NASA scientists, who are very concerned with the increasing hazard of impacts of orbital debris impact on spacecraft, have designed the "stuffed Whipple" shield — a lightweight, relatively inexpensive alternative to simple aluminum meteoroid/orbital-debris (M/OD) shield. The stuffed Whipple...

Lightweight, inflatable tubular structural components containing tape-spring reinforcements are undergoing development. The basic (without tape-spring reinforcement) tubular components are made, variously, of aluminum laminates or composite materials and are under consideration for use in...

The Space Station Robot Manipulator System (SSRMS) Path Planning Program is a computer program that, in comparison with software developed previously for the same purpose, supports operations of faster and more complex robots. Two especially notable features of the program are that (1) it...

A method of designing purging flows of clean, dry gases to maintain acceptably low levels of contamination in enclosed volumes has been developed. The method is applicable to diverse enclosures that must be kept clean, including housings of precise optical instruments, clinical facilities, facilities for...

A report presents additional information on the GENOA-PFA computer program, which was described in "Software for Simulating Progressive Fracture in Braided PMCs" (LEW-16845), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 24, No. 3 (March 2000), page 52. On the basis of material-property data, finite-element...

A report describes direct numerical simulations of single- and two-phase, temporally developing transitional mixing layers at Reynolds numbers (based on the initial vorticity thickness and mean velocity difference) from 200 to 600. As many as 300 × 332 ×180 grid points were used to discretize the...

A report describes direct numerical simulations of a droplet-laden mixing layer (e.g., evaporating droplets of a hydrocarbon fuel in air) undergoing a transition to mixing turbulence. The governing equations are those of Lagrangian transport of discrete droplets through a flowing gas, which...

A report describes experiments that generated evidence of thermodynamic instability of nanometer-size islands (quantum dots) in InxGa1–xAs grown on GaAs. InxGa1–xAs/GaAs specimens were grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, using various partial pressures of AsH3....

The Dynamic Memory Management System (DMMS) is a computer program that was developed in response to some major shortcomings of dynamic-memory- management subsystems of typical operating systems. It is designed for use with the VxWorks operating system, but is easily ported to other operating systems.

Carbon nanotubes (also known as "bucky tubes") have shown promise for use as anode materials in rechargeable lithium-ion power cells. In comparison with graphite and other forms of carbon used under identical conditions, bucky tubes exhibit greater specific discharge capacity and greater...

A spacecraft reaction-control-system (RCS) thruster now undergoing development generates a thrust of 870 lbf (3,870 N) by burning ethanol and liquid oxygen (LOX), which are nontoxic. The performance of the thruster has been tested in operation in multiple pulse modes with pulses as short as 160 ms; such...

Micromechanics Analysis Code With Generalized Method of Cells (MAC/GMC) is a comprehensive, user-friendly, efficient computer program that predicts the elastic and inelastic thermomechanical responses of continuous and discontinuous composite materials with arbitrary internal microstructures and...