Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping

Mounting Heater Wires on Glass Capillary-Heat-Transfer Tubes

Two mounting schemes were devised for attaching heater wires to special-purpose glass tubing used in a capillary-heat-transfer experiment. Not only were the wires required to...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Noise-Reducing Fairings for Flush-Mounted Microphones

Streamlined fairings have been invented for housing single or multiple microphones to measure noise in flowing gases and liquids. Each fairing of this type is designed to minimize the...

Briefs: Information Technology

ParVox - a Parallel-Processing Software for Volume Rendering of Data

ParVox is a distributed visualization system consisting of a rendering core running on a parallel computer and a graphic user interface program (GUI) running on a Unix...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

The Lewis Number Under Supercritical Conditions

An effective Lewis number has been defined for two-fluid mixtures under conditions of (1) supercritical temperature and pressure and (2) large gradients of temperature and composition. The...

Briefs: Materials

Room-Temperature, Ultraviolet Curing of Polyimides

Polyimides have been used widely in fiber-reinforced composite materials for aerospace components and in thin films for packaging of electronic circuitry. Typically, the synthesis of a...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Wide-Angle, Open-Faced Retroreflectors for Optical Metrology

Wide-angle, open-faced retroreflectors of a proposed type would be constructed by use of traditional corner-cube reflectors as building blocks. Wide-angle retroreflectors are...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Push/Pull Four-Point-Bending Apparatus

The figure depicts an improved apparatus for three- or four-point bending tests of stripe specimens. In a bending test, the specimen is subjected to tension along its top surface and compression along...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Model of Interacting O₂ Drops Surrounded by H₂ at High Pressure

A mathematical model has been developed to predict the behavior of mutually interacting drops of a first fluid surrounded by a second fluid, under quiescent conditions at...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Composing Flow-Streak Images From Colorized Particle Images

A method for making a flow visible in a plane and determining in-plane velocities involves the digitization and digital processing of a sequence of monochrome video images of...

Briefs: Materials

Reaction-Forming Method for Joining SiC-Based Ceramic Parts

A process that involves reaction bonding makes it possible to form strong joints, with tailorable thicknesses and compositions, between high-temperature-resistant structural parts...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Two Techniques for Controlling Altitudes of Lifting Balloons

Two techniques have been proposed (see figure) for controlling the buoyancies and thus the altitudes of robotic lifting balloons (aerobots) that would carry scientific instruments...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Mathematical Model of Vortex Pyrolysis of Biomass

A mathematical model has been developed for analyzing the steady-state performances of vortex pyrolysis reactors used to convert particles of raw biomass materials (usually small wood chips)...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

Algorithm for Equalizing Rectangular Signal Constellations

A rectangular-constellation-based blind-equalization (RECBEQ) technique implemented by a real-time, recursive algorithm has been developed to improve the performances of radio...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Model of a Drop of O₂ Surrounded by H₂ at High Pressure

A mathematical model has been developed to predict the behavior of an isolated drop of a first fluid surrounded by a second fluid, under quiescent conditions at supercritical...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Ultrasonic Profiling of an Object

A computer-controlled ultrasonic C-scan instrumentation system that was developed primarily for use in finding defects inside solid material specimens can also be used to obtain three-dimensional profiles...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

Microwave Heating With Uniform Temperature History

Several microwave-cavity devices at various stages of development are designed for heating material samples or process streams with uniform temperature-versus-time histories. These devices...

Briefs: Materials

Improved Synthesis of SnO Powder for Lithium-Ion Power Cells

An improved method of synthesis of crystalline tin monoxide (SnO) powder for use in anodes of lithium-ion electrochemical power cells has been developed. The carbon used in anodes...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

Stable, Soft-Opening/Soft-Closing Pressure-Relief Valves

Improved pressure-relief valves have been developed for systems that contain gases and liquids in a variety of pneumatic, hydraulic, and cryogenic applications. These valves could...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Inflatable Fresnel Lenses as Concentrators for Solar Power

Inflatable Fresnel lenses are being developed for use as optical concentrators in solar power systems. These lenses are of two types: dome (point-focus) lenses and cylindrical...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Hybrid Acoustic/Electrostatic Levitation Apparatus

The figure schematically illustrates a developmental automated hybrid acoustic/electrostatic apparatus for levitating both electrically charged and electrically neutral liquid drops with...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

Highly Stable Lateral-Transfer Retroreflectors

Lateral-transfer optical retroreflectors can now be made extremely stable to both external and internal fluctuations and gradients of temperature. As explained in more detail in the fourth...

Briefs: Information Technology

Improvements in Generating and Using Unstructured CFD Grids

Some recent and continuing efforts to develop a software system for simulations of flows in gas-turbine combustors by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) have addressed such major...

Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control

Engines for Remotely Piloted Atmospheric-Science Airplanes

A spark-ignited reciprocating gasoline engine, intake-pressurized with three cascaded stages of turbocharging, was selected by NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor...