National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research 2001 Program Solicitation

TOPIC A7 Design and Analysis for Aerospace Vehicles

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A7.01 Modeling and Control of Complex Flows Over Aerospace Vehicles and Propulsion Systems
A7.02 Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Vehicles in a Flight Test Environment
A7.03 Flight Sensors, Sensor Arrays and Airborne Instruments for Flight Research

The Aerospace Technology Enterprise is engaged in developing the tools, techniques, and technologies to revolutionize the design and development processes of the aerospace industry with the goal to reduce the aerospace vehicle development cycle time. Aerospace vehicle systems design of the future will more fully integrate the various aerospace disciplines and require a greater understanding of not only the critical physics of the various disciplines, but also how the physics of the various disciplines play together. Important elements in the next generation design and analyses of aerospace vehicle systems include: enhanced safety, affordability, productivity, and environmental compatibility. Innovative test instrumentation, and flow control and simulation are key areas in this effort. Flight sensors, sensor arrays, and airborne instruments for flight research are also sought.

A7.01 Modeling and Control of Complex Flows Over Aerospace Vehicles and Propulsion Systems
Lead Center: LaRC
Participating Center(s): ARC

This subtopic solicits innovative ideas, concepts, and methodologies for the measurement, prediction, modeling and control of unsteady aerodynamic and aerothermodynamic phenomena that may be encountered by aerospace vehicles. Biologically inspired approaches and/or ideas for flow control are also solicited in this subtopic. Also of interest are advanced measurement systems and ground testing techniques to provide dynamic and global measuring capabilities, higher bandwidth, and improved resolution. Additionally, the subtopic is interested in innovative computational and experimental techniques that account for the complex aerothermodynamic, mixing, and combustion phenomena impacting the design and development of future space transportation vehicles, aeroassist orbital transfer vehicles, planetary entry probes, and hypersonic air-breathing propulsion systems. Unsteady phenomena of interest include active and passive flow control mechanisms; vortical and separated flows; equilibrium and finite-rate chemistry; thermodynamic and transport properties of multi-component mixtures, gaseous radiation, gas-surface interactions, mixing and combustion, shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions; and laminar, transitional, and turbulent reacting and non-reacting flows. Specific areas of interest include:

• Flow-physics modeling and control of transition and/or transitional flows, turbulence, and turbulence-related phenomena such as heat transfer, skin-friction, acoustics, mixing and combustion, with an emphasis on separated flow and the scaling of ground-based experiments to flight Reynolds numbers.
• Control and/or mitigation of separation, vortical flows, and shock wave phenomenon, including their impact on vehicle drag (turbulent skin friction drag, profile drag, drag-due-to-lift, and wave drag).
• Non-conventional numerical methods for solving fluid-flow equations that increase computational efficiency, accuracy, speed, and utility, including construction of new algorithms, improved computer languages, efficient and adaptive grid-algorithm interfacing, and applications of automation techniques with discretization error assessments.
• Innovative techniques for robust and reliable handling and sharing of large CFD and experimental data sets.
• Analytical and/or computational models/algorithms applicable to the optimization of integrated hypersonic propulsion/vehicle systems.
• Innovative and patentable mixing techniques applicable to hypersonic propulsion, with special consideration placed on the stoichiometric fuel regimes.
• Small-scale devices that initiate and sustain fuel (hydrogen and/or hydrocarbon) ignition and flame holding in supersonic combustor environments, at conditions relevant to hypersonic air-breathing propulsion flight trajectories.
• Advanced test techniques and flow diagnostics (including non-intrusive flow diagnostics and surface diagnostics) for developing definitive databases across speed range from subsonic to hypersonic facilities including shock-expansion pulse facilities.
• MEMS and nano technology sensors and interface electronics for flow measurements including flow velocity, pressure, temperature, shear stress, vibration, force, attitude, and/or acceleration.
• A small onboard multichannel intelligent data system and/or a high-speed wireless (optical or radio frequency) data transfer system with 50 megabits-per-second or higher data rate for wind tunnel model applications.
• Optical flow diagnostic technologies capable of resolving velocity, density, temperature, etc., in a global sense to provide planar or volumetric data, or at multiple points within the flow to provide temporally dependent cross correlations at sample rates on the order of 100 kHz.

A7.02 Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Vehicles in a Flight Test Environment
Lead Center: DFRC
Participating Center(s): None

Safer and more efficient design of advanced aerospace vehicles requires advancement in current predictive design tools. The goal of this subtopic is to develop more efficient software tools for predicting and understanding the response of an airframe under the simultaneous influence of aerodynamics and the control system, in addition to pilot commands. The benefit of this effort will ultimately be increased flight safety (particularly during flight tests), more efficient aerospace vehicles, and an increased understanding of the complex interactions between the vehicle subsystems. This subtopic solicits proposals for novel, multi-disciplinary, linear or nonlinear, dynamic systems simulation techniques. Proposals should address one or more of the objectives listed below:

• Prediction of steady and unsteady pressure and thermal load distributions on the aerospace surfaces, or similar distributions due to propulsive forces, by employing accurate finite element CFD techniques.
• Effective finite element numerical algorithms for multidisciplinary systems response analysis with adaptive three-dimensional grid/mesh generation at selected time steps.
• Effective use of high-performance computing machines, including parallel processors, for integrated systems analysis or pilot-in-the-loop simulators.
• Innovative applications of high-performance computer graphics or virtual reality systems for visualizing the computer model or results.
• Correlation of predictive analyses with test data or model update schemes based on measured information.

A7.03 Flight Sensors, Sensor Arrays and Airborne Instruments for Flight Research
Lead Center: DFRC
Participating Center(s): GRC, LaRC

Real-time measurement techniques are needed to acquire aerodynamic, structural and propulsion system performance characteristics in flight and to safely expand the flight envelope of aerospace vehicles. The scope of this subtopic is the development of sensors, sensor systems, sensor arrays or instrumentation systems for improving the state-of-the art in aircraft ground or flight testing. This includes the development of sensors to enhance aircraft safety by determining atmospheric conditions. The goals are to improve the effectiveness of flight testing by: simplifying and minimizing sensor installation; measuring new parameters; improving the quality of measurements; minimizing the disturbance to the measured parameter from the sensor presence; deriving new information from conventional techniques; or combining sensor suites with embedded processing to add value to output information. This subtopic solicits proposals for improving airborne sensors and sensor-instrumentation systems in subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic flight regimes. These sensors and systems are required to have fast response, low volume, minimal intrusion and high accuracy and reliability, and include wireless technology. Innovative technologies are solicited in the following areas:

Vehicle Environmental Monitoring

• Nonintrusive air data parameters (airspeed, air temperature, ambient and stagnation pressures, Mach number, air density, flow angle, and humidity at air temperatures as low as -20 deg. F).
• Off-surface flow field measurement and/or visualization (laminar, vortical, and separated flow, turbulence) 0 to 50 meters from the aircraft.
• Boundary layer flow field, surface pressure distribution, acoustics or skin friction measurements or visualization.
• Any of the above measurements in hypersonic flow.

Vehicle Condition Monitoring

• Optical arrays for robust flight control surface position and velocity measurement.
• Sensor arrays for structural load monitoring.
• Robust arrays for engine monitoring and control applications.

Advanced Instrumentation for Aeropropulsion Flight Tests
Thin film and fiber optic sensors, especially those compatible with advanced propulsion system materials such as ceramics and composites, and capable of withstanding the high temperatures and pressures associated with turbomachinery.

• Onboard processing for data condensation, failed sensor identification or other valuable onboard processing capability.

Vehicle Far Field Environmental Monitoring

• Nonintrusive measurements at range of 2-5 kilometers of environmental data (natural and induced flowfields, turbulence, weather, traffic).
• Onboard processing of sensed and telemetered data for integrated storage and strategic presentation to the flight crew.
  

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