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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Leveraging the Polymer Glass Transition to Access Thermally Switchable Shear Jamming Suspensions

Suspensions of polymeric nano-and microparticles are fascinating stress-responsive material systems that, depending on their composition, can display a diverse range of flow properties under shear, such as drastic thinning, thickening, and even jamming (reversible solidification driven by shear). However, investigations to date have almost exclusively focused on nonresponsive particles, which do not allow in situ tuning of the flow properties. Polymeric materials possess rich phase transitions that can be directly tuned by their chemical structures, which has enabled researchers to engineer versatile adaptive materials that can respond to targeted external stimuli. Reported herein are suspensions of (readily prepared) micrometer-sized polymeric particles with accessible glass transition temperatures (T g ) designed to thermally control their non-Newtonian rheology. The underlying mechanical stiffness and interparticle friction between particles change dramatically near T g . Capitalizing on these properties, it is shown that, in contrast to conventional systems, a dramatic and nonmonotonic change in shear thickening occurs as the suspensions transition through the particles' T g . This straightforward strategy enables the in situ turning on (or off) of the system's ability to shear jam by varying the temperature relative to T g and lays the groundwork for other types of stimuli-responsive jamming systems through polymer chemistry.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Geodetic Evidence for Distributed Shear Below the Brittle Crust of the Walker Lane, Western United States

Abstract Models of active deformation of the Earth's crust are predominantly represented with dislocations having a downdip continuation into the lower crust, where the fault slips continuously. This model predicts surface strain accumulation concentrated near the fault during the interseismic period. In an alternative model, faults do not extend beneath the elastic portion of the crust and are accompanied by a wide zone of distributed shear underneath, predicting a more constant strain rate lacking concentrations at the faults. We use high‐precision GPS data collected across the northern and central Walker Lane, USA— a region of complex faulting near the western edge of the Basin and Range Province to evaluate which model is appropriate. Despite the existence of dense continuous and semi‐continuous geodetic networks that have been surveyed for ∼20 years, the horizontal velocities reveal no evidence of localized strain accumulation across the fault surface expressions. Instead, deformation within the Walker Lane is uniformly linear, suggesting that the surface deformation reflects distributed shear within the ductile crust rather than focused deformation at faults. This suggests no downdip extension of the faults below the seismogenic layer. The shear zone is 172 ± 6 km wide in the northernmost Walker Lane narrowing to 116 ± 4 km in the central Walker Lane. The total velocity budget across the shear zone is 7.2 ± 0.1 mm/yr in the north, increasing to 10.1 ± 0.1 mm/yr in the central Walker Lane. We conclude that assuming the presence of lower crustal dislocations when estimating geodetic faults slip rates may be inappropriate.

Geochemistry & Geophysics↗
DOE OSTI2025

Co‐Evolution of Specific Stiffness and Permeability of Rock Fractures Offset in Shear

Abstract Fractures and faults represent planes of weakness and compliance in rock masses that serve as focal points for both microearthquakes and fluid transport, with seismicity and permeability evolution closely linked. Contact stiffness is highly stress‐sensitive and directly influences permeability. We explore the co‐evolution of specific stiffness and permeability of rough fractures under normal stress and shear offset using numerical simulations. Individual rough fractures are represented by variable amplitude (Root mean square) and wavelength ( λ ) using a granular mechanics model. Contacting rough surfaces are mated, offset in shear, and then compacted in displacement mode. The compacting fractures generate stress‐dependent changes in contact porosity, which govern both permeability and stiffness evolution. We establish a universal dimensionless relationship linking specific stiffness and permeability that inherently incorporates the effects of surface roughness, shear offset, and microcracking. The observed cracking effect—where local stress redistribution and pressure‐driven microcrack propagation dynamically alter the aperture field—introduces a nonlinear permeability response at high stress. Increased roughness amplitude and larger shear offsets reduce stiffness while dampening permeability sensitivity to stress, demonstrating a strong interplay between surface texture and hydro‐mechanical behavior. While the model captures this behavior effectively, deviations emerge at very low porosities due to extreme aperture sensitivity in this limit.

He, Xinxin [Energy and Mineral Engineering Pennsyl↗
DOE OSTI2022

Relation between interfacial shear and friction force in 2D materials

Understanding the interfacial properties between an atomic layer and its substrate is of key interest at both the fundamental and technological levels. From Fermi level pinning to strain engineering and superlubricity, the interaction between a single atomic layer and its substrate governs electronic, mechanical and chemical properties. Here, we measure the hardly accessible interfacial transverse shear modulus of an atomic layer on a substrate. By performing measurements on bulk graphite, and on epitaxial graphene films on SiC with different stacking orders and twisting, as well as in the presence of intercalated hydrogen, we find that the interfacial transverse shear modulus is critically controlled by the stacking order and the atomic layer–substrate interaction. Importantly, we demonstrate that this modulus is a pivotal measurable property to control and predict sliding friction in supported two-dimensional materials. The experiments demonstrate a reciprocal relationship between friction force per unit contact area and interfacial shear modulus. As a result, the same relationship emerges from simulations with simple friction models, where the atomic layer– substrate interaction controls the shear stiffness and therefore the resulting friction dissipation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

The coexistence of the streaming instability and the vertical shear instability in protoplanetary disks

The streaming instability is a promising mechanism to induce the formation of planetesimals. Nonetheless, this process has been found in previous studies to require either a dust-to-gas surface density ratio or a dust size that is enhanced compared to observed values. Employing two-dimensional global simulations of protoplanetary disks, we show that the vertical shear instability and the streaming instability in concert can cause dust concentration that is sufficient for planetesimal formation for lower surface density ratios and smaller dust sizes than the streaming instability in isolation, and in particular under conditions that are consistent with observational constraints. This is because dust overdensities forming in pressure bumps induced by the vertical shear instability act as seeds for the streaming instability and are enhanced by it. While our two-dimensional model does not include self-gravity, we find that strong dust clumping and the formation (and dissolution) of gravitationally unstable overdensities can be robustly inferred from the evolution of the maximum or the mean dust-to-gas volume density ratio. The vertical shear instability puffs up the dust layer to an average mid-plane dust-to-gas density ratio that is significantly below unity. We therefore find that reaching a mid-plane density ratio of one is not necessary to trigger planetesimal formation via the streaming instability when it acts in unison with the vertical shear instability.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Investigating shear flow through continuum gyrokinetic simulations of limiter biasing in the Texas Helimak

Previous limiter-biasing experiments on the Texas Helimak, a simple magnetized torus, have been inconclusive on the effect of flow shear on turbulence levels. To explore this, the first gyrokinetic simulations of limiter biasing in the Helimak using the plasma physics code Gkeyll have been carried out, and results are presented here. For the scenarios considered, turbulence is mostly driven by the interchange instability, which depends on gradients of steady state density profiles. An analysis of both experimental and simulation data demonstrates that shear rates are mostly less than than local linear growth rates, and not all requirements for shear stabilization are met. Yet, the mostly vertical shear flow has an important effect on bulk transport and experimental steady-state density profiles, and changes to the gradients correspond to changes in turbulence levels.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Anisotropic E × B shearing rate in a magnetic island

We derive the E × B shearing rate associated with vortex flow inside a macroscopic magnetic island (MI) in axisymmetric toroidal geometry. Due to the elongation of the MI and incompressibility of the E × B flow, the shearing rate near X-points is much lower than that near the mid-plane (x-axis of the local Cartesian coordinate) of the MI on the same flux surface. Furthermore, the rate formally vanishes at the X-points where the local poloidal magnetic field associated with the MI stagnates. Here, this calculation of E × B shearing profile and, in particular, minimal E × B shear near the X-points is consistent with the recent experimental finding that turbulence tends to spread into an MI through regions around the X-points and can contribute to more thorough quantitative interpretation of the results from experiments and simulations.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Gyrokinetic and extended-MHD simulations of a flow shear stabilized Z-pinch experiment

Axisymmetric (m = 0) gyrokinetic and extended-MHD simulations of a sheared-flow Z-pinch plasma are performed with the high-order finite volume code COGENT. The present gyrokinetic model solves the long-wavelength limit of the gyrokinetic equation for both ion and electron species coupled to the electrostatic gyro-Poisson equation for the electrostatic potential. The extended-MHD model is electromagnetic and includes the effects of the gyro-viscous pressure tensor, diamagnetic electron and ion heat fluxes, and generalized Ohm's law. Additionally, a prominent feature of this work is that the radial profiles for the plasma density and temperature are taken from the fusion Z-pinch experiment (FuZE), and the magnetic field profile is obtained as a solution of the MHD force balance equation. Such an approach allows to address realistic plasma parameters and provide insights into the current and planned experiments. In particular, it is demonstrated that the radial profiles play an important role in stabilization, as the embedded guiding center (E×B ) drift has a strong radial shear, which can contribute to the Z-pinch stabilization even in the absence of the fluid flow shear. The results of simulations for the FuZE plasma parameters show a decrease in the linear growth rate with an increase in the flow shear; however, full stabilization in the linear regime is not observed even for large (comparable to the Alfvén velocity) radial variations of the axial flow. Nonlinear stability properties of the FuZE plasmas are also studied, and it is found that profile broadening can have a pronounced stabilizing effect in the nonlinear regime.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Scaling of the mean transverse flow and Reynolds shear stress in turbulent plane jet

Here, proper scaling for the mean transverse flow and Reynolds shear stress in a turbulent plane jet is determined using a scaling patch approach. By seeking an admissible scaling, a key concept in the scaling patch approach, for the mean continuity equation, a proper scale for the mean transverse flow in a turbulent plane jet is found as V ref = –δdU ctr /dx, where δ is the jet half width and dU ctr /dx is the decay rate of the mean axial velocity at the jet centerline. By seeking an admissible scaling for the mean axial momentum equation, a proper scale for the kinematic Reynolds shear stress is found as R uv,ref =U ctr V ref , which is a mix of the velocity scales in the axial and transverse directions. Approximation functions for the scaled mean transverse flow and Reynolds shear stress are developed and found to agree well with experimental and numerical data. Similarities and differences between the scales of the mean transverse flow and Reynolds shear stress in turbulent plane jets and zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer flows are clarified.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Sensitivity measurements for a 250 MHz quartz shear-horizontal surface acoustic wave biosensor under liquid viscous loading

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices have been used in biochemical assays due to their high sensitivity. The device sensitivity is a function of changes in the density and viscosity of the liquid. Here, we studied the effect of fluid viscosity using a 250 MHz quartz shear-horizontal (SH)-SAW biosensor by monitoring different concentrations of binary aqueous/glycerol solutions. In this study, the sensitivity of the biosensor was determined by fitting the data to models derived from perturbation theory. Measurements in water were used as the reference. For a 0% to 50% glycerol solution, an 87°–204° separation in the phase shift was observed. The slope of the plot of the phase shift vs (ηρ)0.5 was used to indicate the sensor’s sensitivity. The sensitivity for our 250 MHz quartz SH-SAW sensors was calculated to be 3.7×10−3m2sKg. The corresponding mass sensitivity was determined to be 9.25 × 105m2Kg. The limit of detection was calculated to be 36 picograms (pg), while the limit of quantification or LOQ was calculated to be 109 pg. Traditionally, liquid phase measurements have been challenging for SAW devices because liquids dampen the vibrating sensors severely. This problem has been largely solved using a transverse (shear) wave instead of the more popular longitudinal or Rayleigh waves. Liquid measurements are now possible using transverse waves, also known as shear waves, because transverse waves are only minimally attenuated by liquids. Shear-horizontal SAW sensors (SH-SAW) show great promise as label-free biosensors because of their ability to handle liquid samples. However, the viscosity of the liquid still induces loading effects and can be measured when the liquid is loaded onto the SH-SAW propagating surface (delay line). When the liquid above the delay line is perturbed by physical or chemical changes, such as binding to a receptor, it alters the propagating acoustic wave. The SH-SAW device can measure these changes in liquid properties as a change in the wave’s phase compared to the original wave. The device’s phase shift was recorded as a function of the changes in the density and viscosity of the binary glycerol solution and used to determine the sensitivity in the linear dynamic range of responses.

Materials Science↗
DOE OSTI2023

Mitigation of resistive drift wave and ion temperature gradient instabilities by velocity shear

The effects of velocity shear on the resistive drift wave instability in the non-adiabatic limit and the toroidal ion temperature gradient instability are investigated for a plasma of inhomogeneous density/ion temperature, respectively. For the resistive drift wave, we find that the instability growth rate decreases monotonically with increasing magnitude of shear, but we find that complete stabilization is impossible. For the ion temperature gradient instability, we find that the standard WKB approximation is insufficient to describe the full behavior of the instability, and that an analysis of the localized eigenmode problem reveals two separate unstable solutions, which the WKB approximation does not predict. The impact of flow shear on these two new unstable solutions is discussed. In both resistive drift wave and ion temperature gradient instabilities, the sheared flow causes a shifting, tilting, and sharpening of the electrostatic potential eddies.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2025

Enhanced shear stabilization of turbulence in NSTX

In studying a particular non-stationary NSTX L-mode plasma, we observed unexpectedly high levels of flux—first with quasilinear (TGLF) modeling and subsequently with nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations. Upon more detailed analysis, a novel confinement regime was discovered in which a modest increase in E x B shear (beyond baseline experimental estimates) rapidly reduced turbulent transport to levels consistent with power balance. This modest increase is plausible given the errors inherent to the estimation of shearing rates, and the added complexity of the non-stationary (time-dependent) power balance. Remarkably, an additional small increase in shear yields the familiar ion-neoclassical transport level with what appears to be the onset of high-k electron transport only. Although analyses using the TGLF-SAT2 model successfully capture numerous parametric dependencies of this plasma, TGLF does not reproduce the rapid E x B stabilization seen in CGYRO. We believe the results presented should help to better characterize the nonlinear physics of spherical tokamak confinement regimes, provide useful ST datasets for reduced model development, and motivate more accurate experimental diagnosis of E x B shearing rates.

Atomic and molecular collisions↗
DOE OSTI2021

Cosmic shear power spectra in practice

Cosmic shear is one of the most powerful probes of Dark Energy, targeted by several current and future galaxy surveys. Lensing shear, however, is only sampled at the positions of galaxies with measured shapes in the catalog, making its associated sky window function one of the most complicated amongst all projected cosmological probes of inhomogeneities, as well as giving rise to inhomogeneous noise. Partly for this reason, cosmic shear analyses have been mostly carried out in real-space, making use of correlation functions, as opposed to Fourier-space power spectra. Since the use of power spectra can yield complementary information and has numerical advantages over real-space pipelines, it is important to develop a complete formalism describing the standard unbiased power spectrum estimators as well as their associated uncertainties. Building on previous work, this paper contains a study of the main complications associated with estimating and interpreting shear power spectra, and presents fast and accurate methods to estimate two key quantities needed for their practical usage: the noise bias and the Gaussian covariance matrix, fully accounting for survey geometry, with some of these results also applicable to other cosmological probes. Here, we demonstrate the performance of these methods by applying them to the latest public data releases of the Hyper Suprime-Cam and the Dark Energy Survey collaborations, quantifying the presence of systematics in our measurements and the validity of the covariance matrix estimate. We make the resulting power spectra, covariance matrices, null tests and all associated data necessary for a full cosmological analysis publicly available.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Deconvolving the roles of E × B shear and pedestal structure in the energy confinement quality of super H-mode experiements

Analysis of “super H-mode” experiments on DIII-D has put forward that high plasma toroidal rotation, not high pedestal, plays the essential role in achieving energy confinement quality H 98y2 >>1. Recently, super H-mode experiments with variable input torque have confirmed that high rotation shear discharges have very high levels of H 98y2 (>1.5), independent of the pedestal height, and that high pedestal discharges with low rotation shear have levels of H 98y2 only slightly above 1 (≤1.2). Although some increase in stored energy with higher pedestal occurs, the energy confinement quality mainly depends on the toroidal rotation shear, which varies according to different levels of injected neutral beam torque per particle. Here, quasi-linear gyrofluid modeling achieves a good match of the experiment when including the E×B shear; without including plasma rotation, the modeling predicts a confinement quality consistent with the empirical observation of H 98y2 ~1.2 at low rotation. Nonlinear gyrokinetic transport modeling shows that the effect of E×B turbulence stabilization is far larger than other mechanisms, such as the so-called hot-ion stabilization (T i /T e ) effect. Consistent with these experimental and modeling results are previous simulations of the ITER Baseline Scenario using a super H-mode pedestal solution, which showed the potential to exceed the Q=10 target if the pedestal density could be increased above the Greenwald limit. A close look at these simulations reveals that the predicted energy confinement quality is below 1 even at the highest pedestal pressure. The improvement in Q at higher pedestal density is due to the improved fusion power generation at the higher core density associated with higher pedestal density, not to an improved energy confinement quality.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Do ambient shear and thermal stratification impact wind turbine tip-vortex breakdown?

Modern wind turbines experience uneven inflow conditions across the rotor, due to the ambient flow’s shear and thermal stratification. Such conditions alter the shape and length of turbine wakes and thus impact the loads and power generation of downstream turbines. To this end, understanding the spatial evolution of the individual wakes under different atmospheric conditions is key to controlling and optimising turbine arrays. With this numerical study we aim to obtain a better understanding of the fundamental physics governing the near-wake dynamics of wind turbines under shear and thermal stability, by examining their tip-vortex breakup mechanisms. Our approach considers scale-resolving simulations of a single turbine wake under a linear shear profile as well as the application of harmonic tip perturbations to trigger flow instabilities. For the subsequent analysis we use the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method to extract coherent structures from the flow, and we also calculate mean kinetic energy fluxes to quantify each coherent structure’s contribution to wake recovery. The wake’s helical spiral is found to hinder wake recovery for all studied ambient flow conditions, whereas the mutual inductance instability has positive MKE flux leading to an enhanced wake recovery. Finally, the ambient shear has the largest impact on the local MKE flux with respect to downstream location by changing the shape of the curve and location of extrema, whereas thermal stratification has only a minimal impact on the magnitude of the near-wake local MKE flux distribution.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Mitigating the effects of undersampling in weak lensing shear estimation with metacalibration

ABSTRACT metacalibration is a state-of-the-art technique for measuring weak gravitational lensing shear from well-sampled galaxy images. We investigate the accuracy of shear measured with metacalibration from fitting elliptical Gaussians to undersampled galaxy images. In this case, metacalibration introduces aliasing effects leading to an ensemble multiplicative shear bias about 0.01 for Euclid and even larger for the Roman Space Telescope, well exceeding the missions’ requirements. We find that this aliasing bias can be mitigated by computing shapes from weighted moments with wider Gaussians as weight functions, thereby trading bias for a slight increase in variance of the measurements. We show that this approach is robust to the point-spread function in consideration and meets the stringent requirements of Euclid for galaxies with moderate to high signal-to-noise ratios. We therefore advocate metacalibration as a viable shear measurement option for weak lensing from upcoming space missions.

Kannawadi, Arun↗
DOE OSTI2021

Dark Energy Survey Y3 results: blending shear and redshift biases in image simulations

ABSTRACT As the statistical power of galaxy weak lensing reaches per cent level precision, large, realistic, and robust simulations are required to calibrate observational systematics, especially given the increased importance of object blending as survey depths increase. To capture the coupled effects of blending in both shear and photometric redshift calibration, we define the effective redshift distribution for lensing, nγ(z), and describe how to estimate it using image simulations. We use an extensive suite of tailored image simulations to characterize the performance of the shear estimation pipeline applied to the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data set. We describe the multiband, multi-epoch simulations, and demonstrate their high level of realism through comparisons to the real DES data. We isolate the effects that generate shear calibration biases by running variations on our fiducial simulation, and find that blending-related effects are the dominant contribution to the mean multiplicative bias of approximately $-2{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$. By generating simulations with input shear signals that vary with redshift, we calibrate biases in our estimation of the effective redshift distribution, and demonstrate the importance of this approach when blending is present. We provide corrected effective redshift distributions that incorporate statistical and systematic uncertainties, ready for use in DES Year 3 weak lensing analyses.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Joint modelling of astrophysical systematics for cosmology with LSST cosmic shear

ABSTRACT We present a novel framework for jointly modelling the weak lensing source galaxy redshift distribution and the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies through a shared luminosity function (LF). In the context of a Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Year 1 and Year 10 cosmic shear analysis, we show that our novel approach produces cosmological parameter constraints which are comparable to standard methods, while offering more physical insight into IA and selection effects. We clarify the relationship between individual parameters of a Schechter LF and the redshift distribution of a magnitude-limited sample, showing the consequences of marginalizing over these parameters when modelling IAs in standard cosmic shear analyses. We explore the impact of the shape of the LF on the cosmic shear data vector, and we outline the potential of this method to naturally model selection functions in redshift distribution estimation. Although this work focuses on LSST cosmic shear, the proposed joint modelling framework is broadly applicable to weak lensing surveys.

Šarčević, Nikolina (ORCID:0000000173016415)↗