SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Controls library”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 271 records · Page 15

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1994

A Macintosh-Based Scientific Images Video Analysis System

A set of experiments was designed at MIT's Man-Vehicle Laboratory in order to evaluate the effects of zero gravity on the human orientation system. During many of these experiments, the movements of the eyes are recorded on high quality video cassettes. The images must be analyzed off-line to calculate the position of the eyes at every moment in time. To this aim, I have implemented a simple inexpensive computerized system which measures the angle of rotation of the eye from digitized video images. The system is implemented on a desktop Macintosh computer, processes one play-back frame per second and exhibits adequate levels of accuracy and precision. The system uses LabVIEW, a digital output board, and a video input board to control a VCR, digitize video images, analyze them, and provide a user friendly interface for the various phases of the process. The system uses the Concept Vi LabVIEW library (Graftek's Image, Meudon la Foret, France) for image grabbing and displaying as well as translation to and from LabVIEW arrays. Graftek's software layer drives an Image Grabber board from Neotech (Eastleigh, United Kingdom). A Colour Adapter box from Neotech provides adequate video signal synchronization. The system also requires a LabVIEW driven digital output board (MacADIOS II from GW Instruments, Cambridge, MA) controlling a slightly modified VCR remote control used mainly to advance the video tape frame by frame.

Groleau, Nicolas↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Ground control points refresh for MODIS and VIIRS geolocation monitoring

The Control Point Matching (CPM) program and a set of over 1200 globally distributed ground control points (GCPs ) have been successfully used to develop more than 20 years of MODIS geolocation products. In this research, we refresh current GCP library with more than 2500 new GCPs using the latest Landsat 8 Collection 2 images. The refreshed GCPs are distributed from 56 S to 80 N latitude, with more than 2000 shoreline and 500 inland GCP chips. The size of these GCPs are extended from800*800 to 1400*1400 Landsat pixels and the CPM program correspondingly increase s t h e searching distance from 0.8 pixels to 2.5 pixels, which also extends the geolocation error measurement from +/-45 to the edge of scan at +/-55 degree in scan angle. This will allow the algorithm to catch geolocation errors that are larger than one MODIS pixel. The geolocation errors measured with the refreshed GCP library are comparable to the previous results, yet with 2-3more times of matched GCPs. The daytime Aqua ascending orbits and Terra descending orbits enable us to identify a few GCP outliers which might be due to the quality of the original Landsat images. Most importantly, the refreshed GCP library will include images from both Landsat band 4 to match with VIIRS I1, and Landsat band 6 to match with VIIRS I3. This will allow us to measure and correct on orbit band-to-band registration at both track and scan directions, which will help understanding and improving future JPSS mission’s prelaunch geometric performance.

VIIRS↗

DOE OSTI2021

National nuclear forensics libraries: a case study on benefits and possibilities for identification of sealed radioactive sources

A National Nuclear Forensic Library (NNFL) is a useful nuclear forensics tool which consists of information and subject matter expertise on radioactive and nuclear (RN) materials produced, used or stored within a State. If RN material is found out of regulatory control the NNFL can be used as part of a nuclear forensics investigation to help identify whether or not the material is consistent with a country’s national holdings. In previous work, a number of signatures which can be useful to identify sealed sources of 241 Am were investigated. To validate the measurement results, an official query concerning information about two of the previously investigated 241 Am sources was sent to the United States Department of State, the international point-of-contact (POC) for the U.S. NNFL. The aim of this work is to show how data obtained in a characterization of a radioactive source can be used in conjunction with an NNFL to investigate the history of a source out of regulatory control.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

DOE OSTI2025

otsdaq

otsdaq is a Ready-to-Use data-acquisition (DAQ) solution aimed at scaling down to test-beam, detector development, and other rapid-deployment scenarios; and scaling up through the development cycle to fullscale production and operation. otsdaq uses the artdaq DAQ framework under-the-hood, providing flexibility and scalability to meet evolving DAQ needs. otsdaq provides a library of supported front-end boards and firmware modules which implement a custom UDP protocol. Additionally, an integrated Run Control GUI and readout software are provided, preconfigured to communicate with otsdaq firmware.

Rivera, Ryan [Fermi National Accelerator Laborator↗

DOE OSTI2020

Repurposing a microfluidic formulation device for automated DNA construction

Microfluidic applications have expanded greatly over the past decade. For the most part, however, each microfluidics platform is developed with a specific task in mind, rather than as a general-purpose device with a wide-range of functionality. Here, we show how a microfluidic system, originally developed to investigate protein phase behavior, can be modified and repurposed for another application, namely DNA construction. We added new programable controllers to direct the flow of reagents across the chip. We designed the assembly of a combinatorial Golden Gate DNA library using TeselaGen DESIGN software and used the repurposed microfluidics platform to assemble the designed library from off-chip prepared DNA assembly pieces. Further experiments verified the sequences and function of the on-chip assembled DNA constructs.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS2000

A Cost Effective System Design Approach for Critical Space Systems

NASA-JSC required an avionics platform capable of serving a wide range of applications in a cost-effective manner. In part, making the avionics platform cost effective means adhering to open standards and supporting the integration of COTS products with custom products. Inherently, operation in space requires low power, mass, and volume while retaining high performance, reconfigurability, scalability, and upgradability. The Universal Mini-Controller project is based on a modified PC/104-Plus architecture while maintaining full compatibility with standard COTS PC/104 products. The architecture consists of a library of building block modules, which can be mixed and matched to meet a specific application. A set of NASA developed core building blocks, processor card, analog input/output card, and a Mil-Std-1553 card, have been constructed to meet critical functions and unique interfaces. The design for the processor card is based on the PowerPC architecture. This architecture provides an excellent balance between power consumption and performance, and has an upgrade path to the forthcoming radiation hardened PowerPC processor. The processor card, which makes extensive use of surface mount technology, has a 166 MHz PowerPC 603e processor, 32 Mbytes of error detected and corrected RAM, 8 Mbytes of Flash, and I Mbytes of EPROM, on a single PC/104-Plus card. Similar densities have been achieved with the quad channel Mil-Std-1553 card and the analog input/output cards. The power management built into the processor and its peripheral chip allows the power and performance of the system to be adjusted to meet the requirements of the application, allowing another dimension to the flexibility of the Universal Mini-Controller. Unique mechanical packaging allows the Universal Mini-Controller to accommodate standard COTS and custom oversized PC/104-Plus cards. This mechanical packaging also provides thermal management via conductive cooling of COTS boards, which are typically designed for convection cooling methods.

Abbott, Larry Wayne↗

NASA NTRS2017

Implementation of a Space Communications Cognitive Engine

Although communications-based cognitive engines have been proposed, very few have been implemented in a full system, especially in a space communications system. In this paper, we detail the implementation of a multi-objective reinforcement-learning algorithm and deep artificial neural networks for the use as a radio-resource-allocation controller. The modular software architecture presented encourages re-use and easy modification for trying different algorithms. Various trade studies involved with the system implementation and integration are discussed. These include the choice of software libraries that provide platform flexibility and promote reusability, choices regarding the deployment of this cognitive engine within a system architecture using the DVB-S2 standard and commercial hardware, and constraints placed on the cognitive engine caused by real-world radio constraints. The implemented radio-resource allocation-management controller was then integrated with the larger spaceground system developed by NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC).

reinforcement learning↗

NASA NTRS2017

Implementation of a Space Communications Cognitive Engine

reinforcement learning↗

DOE OSTI2022

Towards Superior Software Portability with SHAD and HPX C++ Libraries

As hardware architectures and software stacks complexity grows, development productivity, performance and software portability, quickly evolve from desirable features to actual needs. SHAD, the Scalable High-performance Algorithms and Data-structures C++ library is designed to mitigate these issues: it provides general purpose building blocks as well as high-level custom utilities, and offers a shared-memory programming abstraction which facilitates the programming of complex systems, scaling up to High Performance Computing clusters. SHAD’s portability is achieved through an abstract runtime interface, which decouples the upper layers of the library and hides the low level details of the underlying architecture. This layer enables SHAD to interface with different runtime/threading systems, e.g. Intel TBB and Global Memory and Threading (GMT). However, current backends targeting distributed systems, rely on a centralized controller which may possibly limit scalability up to hundreds of nodes and creates a network hot spot due to all to one communication for synchronization, and possibly resulting in degraded performance at high process counts. In this research, we explore HPX, the C++ standard library for parallelism and concurrency, as an additional backend in support of the SHAD library, and present the methodologies in support of local and remote task executions in SHAD with respect to HPX. Finally, we evaluate the proposed system by comparing against existing backends of SHAD and analyzing their performance on C++ Standard Template Library algorithms.

Wu, Nanmiao↗

NASA NTRS1996

Parallel NPARC: Implementation and Performance

Version 3 of the NPARC Navier-Stokes code includes support for large-grain (block level) parallelism using explicit message passing between a heterogeneous collection of computers. This capability has the potential for significant performance gains, depending upon the block data distribution. The parallel implementation uses a master/worker arrangement of processes. The master process assigns blocks to workers, controls worker actions, and provides remote file access for the workers. The processes communicate via explicit message passing using an interface library which provides portability to a number of message passing libraries, such as PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). A Bourne shell script is used to simplify the task of selecting hosts, starting processes, retrieving remote files, and terminating a computation. This script also provides a simple form of fault tolerance. An analysis of the computational performance of NPARC is presented, using data sets from an F/A-18 inlet study and a Rocket Based Combined Cycle Engine analysis. Parallel speedup and overall computational efficiency were obtained for various NPARC run parameters on a cluster of IBM RS6000 workstations. The data show that although NPARC performance compares favorably with the estimated potential parallelism, typical data sets used with previous versions of NPARC will often need to be reblocked for optimum parallel performance. In one of the cases studied, reblocking increased peak parallel speedup from 3.2 to 11.8.

Townsend, S. E.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Efficient Tracing for On-the-Fly Space-Time Displays in a Debugger for Message Passing Programs

In this work we describe the implementation of a practical mechanism for collecting and displaying trace information in a debugger for message passing programs. We introduce a trace format that is highly compressible while still providing information adequate for debugging purposes. We make the mechanism convenient for users to access by incorporating the trace collection in a set of wrappers for the MPI (message passing interface) communication library. We implement several debugger operations that use the trace display: consistent stoplines, undo, and rollback. They all are implemented using controlled replay, which executes at full speed in target processes until the appropriate position in the computation is reached. They provide convenient mechanisms for getting to places in the execution where the full power of a state-based debugger can be brought to bear on isolating communication errors.

Hood, Robert↗

NASA NTRS2015

Telescience Resource Kit (TReK)

Telescience Resource Kit (TReK) is one of the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) remote operations solutions. It can be used to monitor and control International Space Station (ISS) payloads from anywhere in the world. It is comprised of a suite of software applications and libraries that provide generic data system capabilities and access to HOSC services. The TReK Software has been operational since 2000. A new cross-platform version of TReK is under development. The new software is being released in phases during the 2014-2016 timeframe. The TReK Release 3.x series of software is the original TReK software that has been operational since 2000. This software runs on Windows. It contains capabilities to support traditional telemetry and commanding using CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) packets. The TReK Release 4.x series of software is the new cross platform software. It runs on Windows and Linux. The new TReK software will support communication using standard IP protocols and traditional telemetry and commanding. All the software listed above is compatible and can be installed and run together on Windows. The new TReK software contains a suite of software that can be used by payload developers on the ground and onboard (TReK Toolkit). TReK Toolkit is a suite of lightweight libraries and utility applications for use onboard and on the ground. TReK Desktop is the full suite of TReK software -most useful on the ground. When TReK Desktop is released, the TReK installation program will provide the option to choose just the TReK Toolkit portion of the software or the full TReK Desktop suite. The ISS program is providing the TReK Toolkit software as a generic flight software capability offered as a standard service to payloads. TReK Software Verification was conducted during the April/May 2015 timeframe. Payload teams using the TReK software onboard can reference the TReK software verification. TReK will be demonstrated on-orbit running on an ISS provided T61p laptop. Target Timeframe: September 2015 -2016. The on-orbit demonstration will collect benchmark metrics, and will be used in the future to provide live demonstrations during ISS Payload Conferences. Benchmark metrics and demonstrations will address the protocols described in SSP 52050-0047 Ku Forward section 3.3.7. (Associated term: CCSDS File Delivery Protocol (CFDP)).

Lippincott, Jeff↗

NASA NTRS2015

Earth Science Data Fusion with Event Building Approach

Objectives of the NASA Information And Data System (NAIADS) project are to develop a prototype of a conceptually new middleware framework to modernize and significantly improve efficiency of the Earth Science data fusion, big data processing and analytics. The key components of the NAIADS include: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) multi-lingual framework, multi-sensor coincident data Predictor, fast into-memory data Staging, multi-sensor data-Event Builder, complete data-Event streaming (a work flow with minimized IO), on-line data processing control and analytics services. The NAIADS project is leveraging CLARA framework, developed in Jefferson Lab, and integrated with the ZeroMQ messaging library. The science services are prototyped and incorporated into the system. Merging the SCIAMACHY Level-1 observations and MODIS/Terra Level-2 (Clouds and Aerosols) data products, and ECMWF re- analysis will be used for NAIADS demonstration and performance tests in compute Cloud and Cluster environments.

Lukashin, C.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Develop a Model Component

During my internship at NASA, I was a model developer for Ground Support Equipment (GSE). The purpose of a model developer is to develop and unit test model component libraries (fluid, electrical, gas, etc.). The models are designed to simulate software for GSE (Ground Special Power, Crew Access Arm, Cryo, Fire and Leak Detection System, Environmental Control System (ECS), etc. ~.) before they are implemented into hardware. These models support verifying local control and remote software for End-Item Software Under Test (SUT). The model simulates the physical behavior (function, state, limits and 110) of each end-item and it's dependencies as defined in the Subsystem Interface Table, Software Requirements & Design Specification (SRDS), Ground Integrated Schematic (GIS), and System Mechanical Schematic.(SMS). The software of each specific model component is simulated through MATLAB's Simulink program. The intensiv~ model development life cycle is a.s follows: Identify source documents; identify model scope; update schedule; preliminary design review; develop model requirements; update model.. scope; update schedule; detailed design review; create/modify library component; implement library components reference; implement subsystem components; develop a test script; run the test script; develop users guide; send model out for peer review; the model is sent out for verific~tionlvalidation; if there is empirical data, a validation data package is generated; if there is not empirical data, a verification package is generated; the test results are then reviewed; and finally, the user. requests accreditation, and a statement of accreditation is prepared. Once each component model is reviewed and approved, they are intertwined together into one integrated model. This integrated model is then tested itself, through a test script and autotest, so that it can be concluded that all models work conjointly, for a single purpose. The component I was assigned, specifically, was a fluid component, a discrete pressure switch. The switch takes a fluid pressure input, and if the pressure is greater than a designated cutoff pressure, the switch would stop fluid flow.

Ensey, Tyler S.↗

DOE OSTI2023

CSPlib: A performance portable parallel software toolkit for analyzing complex kinetic mechanisms

Computational singular perturbation (CSP) is a method to analyze dynamical systems. It targets the decoupling of fast and slow dynamics using an alternate linear expansion of the right-hand side of the governing equations based on eigenanalysis of the associated Jacobian matrix. This representation facilitates diagnostic analysis, detection and control of stiffness, and the development of simplified models. For this work, we have implemented CSP in a C++ open-source library CSPlib using the Kokkos parallel programming model to address portability across diverse heterogeneous computing platforms, i.e., multi/many-core CPUs and GPUs. We describe the CSPlib implementation and present its computational performance across different computing platforms using several test problems. Specifically, we test the CSPlib performance for a constant pressure ignition reactor model on different architectures, including IBM Power 9, Intel Xeon Skylake, and NVIDIA V100 GPU. The size of the chemical kinetic mechanism is varied in these tests. As expected, the Jacobian matrix evaluation, the eigensolution of the Jacobian matrix, and matrix inversion are the most expensive computational tasks. When considering the higher throughput characteristic of GPUs, GPUs performs better for small matrices with higher occupancy rate. CPUs gain more advantages from the higher performance of well-tuned and optimized linear algebra libraries such as OpenBLAS.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2025

Patchy burn severity explains heterogeneous soil viral and prokaryotic responses to fire in a mixed conifer forest

ABSTRACT Effects of fire on soil viruses and virus–host dynamics are largely unexplored, despite known microbial contributions to biogeochemical processes and ecosystem recovery. Here, we assessed how viral and prokaryotic communities responded to a prescribed burn in a mixed conifer forest. We sequenced 91 viral-size fraction metagenomes (viromes) and 115 16S rRNA gene amplicon libraries from 120 samples: four samples at five timepoints (two before fire and three after fire) at six sites (four treatment, two control). We hypothesized that compositional differences would be most significant between burned and unburned soils, but instead, plot location best distinguished viral communities, more than treatment (burned or not), depth (0–3 or 3–6 cm), or timepoint. For both viruses and prokaryotes, some burned communities resembled unburned controls, while others were significantly different, revealing heterogeneous responses to fire. These patterns were explained by burn severity, here defined by soil chemistry. Viral but not prokaryotic richness decreased significantly with burn severity, and low viromic DNA yields indicated substantial loss of viral biomass at higher severity. The relative abundances of Firmicutes, Actinobacteriota, and the viruses predicted to infect them increased significantly with burn severity, suggesting survival and viral infection of these fire-responsive and potentially spore-forming taxa. The degree of burn severity experienced by each patch of soil, rather than burn status alone, differed over mere meters in the same fire. Therefore, our analyses highlight the importance of high-resolution, paired biogeochemical data to explain soil community responses to fire. IMPORTANCE The impact of fire on the soil microbiome, particularly on understudied soil viral communities, warrants investigation, given known microbial contributions to biogeochemical processes and ecosystem recovery. Here, we collected 120 soil samples before and after a prescribed burn in a mixed conifer forest to assess the impacts of this disturbance on soil viral and prokaryotic communities. We show that simple categorical comparisons of burned and unburned areas were insufficient to reveal the underlying community response patterns. The patchy nature of the fire (indicated by soil chemistry data) led to significant changes in viral and prokaryotic community composition in areas of high burn severity, while communities that experienced lower burn severity were indistinguishable from those in unburned controls. Our results highlight the importance of considering highly resolved burn severity and biogeochemical measurements, even in nearby soils after the same fire, in order to understand soil microbial responses to prescribed burns.

Microbiology↗

DOE OSTI2024

hkl-projects/ioc-hkl

HKL-IOC is an open source EPICS IOC that performs real‑time crystallographic HKL calculations for diffractometers and scattering instruments. It integrates the Python hkl library with EPICS through PyDevice, exposing HKL calculations and diffractometer geometry transformations as standard EPICS process variables. This allows beamline and laboratory control systems to convert between motor positions and reciprocal‑space coordinates, configure diffractometer geometries, and drive scans directly in HKL space. The software is written in Python and designed to run alongside existing EPICS deployments without requiring changes to core EPICS components. It is intended for use at synchrotron and neutron scattering facilities, as well as laboratory X‑ray diffractometers, where reliable and reproducible HKL calculations are needed for experiment control, data collection, and automation. HKL-IOC is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL‑3.0) and contributions and extensions for additional geometries and beamlines are welcomed.

Baekey, Alex↗

NASA NTRS1978

The IFIP WG 2.5 proposals on FORTRAN

Language problem areas are summarized and possible solutions are discussed. Areas covered are: (1) double complex, (2) arrays of work space in library subroutines, (3) calls from a library subprogram to user code, (4) decomposition and synthesis of floating-point numbers, (5) environment parameters, (6) precision function, and (7) control structures.

Lawson, C. L.↗