Turboprop Cargo Aircraft Systems study, phase 1

The effects of advanced propellers (propfan) on aircraft direct operating costs, fuel consumption, and noiseprints were determined. A comparison of three aircraft selected from the results with competitive turbofan aircraft shows that advanced turboprop aircraft offer these potential benefits, relative to advanced turbofan aircraft: 21 percent fuel saving, 26 percent higher fuel efficiency, 15 percent lower DOCs, and 25 percent shorter field lengths. Fuel consumption for the turboprop is nearly 40 percent less than for current commercial turbofan aircraft. Aircraft with both types of propulsion satisfy current federal noise regulations. Advanced turboprop aircraft have smaller noiseprints at 90 EPNdB than advanced turbofan aircraft, but large noiseprints at 70 and 80 EPNdB levels, which are usually suggested as quietness goals. Accelerated development of advanced turboprops is strongly recommended to permit early attainment of the potential fuel saving. Several areas of work are identified which may produce quieter turboprop aircraft

Nuclear thermal rocket workshop reference system Rover/NERVA

The Rover/NERVA engine system is to be used as a reference, against which each of the other concepts presented in the workshop will be compared. The following topics are reviewed: the operational characteristics of the nuclear thermal rocket (NTR); the accomplishments of the Rover/NERVA programs; and performance characteristics of the NERVA-type systems for both Mars and lunar mission applications. Also, the issues of ground testing, NTR safety, NASA's nuclear propulsion project plans, and NTR development cost estimates are briefly discussed

Propeller-Wing Integration on the Parallel Electric-Gas Architecture with Synergistic Utilization Scheme (PEGASUS) Aircraft

Electrically powered aircraft show promise for reducing emissions and energy consumption, but many of the opportunities surrounding electric propulsion have yet to be explored. One opportunity is the use of multiple propulsors or distributed propulsion for improved propulsion airframe integration. However, the size, power, location, and optimum number of propulsors has not been thoroughly vetted. This paper describes the use of FlightStream, a surface vorticity solver, to investigate the aerodynamic-propulsion integration of four propulsors across the leading edge of a wing, two inboard and two at the wingtips, as proposed in the NASA Parallel Electric-Gas Architecture with Synergistic Utilization Scheme (PEGASUS) concept. FlightStream was used to determine the minimum power required for cruise for the PEGASUS aircraft. The study found that tip propellers are effective at lowering both viscous and induced drag when compared to inboard propellers alone or inboard propellers combined with tip propellers. Despite this drag savings, the propulsive efficiency was reduced when a single propeller class was used, resulting in a higher system power consumption when compared with using multiple propeller classes. Reductions in propeller efficiency are related to increases in disc and blade loading of the propeller; thus, larger propellers or higher tip speeds are seen as possible means of to improve system performance

The NASA high-speed turboprop program

Technology readiness for Mach 0.7 to 0.8 turboprop powered aircraft with the potential for fuel savings and DOC reductions of up to 30 and 15 percent respectively relative to current in-service aircraft is addressed. The areas of propeller aeroacoustics, propeller structures, turboprop installed performance, aircraft cabin environment, and turboprop engine and aircraft studies are emphasized. Large scale propeller characteristics and high speed propeller flight research tests using a modified testbed aircraft are also considered

LOT-ECC: LOcalized and tiered reliability mechanisms for commodity memory systems

pre-printMemory system reliability is a serious and growing concern in modern servers. Existing chipkill-level mem- ory protection mechanisms suffer from several draw- backs. They activate a large number of chips on ev- ery memory access - this increases energy consump- tion, and reduces performance due to the reduction in rank-level parallelism. Additionally, they increase ac- cess granularity, resulting in wasted bandwidth in the absence of sufficient access locality. They also restrict systems to use narrow-I/O x4 devices, which are known to be less energy-efficient than the wider x8 DRAM de- vices. In this paper, we present LOT-ECC, a local- ized and multi-tiered protection scheme that attempts to solve these problems. We separate error detection and error correction functionality, and employ simple checksum and parity codes effectively to provide strong fault-tolerance, while simultaneously simplifying imple- mentation. Data and codes are localized to the same DRAM row to improve access efficiency. We use sys- tem firmware to store correction codes in DRAM data memory and modify the memory controller to handle data mapping. We thus build an effective fault-tolerance mechanism that provides strong reliability guarantees, activates as few chips as possible (reducing power con- sumption by up to 44.8% and reducing latency by up to 46.9%), and reduces circuit complexity, all while work- ing with commodity DRAMs and operating systems. Fi- nally, we propose the novel concept of a heterogeneous DIMM that enables the extension of LOT-ECC to x16 and wider DRAM parts

LOT-ECC: LOcalized and tiered reliability mechanisms for commodity memory systems

pre-printMemory system reliability is a serious and growing concern in modern servers. Existing chipkill-level mem- ory protection mechanisms suffer from several draw- backs. They activate a large number of chips on ev- ery memory access - this increases energy consump- tion, and reduces performance due to the reduction in rank-level parallelism. Additionally, they increase ac- cess granularity, resulting in wasted bandwidth in the absence of sufficient access locality. They also restrict systems to use narrow-I/O x4 devices, which are known to be less energy-efficient than the wider x8 DRAM de- vices. In this paper, we present LOT-ECC, a local- ized and multi-tiered protection scheme that attempts to solve these problems. We separate error detection and error correction functionality, and employ simple checksum and parity codes effectively to provide strong fault-tolerance, while simultaneously simplifying imple- mentation. Data and codes are localized to the same DRAM row to improve access efficiency. We use sys- tem firmware to store correction codes in DRAM data memory and modify the memory controller to handle data mapping. We thus build an effective fault-tolerance mechanism that provides strong reliability guarantees, activates as few chips as possible (reducing power con- sumption by up to 44.8% and reducing latency by up to 46.9%), and reduces circuit complexity, all while work- ing with commodity DRAMs and operating systems. Fi- nally, we propose the novel concept of a heterogeneous DIMM that enables the extension of LOT-ECC to x16 and wider DRAM parts

Quantifying the Benefits of Resource Multiplexing in On-Demand Data Centers

On-demand data centers host multiple applications on server farms by dynamically provisioning resources in response to workload variations. The efficiency of such dynamic provisioning on the required server farm capacity is dependent on several factors — the granularity and frequency of reallocation, the number of applications being hosted, the amount of resource overprovisioning and the accuracy of workload prediction. In this paper, we quantify the effect of these factors on the multiplexing benefits achievable in an on-demand data center. Using traces of real e-commerce workloads, we demonstrate that the ability to allocate fractional server resources at fine time-scales of tens of seconds to a few minutes can increase the multiplexing benefits by 162-188% over coarsegrained reallocation. Our results also show that these benefits increase in the presence of large number of hosted applications as a result of high level of multiplexing. In addition, we demonstrate that such fine-grained multiplexing is achievable even in the presence of real-world (inaccurate) workload predictors and allows overprovisioning slack of nearly 35-70% over coarse-grained multiplexing

JT8D and JT9D jet engine performance improvement program. Task 1: Feasibility analysis

JT8D and JT9D component performance improvement concepts which have a high probability of incorporation into production engines were identified and ranked. An evaluation method based on airline payback period was developed for the purpose of identifying the most promising concepts. The method used available test data and analytical models along with conceptual/preliminary designs to predict the performance improvements, weight, installation characteristics, cost for new production and retrofit, maintenance cost, and qualitative characteristics of candidate concepts. These results were used to arrive at the concept payback period, which is the time required for an airline to recover the investment cost of concept implementation