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At least 289 records · Page 16

STARS: A general-purpose finite element computer program for analysis of engineering structures

STARS (Structural Analysis Routines) is primarily an interactive, graphics-oriented, finite-element computer program for analyzing the static, stability, free vibration, and dynamic responses of damped and undamped structures, including rotating systems. The element library consists of one-dimensional (1-D) line elements, two-dimensional (2-D) triangular and quadrilateral shell elements, and three-dimensional (3-D) tetrahedral and hexahedral solid elements. These elements enable the solution of structural problems that include truss, beam, space frame, plane, plate, shell, and solid structures, or any combination thereof. Zero, finite, and interdependent deflection boundary conditions can be implemented by the program. The associated dynamic response analysis capability provides for initial deformation and velocity inputs, whereas the transient excitation may be either forces or accelerations. An effective in-core or out-of-core solution strategy is automatically employed by the program, depending on the size of the problem. Data input may be at random within a data set, and the program offers certain automatic data-generation features. Input data are formatted as an optimal combination of free and fixed formats. Interactive graphics capabilities enable convenient display of nodal deformations, mode shapes, and element stresses.

Gupta, K. K.↗

Observer-Based Magnetic Bearing Controller Developed for Aerospace Flywheels

A prototype of a versatile, observer-based magnetic bearing controller for aerospace flywheels was successfully developed and demonstrated on a magnetic bearing test rig (see the photograph) and an actual flywheel module. The objective of this development included a fast, yet low risk, control development process, and a robust, high-performance controller for a large variety of flywheels. This required a good system model, an efficient development procedure, and a model-based controller that addressed the key problems associated with flywheel and bearing imbalance, sensor error, and vibration. The model used in this control development and tuning procedure included the flexible rotor dynamics and motor-induced vibrations. Such a model was essential for low-risk scheduling of speed-dependent control parameters and for reliable evaluation of novel control strategies. The successfully tested control prototype utilized an extended Kalman filter to estimate the true rotor principal-axis motion from the raw sensor position feedback. For control refinement, the extended Kalman filter also estimated and eliminated the combined effects of mass-imbalance and sensor runouts from the input data. A key advantage of the design based on the extended Kalman filter is its ability to accurately estimate both the rotor's principal-axis position and gyroscopic rates with the least amount of phase lag. This is important for control parameter scheduling to dampen the gyroscopic motions. Because of large uncertainties in the magnetic bearing and imbalance characteristics, this state-estimation scheme alone is insufficient for containing the rotor motion within the desired 1-mil excursion radius. A nonlinear gain adjustment based on an estimation of the principal-axis orbit size was needed to provide a coarse (nonoptimal), but robust, control of the orbit growth. Control current minimization was achieved with a (steepest gradient) search of synchronous errors in the principal-axis position input data. Actual flywheel tests of this observer-based controller (developed entirely in-house) at the NASA Glenn Research Center showed that the model correctly predicted the rotor orbit growth as a function of rotational speed, and it demonstrated the capability of gain adjustments to arrest this growth. Data from these tests on an actual flywheel module spun to 26,000 rpm proved that the controller was able to contain the shaft motion to within much less than 0.5 mils of radial excursion with axis currents less than 300 mA in root-mean-square estimate. The test speed range was limited because of thermal expansion concerns for this particular flywheel unit, not because of any deficiency in the controller. Simulations for this unit indicated that the controller should be robust up to its top operating speed of 60,000 rpm. Aside from these important achievements, and most significantly, it took less than 1 week to adapt this controller from the simple test rig to the actual flywheel and to demonstrate full five-axis levitation and control. This demonstration showed that both the controller and the model-based development and tuning framework are easily adaptable to a wide range of rotors and bearing configurations and, hence, are capable of reducing design risks and costs for many future flywheel technology developments.

Le, Dzu K.↗

Numerical Analysis of Liquid Metal MHD Flow and Heat Transfer for Open-Surface Li Divertor in FNSF

Within the ongoing U.S.-based program on the development of liquid metal plasma-facing components, numerical simulations and analyses are performed to address the feasibility of the open-surface Li divertor. In the previous scoping studies (Smolentsev, 2021), heat-removal capabilities of the divertor were assessed using a simplified flow model for a slug-type velocity profile and constant flow thickness. Here, new analyses take into account forces acting on the flowing Li layer. Three reduced-order mathematical models are applied under the conditions of the U.S. Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) to access magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow development effects, velocity distribution, and surface waves: 1) fully developed MHD flow; 2) quasi-2-D developing MHD flow; and 3) multiphase MHD flow. The obtained results for MHD flows and the surface heat flux computed with the plasma code scrape-off layer plasma simulation for ITER (SOLPS-ITER) are then used as input data to compute the temperature distribution in the divertor by solving the convection–diffusion energy equation.

Smolentsev, Sergey↗

Integration of Evidence Base into a Probabilistic Risk Assessment

INTRODUCTION: A probabilistic decision support model such as the Integrated Medical Model (IMM) utilizes an immense amount of input data that necessitates a systematic, integrated approach for data collection, and management. As a result of this approach, IMM is able to forecasts medical events, resource utilization and crew health during space flight. METHODS: Inflight data is the most desirable input for the Integrated Medical Model. Non-attributable inflight data is collected from the Lifetime Surveillance for Astronaut Health study as well as the engineers, flight surgeons, and astronauts themselves. When inflight data is unavailable cohort studies, other models and Bayesian analyses are used, in addition to subject matters experts input on occasion. To determine the quality of evidence of a medical condition, the data source is categorized and assigned a level of evidence from 1-5; the highest level is one. The collected data reside and are managed in a relational SQL database with a web-based interface for data entry and review. The database is also capable of interfacing with outside applications which expands capabilities within the database itself. Via the public interface, customers can access a formatted Clinical Findings Form (CLiFF) that outlines the model input and evidence base for each medical condition. Changes to the database are tracked using a documented Configuration Management process. DISSCUSSION: This strategic approach provides a comprehensive data management plan for IMM. The IMM Database s structure and architecture has proven to support additional usages. As seen by the resources utilization across medical conditions analysis. In addition, the IMM Database s web-based interface provides a user-friendly format for customers to browse and download the clinical information for medical conditions. It is this type of functionality that will provide Exploratory Medicine Capabilities the evidence base for their medical condition list. CONCLUSION: The IMM Database in junction with the IMM is helping NASA aerospace program improve the health care and reduce risk for the astronauts crew. Both the database and model will continue to expand to meet customer needs through its multi-disciplinary evidence based approach to managing data. Future expansion could serve as a platform for a Space Medicine Wiki of medical conditions.

Saile, Lyn↗

A FORTRAN program for the analysis of linear continuous and sample-data systems

A FORTRAN digital computer program which performs the general analysis of linearized control systems is described. State variable techniques are used to analyze continuous, discrete, and sampled data systems. Analysis options include the calculation of system eigenvalues, transfer functions, root loci, root contours, frequency responses, power spectra, and transient responses for open- and closed-loop systems. A flexible data input format allows the user to define systems in a variety of representations. Data may be entered by inputing explicit data matrices or matrices constructed in user written subroutines, by specifying transfer function block diagrams, or by using a combination of these methods.

Edwards, J. W.↗

Identifying Nuclear Data Correlated Through Predicting Bias in Integral Experiments via Applying Principal Component Analysis to Random Forest

ABSTRACT Nuclear data (ND) are the input data for neutron‐transport simulations to answer questions related to nuclear technologies. Subsets of ND, here > 20,000 data points, are validated with respect to thousands of criticality experiments that represent various applications on a small scale. The aim of validation with these experiments is to find errors in ND or methods. The key challenge here is that several hundreds of ND are used to simulate one integral value. Hence, one cannot clearly identify what ND are leading to bias in criticality measurements. In fact, a mistake in one nuclear‐data observable can be compensated with an error in another, and the predicted criticality value would still be predicted in agreement with experimental data. Random forest (RF) was previously employed to predict bias in criticality measurements using sensitivities of simulated criticality experiments to ND. The SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) metric was then applied to attribute the importance of each ND experiment and observable to bias prediction. This, however, did not highlight what ND were jointly related to predicting bias. This is important as it could inform us about where compensating errors in ND could hide. We tackle this shortcoming here by first decomposing the ND sensitivities to integral‐experiment simulations into principal components. Then we use principal component projections to predict bias via the RF and SHAP. The SHAP values and principal components are employed to reconstruct detailed SHAP values for each ND observable. We demonstrate that these extended SHAP bias predictions are more robust, less noisy, and more efficient. In addition, we show that this approach accounts for covariance in ND sensitivities and automates the identification of where compensating errors could hide in ND.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Unrecognized Sources of Uncertainties ( USU ) in Experimental Nuclear Data

Evaluated nuclear data uncertainties reported in the literature or archived in data libraries are often perceived as unrealistic, most often because they are thought to be too small. The impact of this issue in applied nuclear science has been discussed widely in recent years. Commonly suggested causes are: poor estimates of specific error components, neglect of uncertainty correlations, and overlooked known error sources. However, instances have been reported where very careful, objective assessments of all known error sources have been made with realistic error magnitudes and correlations provided, yet the resulting evaluated uncertainties still appear to be inconsistent with observed scatter of predicted mean values. These discrepancies might be attributed to significant unrecognized sources of uncertainty ( USU ) that limit the accuracy to which these physical quantities can be determined. The objective of our work reported herein has been to develop qualitative and quantitative procedures for revealing and including USU estimates in nuclear data evaluations involving experimental input data. This paper identifies several specific clues that can be explored by evaluators in identifying the existence of USU . It then describes numerical procedures we have introduced to generate quantitative estimates of USU magnitudes. Key requirements for these procedures to be viable are that sufficient numbers of data points be available, for statistical reasons, and that additional supporting information about the measurements be provided by the experimenters. Several realistic examples are described here to illustrate these procedures and demonstrate their outcomes and limitations. Our work strongly supports the view that USU is an important issue in nuclear data evaluation, with significant consequences for applications, and that this topic warrants further investigation by the nuclear science community.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

PLANC: Parallel Low-rank Approximation with Nonnegativity Constraints

In this work, we consider the problem of low-rank approximation of massive dense nonnegative tensor data, for example, to discover latent patterns in video and imaging applications. As the size of data sets grows, single workstations are hitting bottlenecks in both computation time and available memory. We propose a distributed-memory parallel computing solution to handle massive data sets, loading the input data across the memories of multiple nodes, and performing efficient and scalable parallel algorithms to compute the low-rank approximation. We present a software package called Parallel Low-rank Approximation with Nonnegativity Constraints, which implements our solution and allows for extension in terms of data (dense or sparse, matrices or tensors of any order), algorithm (e.g., from multiplicative updating techniques to alternating direction method of multipliers), and architecture (we exploit GPUs to accelerate the computation in this work). We describe our parallel distributions and algorithms, which are careful to avoid unnecessary communication and computation, show how to extend the software to include new algorithms and/or constraints, and report efficiency and scalability results for both synthetic and real-world data sets.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

CLM simulated data at three FLUXNET sites and three SNOTEL sites in the Colorado River Basin

This data package includes 6 csv files that include Community Land Model (CLM) simulations for three Fluxnet sites (i.e., US-NR1, US-GLE and US-VCM) and three SNOTEL sites (i.e., ER-BT, ER-SP and ER-PK) in the Upper Colorado River Basin area. Data inputs include meteorological forcing data (obtained from Fluxnet and SNOTEL databases) and CLM-simulated evapotranspiration (ET) data from 2005 to 2016. These datasets support the development of subseasonal regime approach based on statistics driven Hidden Markov Model to assess intra- and inter-annual variability of ET, which improves our understanding of climate change's impacts on water resources and ecosystem dynamics in the Colorado River Basin.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Verified, Archived Library of Inputs and Data (VALID) Online Repository [Slides]

VALID continues to serve as a library of high-quality models used for evaluating SCALE and nuclear data. Large number of cases are in the pipeline. Online repository is available for use. Future plans include simplifying the process for adding cases, including additional models outside the ICSBEP Handbook (HTC models, DNCSH models, International Handbook of Evaluated Reactor Physics Benchmark Experiments [IRPhE], SINBAD, etc.), and increasing the availability of models and results for external users.

KENO↗

Core Model Proposal #410: Updates to Socioeconomic and Macroeconomic Data, Processing Structure, and Visualization

This Core Model Proposal (CMP) comprehensively restructures and updates the macroeconomic and socioeconomic modules in gcamdata. It includes visualizations of key data inputs, accounting identities, and data flows in the context of GCAM-Macro-KLEM. Major improvements include: (1) updating the Penn World Table (PWT) to version 10 and incorporating a new source, the Global Macro Database (GMD); (2) updating the SSP socioeconomics database from version 3.0.1 to 3.2; (3) introducing SSP-specific differentiation of employment and labor force data; (4) improving data integration between national accounts (from PWT, GMD, and GTAP) and GDP/population data from external sources; and (5) general data cleaning and structural refinements. We document the data sources and key assumptions used throughout the processing. These updates establish the foundation for the forthcoming KLEAM version of GCAM-macro.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DORMAN computer program (study 2.5). Volume 3: Original data bank listing

A number of analyses have been performed using the DORCA program for several NASA-funded Aerospace Corporation studies in the past few years. The data decks containing the input data for these analyses have been compiled and are submitted, under separate cover. A few of the data decks are full (basic) decks containing every data item and are used as reference decks in the data bank. The other data decks were obtained by differencing a full deck with respect to one of the reference decks. Using the DORMAN program, a full deck can be recreated from the modified deck and its reference deck when and if desired. The content and structure of the data bank are described. A description of each of these data decks is presented. Three of the cases that are included in this volume have become so widely recognized and accepted that additional descriptive material has been provided. The three cases are: Case 500 Costs, Case 506 Costs, and Case 403.

Stricker, L. T.↗

Prediction of sound radiated from different practical jet engine inlets

Existing computer codes for calculating the far field radiation patterns surrounding various practical jet engine inlet configurations under different excitation conditions were upgraded. The computer codes were refined and expanded so that they are now more efficient computationally by a factor of about three and they are now capable of producing accurate results up to nondimensional wave numbers of twenty. Computer programs were also developed to help generate accurate geometrical representations of the inlets to be investigated. This data is required as input for the computer programs which calculate the sound fields. This new geometry generating computer program considerably reduces the time required to generate the input data which was one of the most time consuming steps in the process. The results of sample runs using the NASA-Lewis QCSEE inlet are presented and comparison of run times and accuracy are made between the old and upgraded computer codes. The overall accuracy of the computations is determined by comparison of the results of the computations with simple source solutions.

Zinn, B. T.↗

A rapid method for obtaining frequency-response functions for multiple input photogrammetric data

A two-digital-camera photogrammetric technique for measuring the motion of a vibrating spacecraft structure or wing surface and an applicable data-reduction algorithm are presented. The 3D frequency-response functions are obtained by coordinate transformation from averaged cross and autopower spectra derived from the 4D camera coordinates by Fourier transformation. Error sources are investigated analytically, and sample results are shown in graphs.

Kroen, M. L.↗

ZIP3D: An elastic and elastic-plastic finite-element analysis program for cracked bodies

ZIP3D is an elastic and an elastic-plastic finite element program to analyze cracks in three dimensional solids. The program may also be used to analyze uncracked bodies or multi-body problems involving contacting surfaces. For crack problems, the program has several unique features including the calculation of mixed-mode strain energy release rates using the three dimensional virtual crack closure technique, the calculation of the J integral using the equivalent domain integral method, the capability to extend the crack front under monotonic or cyclic loading, and the capability to close or open the crack surfaces during cyclic loading. The theories behind the various aspects of the program are explained briefly. Line-by-line data preparation is presented. Input data and results for an elastic analysis of a surface crack in a plate and for an elastic-plastic analysis of a single-edge-crack-tension specimen are also presented.

Shivakumar, K. N.↗