NASA SBIR 2011 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Combustion Research and Flow Technology
6210 Keller's Church Road
Pipersville, PA 18947 - 1020
(215) 766-1520

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Vineet Ahuja
vineet@craft-tech.com
6210 Keller's Church Rd.
Pipersville, PA 18947 - 1020
(215) 766-1520 Extension :23

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 3
End: 5

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The design, development and staging of tests to certify liquid rocket engines usually require high-fidelity structural, fluid and thermal support analysis. These analyses are crucial to a successful engine test program since pressurization requirements, heat loads, cooling requirements and structural stresses are evaluated. Furthermore, these analyses are utilized to detect anomalies, unsteady pressure pulsations, structural vibrations, resonant modes and unexpected plume impingement zones that may be hazardous to the test stand structure and/or the test article. Such high-fidelity analyses have traditionally been performed on PC-cluster type computational platforms spanning over days/weeks given the complexity of the flowpath and flow regimes typically involved in the testing of liquid rocket engines. In this proposal we exploit the data parallelism of the computational algorithms involved to significantly enhance performance on low-cost high-speed GPU enabled hardware. Such a transition to GPU-based hardware will result in a paradigm shift for compute-intensive propulsion system applications from expensive CPU dominated PC-cluster architectures to economical workstation styled hybrid GPU-CPU systems, while resulting in dramatic decreases in turnaround times.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The transition to GPU based computing software will speed up analysis of rocket engine stands and components used on test stands. This includes cryogenic feed lines, high pressure tankage, valve systems, and cooling spray nozzles on flame deflectors. The algorithms developed here can be extended to NASA codes used for heat transfer analysis, tank pressurization, structural and thermal stress analysis. It will establish GPU porting protocols for engine/facility health monitoring software as well as software used in control systems.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The commercial market for our product is very large encompassing the broad markets of aerospace and space transportation, fluid handling machinery (pumps and valves), chemical process plants, nuclear and traditional power generation (gas turbine applications) as well as wind energy. The developed product can also be utilized by the space transportation industry for design support and risk assessment.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.)

Analytical Methods Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing Models & Simulations (see also Testing & Evaluation) Simulation & Modeling Software Tools (Analysis, Design)