Langley Research Center

About: Langley Research Center is a facility organization based out in Hampton, Virginia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Mach number & Wind tunnel. The organization has 15945 authors who have published 37602 publications receiving 821623 citations. The organization is also known as: NASA Langley & NASA Langley Research Center.

Intercomparison and evaluation of cumulus parametrizations under summertime midlatitude continental conditions

Abstract: This study reports the Single-Column Model (SCM) part of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM)/the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud System Study (GCSS) joint SCM and Cloud-Resolving Model (CRM) Case 3 intercomparison study, with a focus on evaluation of cumulus parametrizations used in SCMs. Fifteen SCMs are evaluated under summertime midlatitude continental conditions using data collected at the ARM Southern Great Plains site during the summer 1997 Intensive Observing Period. Results from ten CRMs are also used to diagnose problems in the SCMs. It is shown that most SCMs can generally capture well the convective events that were well-developed within the SCM domain, while most of them have difficulties in simulating the occurrence of those convective events that only occurred within a small part of the domain. All models significantly underestimate the surface stratiform precipitation. A third of them produce large errors in surface precipitation and thermodynamic structures. Deficiencies in convective triggering mechanisms are thought to be one of the major reasons. Using a triggering mechanism that is based on the vertical integral of parcel buoyant energy without additional appropriate constraints results in overactive convection, which in turn leads to large systematic warm/dry biases in the troposphere. It is also shown that a non-penetrative convection scheme can underestimate the depth of instability for midlatitude convection, which leads to large systematic cold/moist biases in the troposphere. SCMs agree well quantitatively with CRMs in the updraught mass fluxes, while most models significantly underestimate the downdraught mass fluxes. Neglect of mesoscale updraught and downdraught mass fluxes in the SCMs contributes considerably to the discrepancies between the SCMs and the CRMs. In addition, uncertainties in the diagnosed mass fluxes in the CRMs and deficiencies with cumulus parametrizations are not negligible. Similar results are obtained in the sensitivity tests when different forcing approaches are used. Finally, sensitivity tests from an SCM indicate that its simulations can be greatly improved when its triggering mechanism and closure assumption are improved. © Royal Meteorological Society, 2002. J. C. Petch's contribution is Crown copyright.

Spatial adaption procedures on unstructured meshes for accurate unsteady aerodynamic flow computation

Abstract: Spatial adaption procedures for the accurate and efficient solution of steady and unsteady inviscid flow problems are described. The adaption procedures were developed and implemented within a two-dimensional unstructured-grid upwind-type Euler code. These procedures involve mesh enrichment and mesh coarsening to either add points in a high gradient region or the flow or remove points where they are not needed, respectively, to produce solutions of high spatial accuracy at minimal computational costs. A detailed description is given of the enrichment and coarsening procedures and comparisons with alternative results and experimental data are presented to provide an assessment of the accuracy and efficiency of the capability. Steady and unsteady transonic results, obtained using spatial adaption for the NACA 0012 airfoil, are shown to be of high spatial accuracy, primarily in that the shock waves are very sharply captured. The results were obtained with a computational savings of a factor of approximately fifty-three for a steady case and as much as twenty-five for the unsteady cases.

Summertime photochemistry of the troposphere at high northern latitudes

Abstract: Budgets of O3, NO(x), and NO(y), and acetic acid in the Arctic Boundary Layer Expedition (ABLE 3A) flight region are constructed using photochemical model statistics based on aircraft observations. A Lagrangian model is used to reconstruct the photochemical history of two aged biomass fire plumes sampled by the ABLE 3A aircraft. It is shown that anthropogenic influence on O3 levels in the Arctic may manifest itself not by long-range transport of pollution-derived O3, but rather by a decrease of the regional photochemical sink due to the presence of small amounts of NO(x). The low concentrations of NO(x) measured in ABLE 3A were sufficient to reduce the rate of photochemical loss appreciably relative to a NO(x)-free atmosphere, thus increasing the O3 lifetime. It is shown that decomposition of PAN can account for most of the NO(x) measured below 4-km altitude, but for only 20 percent at 6-km altitude. A lifetime of 29 days is estimated for NO(y) in the ABLE 23A flight region.

AE Source Orientation by Plate Wave Analysis

Abstract: Lead breaks (Hsu-Neilsen source) were used to generate simulated acoustic emission signals in an aluminum plate at angles of 0, 30, 60, and 90 degrees with respect to the plane of the plate. This was accomplished by breaking the lead on slots cut into the plate at the respective angles. The out-of-plane and in-plane displacement components of the resulting signals were detected by broad band transducers and digitized. Analysis of the waveforms showed them to consist of the extensional and flexural plate modes. The amplitude of both components of the two modes was dependent on the source orientation angle. This suggests that plate wave analysis may be used to determine the source orientation of acoustic emission sources.

Application of nonlinear systems theory to transonic unsteady aerodynamic responses

Abstract: A methodology is presented for using the Volterra-Wiener theory of nonlinear systems in aeroservoelastic (ASE) analyses and design. The theory is applied to the development of nonlinear aerodynamic response models that can be defined in state-space form and are, therefore, appropriate for use in modern control theory. The Volterra-Wiener theory relies on the identification of nonlinear kernels that can be used to predict the response of a nonlinear system due to an arbitrary input. A numerical kernel identification technique, based on unit impulse responses, is presented and applied to a simple bilinear, single-input-single-output (SISO) system. The linear kernel (unit impulse response) and the nonlinear second-order kernel of the system are numerically identified and compared with the exact, analytically defined linear and second-order kernels. This kernel identification technique is then applied to the computational aeroelasticity program-transonic small disturbance (CAP-TSD) code for identification of the linear and second-order kernels of a NACA64A010 rectangular wing undergoing pitch at M = 0.5, M = 0.85 (transonic), and M = 0.93 (transonic). Results presented demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for use with nonlinear, unsteady aerodynamic responses.