Dynamics of space welding impact and corresponding safety welding study

This study was undertaken in order to be sure that no hazard would exist from impingement of hot molten metal particle detachments upon an astronauts space suit during any future electron beam welding exercises or experiments. The conditions under which molten metal detachments might occur in a space welding environment were analyzed. The safety issue is important during welding with regards to potential molten metal detachments from the weld pool and cold filler wire during electron beam welding in space. Theoretical models were developed to predict the possibility and size of the molten metal detachment hazards during the electron beam welding exercises at low earth orbit. Some possible ways of obtaining molten metal drop detachments would include an impulse force, or bump, to the weld sample, cut surface, or filler wire. Theoretical models were determined for these detachment concerns from principles of impact and kinetic energies, surface tension, drop geometry, surface energies, and particle dynamics. A weld pool detachment parameter for specifying the conditions for metal weld pool detachment by impact was derived and correlated to the experimental results. The experimental results were for the most part consistent with the theoretical analysis and predictions.     

Gating Functions for Multipath Mitigation in GNSS BOC Signals

A new multipath mitigation technique is proposed for binary offset carrier (BOC) signals in global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) using the concept of gating function originally conceived for the GPS coarse-acquisition (C/A) code. Specially-tailored pulses are utilized to diminish the number of false-lock points of the code discriminator response and to improve the multipath mitigation capability. The code loop includes only four real correlators (two extra correlators are required for the simplified bump-jumping algorithm with BOC(n,n) signals). Results obtained with BOC(n,n) and BOC(2n,n) signals show that this technique eliminates the multipath ranging errors for reflected rays with relative delays typically above twenty percent of the spreading code chip duration, thus comparing favorably with the conventional receiver correlation techniques.     

Tropospheric delays from GNSS for application in coastal altimetry

In the scope of the development of an improved methodology for the computation of the wet tropospheric correction for coastal altimetry, based on the use of tropospheric delays derived from GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems), various studies have been conducted aiming to improve the estimation, at global scale, of GNSS-derived tropospheric delays.