Index to 1984 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 9, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1984 Tech B Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

Index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1974

The following information was given for 1974: (1) abstracts of reports dealing with new technology derived from the research and development activities of NASA or the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, arranged by subjects: electronics/electrical, electronics/electrical systems, physical sciences, materials/chemistry, life sciences, mechanics, machines, equipment and tools, fabrication technology, and computer programs, (2) indexes for the above documents: subject, personal author, originating center

Breaking Barriers to Low-Cost Modular Inverter Production & Use

The goal of this cost share contract is to advance key technologies to reduce size, weight and cost while enhancing performance and reliability of Modular Inverter Product for Distributed Energy Resources (DER). Efforts address technology development to meet technical needs of DER market protection, isolation, reliability, and quality. Program activities build on SatCon Technology Corporation inverter experience (e.g., AIPM, Starsine, PowerGate) for Photovoltaic, Fuel Cell, Energy Storage applications. Efforts focused four technical areas, Capacitors, Cooling, Voltage Sensing and Control of Parallel Inverters. Capacitor efforts developed a hybrid capacitor approach for conditioning SatCon's AIPM unit supply voltages by incorporating several types and sizes to store energy and filter at high, medium and low frequencies while minimizing parasitics (ESR and ESL). Cooling efforts converted the liquid cooled AIPM module to an air-cooled unit using augmented fin, impingement flow cooling. Voltage sensing efforts successfully modified the existing AIPM sensor board to allow several, application dependent configurations and enabling voltage sensor galvanic isolation. Parallel inverter control efforts realized a reliable technique to control individual inverters, connected in a parallel configuration, without a communication link. Individual inverter currents, AC and DC, were balanced in the paralleled modules by introducing a delay to the individual PWM gate pulses. The load current sharing is robust and independent of load types (i.e., linear and nonlinear, resistive and/or inductive). It is a simple yet powerful method for paralleling both individual devices dramatically improves reliability and fault tolerance of parallel inverter power systems. A patent application has been made based on this control technology

Index to 1985 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 10, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1985 Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

TLC : une architecture photovoltaïque concentrée (CPV) au potentiel d’efficacité élevé à faible coût

Abstract: Human civilization has grown dependent on ready access to low-cost energy, but the fossil fuels that currently meet the bulk of humanity’s energy needs are causing environmental destruction, including potentially catastrophic global warming. Solar energy has to potential to halt global warming, and, if low enough in cost, to also bring the whole world’s population to a first world living standard. Silicon PV has dramatically reduced costs largely through decreasing the cost and increasing the efficiency of the silicon cells, but silicon is nearing its theoretical efficiency limits, and even if the cells were free, silicon PV would still be too expensive to meet these goals. Tandem CPV cells are roughly twice as efficient as silicon, but previous CPV designs have been unable to compete with silicon on cost in spite of the efficiency advantage. A new CPV architecture, called TLC for its trough, lens and cone concentration stages, proposed using initial concentration by a low-cost trough mirror to shrink the rest of an CPV module by 40X and thus reduce overall module costs. But before this PhD research project, TLC was only a paper study. This PhD research project was started to answer the question of whether TLC could work out as well as it appeared, or whether there were hidden flaws that precluded beating silicon PV on cost, or possibly even precluded TLC from working at all. Thesis chapter 3 details the main optical design aspects, and chapter 4 covers the design of the rest of the TLC module, including leading variations where there is more than one plausible way to achieve low cost and high reliability. The work included building a unified analytical model spreadsheet that linked known aspects of the TLC design together and estimated costs for a given design variation. Thesis chapter 5 covers the economics of the proposed design, with a focus on materials costs since these dominate PV overall costs, and a section on reliability since product lifetime strongly influences life-cycle cost. The work included building 3D-CAD models to refine the TLC design, and then the prototyping of individual parts and processes, and finally building a physical prototype of a TLC mini-module and putting it in sun. This physical confirmation was necessary because even after TLC has been “built” many times, in visualization, on paper, on spreadsheets, and then in COMSOL, until TLC was physically built, hidden flaws could arise at any time. Chapter 6 of this thesis covers the simulation and validation carried out to show that it is plausible that TLC can meet its cost targets. The conclusion of this thesis summarizes the overall project. The project was a success, producing a TLC design with high potential efficiency, very low materials cost, and low estimated process costs, with the potential to beat even the US Department of Energy’s goal for PV pricing in 2030. Ray-tracing a 3D model showed that the design could achieve high concentration with adequate acceptance angles, and tests showed that the prototyping cells were suitable for TLC’s massively parallel microcell-array receiver configuration. The project also successfully tested the proposed manufacturing process for molding semi-dense arrays of tertiary optical elements on the back of a lens tile and assembled a TLC mini module which was tested on sun at the focus of a trough mirror. Four papers have already been published, with a fifth paper accepted, as result of this work.La civilisation humaine est devenue de plus en plus dépendante d'un accès facile à une énergie à faible coût, mais les combustibles fossiles qui répondent actuellement à la majeure partie des besoins énergétiques de l'humanité causent la destruction de l'environnement, y compris un réchauffement climatique potentiellement catastrophique. L'énergie solaire a le potentiel d'arrêter le réchauffement climatique et, si son coût est suffisamment bas, d'amener également la population mondiale entière à un niveau de vie du premier monde. Les coûts de photovoltaïque (PV) à base de silicium ont été considérablement réduits en grande partie en diminuant le prix et en augmentant l'efficacité des cellules en silicium, cependant l’utilisation de silicium a ses limites d'efficacité théoriques, et même si les cellules étaient gratuites, la PV à base de silicium serait encore trop chère pour atteindre ces objectifs. Les cellules de photovoltaïque concentré (CPV) Tandem sont environ deux fois plus efficaces que celles à base de silicium, mais malgré l'avantage de leur efficacité, les architectures des années précédentes de CPV n'ont pas été en mesure de rivaliser avec le silicium en termes de coût. Une nouvelle architecture CPV, appelée TLC (Trough-Lens-Cone) utilise la concentration initiale par un miroir parabolique à faible coût combiné avec un module CPV de 40X et ainsi réduire les coûts globaux du module. Avant ce projet de recherche de doctorat, TLC n'était qu'une étude sur papier. Cette thèse a pour but de répondre à la question de savoir si l’approche TLC pouvait fonctionner aussi bien qu'elle était apparue, ou s'il y avait des défauts cachés qui empêchaient de battre le silicium PV sur le coût, ou pourrait même empêcher la TLC de fonctionner. Ce travail comprenait la construction d'un modèle de tableur unifié qui reliait les aspects connus de la conception TLC et les coûts estimés pour une variation de conception donnée. Nous présentons également la construction de modèles 3D-CAD pour raffiner la conception TLC, puis le prototypage de pièces individuelles et de processus, et enfin la construction d'un prototype physique d'un mini-module TLC qui est mis au soleil. Cette validation physique était nécessaire car même après que TLC ait été théoriquement et numériquement « construit » à plusieurs reprises soit, en visualisation, sur papier, sur des feuilles de calcul, puis dans COMSOL, avant que TLC soit physiquement construit, des défauts cachés pouvaient survenir à tout moment. La mise en œuvre de ce projet a réussi, produisant une conception TLC cohérente qui avait un rendement élevé avec un coût des matériaux très bas et des faibles coûts estimatifs de processus, avec un potentiel de battre même l’objectif du département américain de l'énergie pour la tarification du silicium photovoltaïque en 2030. Le suivi de raies (Ray-tracing) avec un modèle 3D a montré que la conception pouvait atteindre une concentration élevée avec des angles d'acceptation adéquats. Les tests ont également montré que les cellules de prototypage ont été bien adaptées à la nouvelle configuration de TLC de récepteur à matrice de microcellules massivement parallèle. Le projet a également testé avec succès le processus de fabrication proposé pour le moulage de réseaux semi-denses d'éléments optiques tertiaires à l'arrière d'un carreau de lentille. Le projet a également réussi à assembler un mini-module TLC et à tester sous le soleil avec le focus d'un miroir parabolique. Quatre articles ont déjà été publiés, avec un cinquième article accepté, à la suite de ce travail

Index to 1983 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 8, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1983 Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

NASA SBIR abstracts of 1991 phase 1 projects

The objectives of 301 projects placed under contract by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are described. These projects were selected competitively from among proposals submitted to NASA in response to the 1991 SBIR Program Solicitation. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses. The abstracts are presented under the 15 technical topics within which Phase 1 proposals were solicited. Each project was assigned a sequential identifying number from 001 to 301, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference of the 1991 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA Field Center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number are included

Aeronautical Engineering. A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 136, June 1981

This bibliography lists 424 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in May 1981

Cumulative Index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1963 - 1966

Cumulative index of NASA Tech Briefs dealing with electrical and electronic, physical science and energy sources, materials and chemistry, life science, and mechanical innovation

NASA Tech Briefs, Fall/Winter 1981

Topics covered: NASA TU Services: Technology Utilization services that can assist you in learning about and applying NASA technology; New Product Ideas: A summary of selected innovations of value to manufacturers for the development of new products; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Life Sciences; Mechanics; Machinery; Fabrication Technology; Mathematics and Information Sciences