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"The ablative Teflon pulsed plasma thruster (PPT) is an onboard electromagnetic propulsion enabling technology for small spacecraft missions. The integration of PPTs onboard spacecraft requires the understanding and evaluation of possible thruster/spacecraft interactions. To aid in this effort the work presented in this thesis is directed towards the development and application of Langmuir probe techniques for use in the plume of PPTs. Double and triple Langmuir probes were developed and used to measure electron temperature and density of the PPT plume. The PPT used in this thesis was a laboratory model parallel plate ablative Teflon® PPT similar in size to the Earth Observing (EO-1) PPT operating in discharge energies between 5 and 40 Joules. The triple Langmuir probe was operated in the current-mode technique that requires biasing all three electrodes and measuring the resulting probe currents. This new implementation differs from the traditional voltage-mode technique that keeps one probe floating and requires a voltage measurement that is often susceptible to noise in the fluctuating PPT plume environment. The triple Langmuir probe theory developed in this work incorporates Laframboise’s current collection model for Debye length to probe radius ratios less than 100 in order to account for sheath expansion effects on ion collection, and incorporates the thin-sheath current collection model for Debye length to probe radius ratios greater than 100. Error analysis of the non-linear system of current collection equations that describe the operation of the current-mode triple Langmuir probe is performed as well. Measurements were taken at three radial locations, 5, 10, and 15 cm from the Teflon® surface of the PPT and at angles of 20 and 40 degrees to either side of the thruster centerline as well as at the centerline. These measurements were taken on two orthogonal planes, parallel and perpendicular to the PPT electrodes. A data-processing software was developed and implements the current-mode triple Langmuir probe theory and associated error analysis. Results show the time evolution of the electron temperature and density. Characteristic to all the data is the presence of hot electrons of approximately 5 to 10 eV at the beginning of the pulse, occurring near the peak of the discharge current. The electron temperature quickly drops off from its peak values to 1-2 eV for the remainder of the pulse. Peak electron densities occur after the peak temperatures. The maximum electron density values on the centerline of the plume of a laboratory PPT 10 cm from the Teflon® surface are 6.6x10^19 +/- 1.3x10^19 m^-3 for the 5 J PPT, 7.2x10^20 +/- 1.4x10^20 m^-3 for the 20 J PPT, and 1.2x10^21 +/- 2.7x10^20 m^-3 for the 40 J PPT. Results from the double Langmuir probe taken at r=10 cm, theta perpendicular=70 degrees and 90 degrees of a laboratory PPT showed good agreement with the triple probe method."

Submitted by FERNANDO RIBEIRO FILADELFO null (frfiladelfo@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-02-06T19:39:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 FILADELFO F R - Tese Doutorado - FEG - UNESP.pdf: 2806067 bytes, checksum: 24caf6543f9f724de7248956a15f5279 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by LUIZA DE MENEZES ROMANETTO (luizamenezes@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2017-02-09T19:05:42Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 filadelfo_fr_dr_guara.pdf: 2806067 bytes, checksum: 24caf6543f9f724de7248956a15f5279 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-09T19:05:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 filadelfo_fr_dr_guara.pdf: 2806067 bytes, checksum: 24caf6543f9f724de7248956a15f5279 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-07 / Veículos elétricos são considerados a melhor alternativa aos veículos com motores de combustão interna, apresentando vantagens bastante significativas, tais como: emissão zero de poluentes, alta eficiência dos motores elétricos e baixa emissão de ruído acústico. O sistema de propulsão de um veículo elétrico consiste basicamente de uma ou mais fontes de energia, um ou mais motores, conversores de potência, componentes eletrônicos, componentes mecânicos para transmissão de torque e velocidade e rodas com pneus. Neste trabalho é proposta a modelagem de um sistema de propulsão para um veículo elétrico, que inclui o modelo dinâmico veicular para movimento longitudinal, o modelo dinâmico do motor elétrico, o modelo do conversor utilizado para acionamento do motor e o modelo do sistema de controle. Devido às características bastante adequadas para aplicação em sistemas de propulsão automotiva, o motor de indução trifásico é o selecionado para estudo. A estratégia de controle para acionamento do motor, foco deste trabalho, é o Controle Vetorial Direto Orientado pelo Fluxo do Estator, que garante alto desempenho, rápida resposta dinâmica e apresenta insensibilidade à variação de parâmetros do motor durante sua operação. São desenvolvidas novas técnicas para a reconstrução dos sinais das tensões do estator a partir de sinais de controle PWM do conversor e da tensão DC que alimenta o inversor e estimativa da amplitude e posição angular do vetor espacial do fluxo do estator, primordial para a estratégia de controle adotada. A modelagem é toda desenvolvida utilizando o software PSIM e os resultados de simulação são apresentados. / Electric vehicles are the best alternative to internal combustion engines vehicles, presenting significant advantages such as: zero emission of pollutants, high efficiency of electric motors and low noise emission. Basically, an electric vehicle propulsion system consists of one or more energy sources, one or more engines, power converters, electronic components, mechanical components for torque and speed transmission, and wheels with tires. This work proposes the modeling of a propulsion system for an electric vehicle, which includes the dynamic vehicle model for longitudinal movement, the dynamic model of the electric motor, the model of the converter used as motor driver and the model of the control system. Due to very suitable characteristics for application in automotive propulsion systems, three-phase induction motor is chosen for this study. Focus of this work, Direct Stator-Flux-Oriented Vector Control is the control strategy for the motor drive, which guarantees high performance, fast dynamic response and insensitivity due motor parameters variation during its operation. New techniques are developed for the reconstruction of the stator voltages signals from the PWM control signals of the converter and the DC voltage that feeds the inverter and the estimation of the amplitude and angular position of the spatial vector of the stator flux, primordial for the adopted control strategy. Modeling is developed using PSIM software and simulation results are presented.

Pulsed Detonation Engines (PDEs) have the potential to revolutionize fight by better utilizing the chemical energy content of reactive fuel/air mixtures over conventional combustion processes. Combustion by a super-sonic detonation wave results in a significant increase in pressure in addition to an increase in temperature. In order to harness this pressure increase and achieve a high power density, it is desirable to operate PDEs at high frequency. The process of detonation initiation impacts operating frequency by dictating the length of the chamber and contributing to the overall cycle time. Therefore a key challenge in the development of a practical PDEs is the requirement to rapidly initiate a detonation in hydrocarbon-air mixtures. This thesis evaluates the influence of spark energy and airflow velocity on this challenging initiation process. The influence of spark energy, number of sparks and airflow velocity on Deflagration-to-Detonation Transition (DDT) was studied during cyclic operation of a small-scale PDE at the General Electric Global Research Center. Experiments were conducted in a 50 mm square transitioning to cylindrical channel PDE with optical access operating with stoichiometric ethylene-air mixture. Total spark energy was varied from 250 mJ to 4 J and was distributed between one and four spark plugs located in the same axial location. Initial flame acceleration was imaged using high-speed shadowgraph and was characterized by the time to reach 20 cm from the spark plug. Measurements of detonation wave velocity and emergence time, the time it takes the detonation wave to exit the tube, was measured using dynamic pressure transducers and ionization probes. It was found that the flame front spread was faster at higher spark energies and with more spark locations. Initial flame acceleration was 16% faster for the 4-spark, 4 J case when compared to the baseline 1-spark, 1 J case. When looking at the effect of airflow on the influence of spark energy, it was found that airflow had a larger effect on emergence time at high energies, versus energies less than 1 J. Finally, for a selected case of 0.25 J spark energy and 4 sparks, the velocity of the fuel-air mixture during fill was found to have a varying influence on detonation initiation and emergence time.

This dissertation investigates the development of a methodology suitable for the evaluation of advanced propulsion concepts. At early stages of development, both the future performance of these concepts and their requirements are highly uncertain, making it difficult to forecast their future value. A systematic methodology to identify potential advanced propulsion concepts and assess their robustness is necessary to reduce the risk of developing advanced propulsion concepts. Existing advanced design methodologies have evaluated the robustness of technologies or concepts to variations in requirements, but they are not suitable to evaluate a large number of dissimilar concepts. Variations in requirements have been shown to impact the development of advanced propulsion concepts, and any method designed to evaluate these concepts must incorporate the possible variations of the requirements into the assessment. In order to do so, a methodology had to do two things. First, it had to systemically identify a probabilistic distribution for the future requirements. Such a distribution would allow decision-makers to quantify the uncertainty introduced by variations in requirements. Second, the methodology must assess the robustness of the propulsion concepts as a function of that distribution. These enabling elements have been synthesized into new methodology, the Evolving Requirements Technology Assessment (ERTA) method. The ERTA method was used to evaluate and compare advanced propulsion systems as possible power systems for a hurricane tracking, High Altitude, Long Endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The problem served as a good demonstration of the ERTA methodology because conventional propulsion systems will not be sufficient to power the UAV, but the requirements for such a vehicle are still uncertain.

Flame-holding in a recessed cavity is investigated experimentally in a Mach 2.5 preheated cross-flow for both stable and unstable combustion, with a relatively low preheating. Self-sustained combustion is investigated for stagnation pressures and temperatures reaching 1.4 MPa and 750 K. In particular, cavity blowout is characterized with respect to cavity aspect ratio (L/D =2.84 - 3.84), injection strategy (floor - ramp), aft ramp angle (90 deg - 22.5 deg) and multi-fuel mixture (CH₄-H₂ or CH₄-C₂H₄ blends). The results show that small hydrogen addition to methane leads to significant increase in flame stability, whereas ethylene addition has a more gradual effect. Since the multi-fuels used here are composed of a slow and a fast chemistry fuel, the resulting blowout region has a slow (methane dominant) and a fast (hydrogen or ethylene dominant) branch. Regardless of the fuel composition, the pressure at blowout is close to the non-reacting pressure imposed by the cross-flow, suggesting that combustion becomes potentially unsustainable in the cavity at the sub-atmospheric pressures encountered in these supersonic studies. The effect of preheating is also investigated and results show that the stability domain broadens with increasing stagnation temperature. However, smaller cavities appear less sensitive to the cross-flow preheating, and stable combustion is achieved over a smaller range of fuel flow rate, which may be the result of limited residence and mixing time. The blowout data point obtained at lower fuel flow rate fairly matches the empirical model developed by Rasmussen et al. for floor injection phi = 0.0028 Da^-.8, where phi is the equivalence ratio and Da the Damkohler number. An alternate model is proposed here that takes into account the ignition to scale the blowout data. Since the mass of air entrained into the cavity cannot be accurately estimated and the cavity temperature is only approximated from the wall temperature, the proposed scaling has some uncertainty. Nevertheless the new phi-Da scaling is shown to preserve the subtleties of the blowout trends as seen in the current experimental data.

This thesis deals with the experimental and numerical analysis of the water hammer phenomenon generated by the discharge of a pressurized liquid into a pipeline kept under vacuum conditions. This flow configuration induces several multiphase phenomena such as cavitation and gas desorption that cannot be ignored in the water hammer behavior.<p><p>The motivation of this research work comes from the liquid propulsion systems used in spacecrafts, which can undergo fluid hammer effects threatening the system integrity. Fluid hammer can be particularly adverse during the priming phase, which involves the fast opening of an isolation valve to fill the system with liquid propellant. Due to the initial vacuum conditions in the pipeline system, the water hammer taking place during priming may involve multiphase phenomena, such as cavitation and desorption of a non-<p>condensable gas, which may affect the pressure surges produced in the lines. Even though this flow behavior is known, only few studies model the spacecraft hardware configuration, and a proper characterization of the two-phase flow is still missing. The creation of a reliable database and the physical understanding of the water hammer behavior in propulsion systems are mandatory to improve the physical models implemented in the numerical codes used to simulate this flow configuration.<p><p>For that purpose, an experimental facility modeling a spacecraft propulsion system has been designed, in which the physical phenomena taking place during priming are generated under controlled conditions in the laboratory using inert fluids. An extended experimental campaign was performed on the installation, aiming at analyzing the effect of various working parameters on the fluid hammer behavior, such as the initial pressure in the line, liquid saturation with the pressurant gas, liquid properties and pipe configuration. The influence of the desorbed gas during water hammer occurrence is found to have a great importance on the whole process, due to the added compressibility and lower speed of sound by an increasing amount of non-condensable gas in the liquid + gas mixture. This results in lower pressure levels and faster pressure peaks attenuation, compared to fluids without desorption. The two-phase flow was characterized by means of flow visualization of the liquid front at the location where the fluid hammer is generated. The front arrival was found to be preceded by a foamy mixture of liquid, vapor and non-condensable gas, and the pressure wave reflected at the tank may induce the liquid column separation at the bottom end. While column separation takes place, the successive pressure peaks are generated by the impact of the column back against the bottom end.<p><p>The resulting experimental database is then confronted to the predictions of the 1D numerical code EcosimPro/ESPSS used to assess the propulsion system designs. Simulations are performed with the flow configuration described before, modeling the experimental facility. The comparison of the numerical results against the experimental data shows that aspects such as speed of sound computation with a dissolved gas and friction modeling need to be improved. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Sustainability thinking and environmental questions are often in the center of news today. Our planet is changing and us humans need to change our lifestyle in order to avoid potentially devastating events. New laws and regulations, along with new sustainability goals, are constantly arriving around the world. Within the maritime industry, multiple emission goals have recently been implemented which puts a lot of pressure on shipping companies around the world. This thesis introduces a new sales-tool, The Ecolometer, which purpose is to support sales-processes within Volvo Penta. The tool uses a Product Environmental Footprint methodology to quantify different environmental impact categories based on the Nine Planetary Boundaries model. Based on the Planetary Boundaries model, some focus categories have been selected which has been set as requirements for the new tool. The tool have been validated and tested on some cases, where different propulsion systems where investigated. The results shows that the method and tool is useful and applicable to the intended purpose. The tool provides an efficient and easy way to quantify and optimize environmental impact throughout the lifecycle of a vessel, while in the meantime making sustainability thinking accessible, and popular within the industry. The thesis also shows how necessary it is for Volvo Penta the implement this tool, in order to ensure that their sustainability investments is going in the right direction. / Miljöfrågor ligger ofta i fokus i dagens debatt, och att tänka miljövänligt och hållbart blir allt mer ett socialt krav. Vår planet förändras, och vi människor måste göra stora förändringar i hur vi lever för att undvika att potentiella katastrofer uppstår. Nya lagar, regler och hållbarhetsmål är konstant uppsatta runt om i världen för hur vi ska leva. Inom den maritima industrin sattes nyligen stora mål upp i hur mycket utsläpp som tillåts för fartyg runt vilket sätter stor press på företag inom branschen runt om i världen. Denna uppsats introducerar ett nytt försäljningsverktyg, Ecolometern, vars syfte är att hjälpa och assistera Volvo Pentas säljprocesser. Verktyget använder sig av en Product Environmental Footprint metodologi för att kvantifiera miljöpåverkan utifrån olika kategorier i Nine Planetary Boundaries modellen. Baserat på modellen, har ett antal kategorier valts ut, som agerar kriterier för det nya verktyget. Verktyget har även blivit validerat och testa mot ett antal case, där olika drivlinor har blivit analyserade. Resultatet visar att metoden och verktyget är användbart för det uppsatta syftet. Verktyget ger ett effektivt men enkelt sätt att visa och optimera miljöpåverkan sett till hela livscykeln av ett fartyg, samtidigt som det gör hållbarhetstänk mer tillgängligt och populärt inom industrin. Uppsatsen visar också på nödvändigheten för Volvo Penta att implementera detta verktyg, för att försäkra sig om att deras hållbarhetssatsningar verkligen går åt rätt håll.

The present research is an experimental and numerical study of aeroacoustic phenomena occurring in large solid rocket motors (SRM) as the Ariane 5 boosters. The emphasis is given to aeroacoustic instabilities that may lead to pressure and thrust oscillations which reduce the rocket motor performance and could damage the payload. The study is carried out within the framework of a CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) research program. <p><p>Large SRM are composed of a submerged nozzle and segmented propellant grains separated by inhibitors. During propellant combustion, a cavity appears around the nozzle. Vortical flow structures may be formed from the inhibitor (Obstacle Vortex Shedding OVS) or from natural instability of the radial flow resulting from the propellant combustion (Surface Vortex Shedding SVS). Such hydrodynamic manifestations drive pressure oscillations in the confined flow established in the motor. When the vortex shedding frequency synchronizes acoustic modes of the motor chamber, resonance may occur and sound pressure can be amplified by vortex nozzle interaction.<p><p>Original analytical models, in particular based on vortex sound theory, point out the parameters controlling the flow-acoustic coupling and the effect of the nozzle design on sound production. They allow the appropriate definition of experimental tests.<p><p>The experiments are conducted on axisymmetric cold flow models respecting the Mach number similarity with the Ariane 5 SRM. The test section includes only one inhibitor and a submerged nozzle. The flow is either created by an axial air injection at the forward end or by a radial injection uniformly distributed along chamber porous walls. The internal Mach number can be varied continuously by means of a movable needle placed in the nozzle throat. Acoustic pressure measurements are taken by means of PCB piezoelectric transducers. A particle image velocimetry technique (PIV) is used to analyse the effect of the acoustic resonance on the mean flow field and vortex properties. An active control loop is exploited to obtain resonant and non resonant conditions for the same operating point.<p><p>Finally, numerical simulations are performed using a time dependent Navier Stokes solver. The analysis of the unsteady simulations provides pressure spectra, sequence of vorticity fields and average flow field. Comparison to experimental data is conducted.<p><p>The OVS and SVS instabilities are identified. The inhibitor parameters, the chamber Mach number and length, and the nozzle geometry are varied to analyse their effect on the flow acoustic coupling.<p><p>The conclusions state that flow acoustic coupling is mainly observed for nozzles including cavity. The nozzle geometry has an effect on the pressure oscillations through a coupling between the acoustic fluctuations induced by the cavity volume and the vortices travelling in front of the cavity entrance. When resonance occurs, the sound pressure level increases linearly with the chamber Mach number, the frequency and the cavity volume. In absence of cavity, the pressure fluctuations are damped.<p><p> / Doctorat en sciences appliquées / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished