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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 307 records · Page 17

Effect of a localized minimum in equatorial field strength on resistive tearing instability in the geomagnetotail

A two-dimensional, resistive-MHD computer code is used to investigate the spontaneous reconnection of magnetotaillike configurations. The initial conditions adopted in the simulations are of two types: (1) in which the equatorial normal magnetic field component B(ze) declines monotonically down the tail, and (2) in which B(ze) exhibits a deep minimum in the near-earth plasma sheet. To represent the case where the earthward convection stops before the X line forms, zero-flow boundary conditions are imposed at the edges of the computational box. The initial configurations are in equilibrium and table within ideal MHD. The dynamic evolution of the system starts after the resistivity is turned on. The main results of these simulations basically support the neutral-line model of substorms and confirm Birn's (1980) computer studies. Spontaneous formation of an X-type neutral point and a single O-type plasmoid with strong tailward flow on the tailward side of the X point is found. The time interval from the turning on of the resistivity to the formation of a plasmoid is much shorter in the case where there is an initial deep minimum. A simple analytic calculation is also carried out to demonstrate why the configuration with a deep minimum is more susceptible to the development of the neutral point.

Hau, L.-N.↗

Reynolds Number Effects on Leading Edge Radius Variations of a Supersonic Transport at Transonic Conditions

A computational study focused on leading-edge radius effects and associated Reynolds number sensitivity for a High Speed Civil Transport configuration at transonic conditions was conducted as part of NASA's High Speed Research Program. The primary purposes were to assess the capabilities of computational fluid dynamics to predict Reynolds number effects for a range of leading-edge radius distributions on a second-generation supersonic transport configuration, and to evaluate the potential performance benefits of each at the transonic cruise condition. Five leading-edge radius distributions are described, and the potential performance benefit including the Reynolds number sensitivity for each is presented. Computational results for two leading-edge radius distributions are compared with experimental results acquired in the National Transonic Facility over a broad Reynolds number range.

Rivers, S. M. B.↗

Modeling of carbon and tungsten transient dust influx in tokamak edge plasma

The paper presents computer simulation studies of burst injection of carbon and tungsten dust particles in DIII-D-like edge plasmas. The injection causes a large transient influx of the low- and high-Z impurities associated with the dust ablation in the plasmas. The dust transport and the effects of the ablated impurities on the edge plasma dynamics in a modern mid-size tokamak geometry are investigated for low- and high-power plasma discharge conditions. The core plasma contamination with dust-ablated impurities and the factors affecting it are evaluated.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Computational simulation of flows about hypersonic geometries with sharp leading edges

Hypersonic waverider design has become an important concern in the aerospace industry. As one part of an inverse design effort for waveriders, work has been done to apply existing Euler and Navier-Stokies flow solvers to hypersonic geometries with sharp leading edges. Previously, calculations were done on bodies with rounded leading edges or with conical solutions for the nose initial conditions. In this paper, solutions are computed about waveriders and conical shapes with sharp leading edges without resorting to either shortrcut. All solutions show attached shocks with fully supersonic flows at the nose and along the leading edges. Flows about several waverider shapes are shown, as well as a preliminary cone with inlet calculation to study the shock/inlet interaction.

Jones, Kevin D.↗

Final Reports of the 2019 Los Alamos National Laboratory Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop

The Los Alamos National Laboratory Computational Physics Workshop is intended to educate select students in problems of computational physics, while exciting them about problems of particular interest to LANL. The long term goal is to train a cadre of future researchers with strong connections to LANL and both interest and expertise in the problems LANL faces. This year’s workshop ran from June 10 – August 16, 2019 and once again attracted a phenomenal group of students, whose work is presented in the following pages. The students worked with LANL staff mentors in teams of two, doing original research. In addition, they attended a lecture series focusing on both the basics and the cutting edge challenges of computational physics (Table 1). A new item this year was a modification to our Meet LANL series of brown-bag lunch session, moving from focusing on individual researchers to panel presentations from the different groups within XCP. As always, the mentors were drawn from across disciplines and divisions. Projects looked physics ranging from quantum interactions, up to solar system development.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A discrepancy within primate spatial vision and its bearing on the definition of edge detection processes in machine vision

The visual perception of form information is considered to be based on the functioning of simple and complex neurons in the primate striate cortex. However, a review of the physiological data on these brain cells cannot be harmonized with either the perceptual spatial frequency performance of primates or the performance which is necessary for form perception in humans. This discrepancy together with recent interest in cortical-like and perceptual-like processing in image coding and machine vision prompted a series of image processing experiments intended to provide some definition of the selection of image operators. The experiments were aimed at determining operators which could be used to detect edges in a computational manner consistent with the visual perception of structure in images. Fundamental issues were the selection of size (peak spatial frequency) and circular versus oriented operators (or some combination). In a previous study, circular difference-of-Gaussian (DOG) operators, with peak spatial frequency responses at about 11 and 33 cyc/deg were found to capture the primary structural information in images. Here larger scale circular DOG operators were explored and led to severe loss of image structure and introduced spatial dislocations (due to blur) in structure which is not consistent with visual perception. Orientation sensitive operators (akin to one class of simple cortical neurons) introduced ambiguities of edge extent regardless of the scale of the operator. For machine vision schemes which are functionally similar to natural vision form perception, two circularly symmetric very high spatial frequency channels appear to be necessary and sufficient for a wide range of natural images. Such a machine vision scheme is most similar to the physiological performance of the primate lateral geniculate nucleus rather than the striate cortex.

Jobson, Daniel J.↗

Learned adaptive properties for mitigation of weight perturbations in embedded spiking networks

Recent years have seen an increased importance of neural network inference in edge-based scenarios, which impose size and power constraints requiring novel computing devices. These same edge scenarios may require operating over long periods of time, or exposure to extreme environments, resulting in a drift of neural network weights that cause degraded performance. In searching for ways to develop neural network approaches that perform robustly under these conditions, we propose a biologically-inspired mechanism for the dynamic adaptation of within-neuron parameters that is guided by a global context signal carrying information about perturbations and variability in incoming stimuli. Specifically, we demonstrate that adaptive voltage thresholds or neuronal time constants, when informed by a global context signal, can enable network-level mechanisms to recover from perturbed synaptic weights. Consistent with prior literature, the context-modulated approach is effective for recurrent, but not feedforward networks, by modulating network level dynamics. We demonstrate this approach successfully recovers performance in image classification tasks and spatiotemporal tracking tasks under idealized and Gaussian noise as well as for realistic perturbations from a memristive device when exposed to ionizing radiation. Finally, we discuss how this approach enables the design of robust and energy-efficient neuromorphic systems that perform well, even in resource-constrained scenarios with extreme environments such as edge processing.

context modulation↗

Distributed approximate minimal Steiner trees with millions of seed vertices on billion-edge graphs

In this report, we present a parallel 2-approximation Steiner minimal tree algorithm and its MPI-based distributed implementation. In place of expensive distance computations between all pairs of seed vertices, the solution we employ exploits a cheaper Voronoi cell computation. Our design leverages asynchronous processing and message prioritization to accelerate convergence of distance computations, and harnesses vertex and edge centric processing to offer fast time-to-solution. We demonstrate scalability and performance using real-world graphs with up to 128 billion edges and 512 compute nodes, and show the ability to find Steiner trees with up to one million seed vertices. Using 12 data instances, we present comparison with the state-of-the-art exact solver, SCIP-Jack, and two sequential 2-approximate algorithms. We empirically show that, on average, the total distance of the Steiner tree identified by our solution is 1.1290 times greater than the Steiner minimal tree – well within the theoretical approximation bound of 2.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

High–Energy Earth–Abundant Cathodes with Enhanced Cationic/Anionic Redox for Sustainable and Long–Lasting Na–Ion Batteries

Layered iron/manganese-based oxides are a class of promising cathode materials for sustainable batteries due to their high energy densities and earth abundance. However, the stabilization of cationic and anionic redox reactions in these cathodes during cycling at high voltage remain elusive. Here, an electrochemically/thermally stable P2-Na 0.67 Fe 0.3 Mn 0.5 Mg 0.1 Ti 0.1 O 2 cathode material with zero critical elements is designed for sodium-ion batteries (NIBs) to realize a highly reversible capacity of ≈210 mAh g –1 at 20 mA g –1 and good cycling stability with a capacity retention of 74% after 300 cycles at 200 mA g –1 , even when operated with a high charge cut-off voltage of 4.5 V versus sodium metal. Combining a suite of cutting-edge characterizations and computational modeling, it is shown that Mg/Ti co-doping leads to stabilized surface/bulk structure at high voltage and high temperature, and more importantly, enhances cationic/anionic redox reaction reversibility over extended cycles with the suppression of other undesired oxygen activities. This work fundamentally deepens the failure mechanism of Fe/Mn-based layered cathodes and highlights the importance of dopant engineering to achieve high-energy and earth-abundant cathode material for sustainable and long-lasting NIBs.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Selective Hydration of Rutile TiO 2 as a Strategy for Site-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition

In this report the feasibility of a site-selective hydration strategy that enables site-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) is investigated among four rutile TiO 2 facets [(110), (100), (101) and (001)] and their most prevalent step edges. First-principles simulations of asymmetric slab models were utilized to create accurate representations of pristine terrace and step edge sites. The adsorption free energies for molecular and dissociative adsorption of H 2 O were calculated to evaluate this strategy as a viable route to step edge selectivity. We predict that selective hydroxylation is possible on the 110 and 001 step edges and further computationally evaluate three metalorganic ALD precursors for their compatibility with the selective hydration strategy. Experimental evidence for delayed nucleation of ALD on rutile (001), (110), and (100) TiO2 single crystals corroborates predictions of the dehydration of the surface and suggests the possibility of site-selective ALD.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Workflow Provenance in the Computing Continuum for Responsible, Trustworthy, and Energy-Efficient AI

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more pervasive in our society, it is crucial to develop, deploy, and assess Responsible and Trustworthy AI (RTAI) models, i.e., those that consider not only accuracy but also other aspects, such as explainability, fairness, and energy efficiency. Workflow provenance data have historically enabled critical capabilities towards RTAI. Provenance data derivation paths contribute to responsible workflows through transparency in tracking artifacts and resource consumption. Provenance data are well-known for their trustworthiness helping explainability, reproducibility, and accountability. However, there are complex challenges to achieve RTAI, which are further complicated by the heterogeneous infrastructure in the computing continuum (Edge-Cloud-HPC) used to develop and deploy models. As a result, a significant research and development gap remains between workflow provenance data management and RTAI. In this paper, we present a vision of the pivotal role of workflow provenance in supporting RTAI and discuss related challenges. We present a schematic view between RTAI and provenance, and highlight open research directions.

Santos Souza, Renan↗

ASAP: Automatic Synthesis of Area-Efficient and Precision-Aware CGRAs

Coarse-grained reconfigurable accelerators (CGRAs) are a promising accelerator design choice that strikes a balance between performance and adaptability to different computing patterns across various applications domains. Designing a CGRA for a specific application domain involves enormous software/hardware engineering effort. Recent research works explore loop transformations, functional unit types, network topology, and memory size to identify optimal CGRA designs given a set of kernels from a specific application do- main. Unfortunately, the impact of functional units with different precision support has rarely been investigated. To address this gap, we propose ASAP – a hardware/software co-design framework that automatically identifies and synthesizes optimal precision-aware CGRA for a set of applications of interest. Our evaluation shows that ASAP generates specialized designs 3.2×, 4.21×, and 5.8× more efficient (in terms of performance per unit of energy or area) than non-specialized homogeneous CGRAs, for the scientific computing, embedded, and edge machine learning domains, respectively, with limited accuracy loss. Moreover, ASAP provides more efficient designs than other state-of-the-art synthesis frameworks for specialized CGRAs.

artificial intelligence↗

Tournament-Based Pretraining to Accelerate Federated Learning

Advances in hardware, proliferation of compute at the edge, and data creation at unprecedented scales have made federated learning (FL) necessary for the next leap forward in pervasive machine learning. For privacy and network reasons, large volumes of data remain stranded on endpoints located in geographically austere (or at least austere network-wise) locations. However, challenges exist to the effective use of these data. To solve the system and functional level challenges, we present an three novel variants of a serverless federated learning framework. We also present tournament-based pretraining, which we demonstrate significantly improves model performance in some experiments. Overall, these extensions to FL and our novel training method enable greater focus on science rather than ML development.

Baughman, Matt↗

braggedgemodeling

braggedgemodeling (bem) is an open-source Python package for modeling neutron Bragg-edge imaging. It computes the wavelength-dependent total neutron cross-section of a material (coherent and incoherent elastic, coherent and incoherent inelastic scattering, and absorption) from its crystal structure, and implements the March-Dollase texture model and the Jorgensen peak profile, supporting quantitative analysis of energy-resolved neutron imaging data (phase, stress/strain, and texture). Published in the Journal of Open Source Software (2018).

Lin, Jiao [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), O↗

Computational Requirements in Clean Energy and Manufacturing: Summary report of the virtual workshop held on June 28-29, 2021

On June 28–29, 2021, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program in the Office of Science convened a workshop with the Energy Efficiency and Renew able Energy (EERE) program offices to assess the future need for advanced computing resources in the areas of clean energy and advanced manufacturing. In part, this discussion served as an update to earlier workshops and townhalls. ASCR is guided by DOE mission needs as it develops research programs, computers, and networks at the leading edge of technologies. As the exascale computing era dawns, technology changes are creating new opportunities for those who must use high-performance computing (HPC) and data systems effectively. The ASCR computing facilities are augmenting their strategy to adapt to changing science needs and emerging technologies and to leverage the utility of exascale computing across the federal government.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Summary Report from the 2025 Interfaces for Energy and the Environment Conference

The inaugural Interfaces for Energy and the Environment Conference (IEEC) took place on May 19-23, 2025, at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, Washington (USA). The aim of this first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary meeting was to provide a forum for participants to share the latest cutting edge experimental and computational advances in interfacial science across energy and environmental applications. The sessions below (elaborated further in the report summaries) highlighted fundamental and applied collaborative research aimed at understanding the interactions occurring at interfaces in aqueous environments, including, but not limited to, the fields of geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, agriculture, environmental management, and catalysis. They were organized to stimulate and provide opportunities to create, renew, and deepen collaborations. The conference included activities such as oral and poster presentations, honoree mentoring session, and a team building exercise to support all career stages (detailed summaries of these activities are in the Appendices).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS)

The history of the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Program, which is designed to provide a leading-edge capability to computational aerodynamicists, is traced back to its origin in 1975. Factors motivating its development and examples of solutions to successively refined forms of the governing equations are presented. The NAS Processing System Network and each of its eight subsystems are described in terms of function and initial performance goals. A proposed usage allocation policy is discussed and some initial problems being readied for solution on the NAS system are identified.

Peterson, V. L.↗