold effects. An algorithm designed for each implementation in current dynamic systems analysis and design software is presented. Example results based upon the analysis of a tracking task using three basic dynamic systems are compared with measured results and with similar analyses performed with the OCM and two previously proposed simplified optimal pilot models. The pilot frequency responses and error statistics obtained with this modified optimal control model are shown to compare more favorably to the measured experimental results than the other previously proposed simplified models evaluated.