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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 325 records · Page 18

Time Changes of the European Gravity Field from GRACE: A Comparison with Ground Measurements from Superconducting Gravimeters and with Hydrology Model Predictions

We investigate the time-variable gravity changes in Europe retrieved from the initial GRACE monthly solutions spanning a 18 month duration from April 2002 to October 2003. Gravity anomaly maps are retrieved in Central Europe from the monthly satellite solutions we compare the fields according to various truncation levels (typically between degree 10 and 20) of the initial fields (expressed in spherical harmonics to degree 120). For these different degrees, an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) decomposition of the time-variable gravity field leads us to its main spatial and temporal characteristics. We show that the dominant signal is found to be annual with an amplitude and a phase both in agreement with predictions in Europe modeled using snow and soil-moisture variations from recent hydrology models. We compare these GRACE gravity field changes to surface gravity observations from 6 superconducting gravimeters of the GGP (Global Geodynamics Project) European sub-network, with a special attention to loading corrections. Initial results suggest that all 3 data sets (GRACE, hydrology and GGP) are responding to annual changes in near-surface water in Europe of a few microGal (at length scales of approx.1000 km) that show a high value in winter and a summer minimum. We also point out that the GRACE gravity field evolution seems to indicate that there is a trend in gravity between summer 2002 and summer 2003 which can be related to the 2003 heatwave in Europe and its hydrological consequences (drought). Despite the limited time span of our analysis and the uncertainties in retrieving a regional solution from the network of gravimeters, the calibration and validation aspects of the GRACE data processing based on the annual hydrology cycle in Europe are in progress.

Hinderer, J.↗

Four-Switch Buck-Boost Converter Based on Model Predictive Control with Smooth Mode Transition Capability

Four-switch buck-boost converter supports both voltage step-up and step-down functionalities, but it suffers from mode transfer challenge that would need reliable mode detection when designed to operate in multi different modes. In this paper, a novel control method based on model predictive current control is proposed for such converter with inherent smooth mode transfer capability without extra design on mode detection and transfer scheme. Modulator and mode detection are replaced by an optimization process through cost function. This largely simplifies the design and makes it easily implemented. Therefore, seamless transfer between buck and boost modes is achieved with many other system level benefits. Simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the effectiveness of proposed method for the four-switch buck-boost converter.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Quantifying spectral albedo effects on bifacial photovoltaic module measurements and system model predictions

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the effect of spectral albedo on photovoltaic (PV) module measurements and system model predictions. We demonstrate how to account for albedo in indoor bifacial device measurements by adjusting the applied irradiance using the scaled rear irradiance method, exemplified on fabricated silicon heterojunction (SHJ) modules. System model performance is studied using a detailed 3D finite-element model, DUET, for fixed-tilt and horizontal single-axis tracked (SAT) arrays between 15 and 75°N. Spectral effects cause variations in measured SHJ module short-circuit current up to 2% and efficiency variation up to 0.3% abs. We further demonstrate that rear-side spectral mismatch factors (SMMs) resulting from including or omitting spectral albedo in PV system modeling vary between ±13%, while total (front+rear) SMMs vary up to 3%, depending on the deployment configuration and latitude. SAT array SMMs are weakly correlated with latitude, while fixed-tilt array SMMs increase with latitude, driven by an increasing proportion of ground-reflected light on the front-side of modules. Ground-reflections can constitute between 2% and 32% of total incident module irradiance, with notably high (>10%) contributions for fixed-tilt arrays at high latitude. Effects of spectral albedo are most significant for: (1) fixed-tilt deployments at high latitudes, (2) wide bandgap technologies such as perovskite and cadmium telluride cells, (3) albedos which vary steeply over the technology's absorption range, and (4) high albedo ground covers. Overall, we demonstrate that omitting spectral albedo effects can result in PV measurement and system-level modeling uncertainties on the order of several percent in these cases.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Thermal barrier coating life prediction model development, phase 1

The objective of this program was to establish a methodology to predict thermal barrier coating (TBC) life on gas turbine engine components. The approach involved experimental life measurement coupled with analytical modeling of relevant degradation modes. Evaluation of experimental and flight service components indicate the predominant failure mode to be thermomechanical spallation of the ceramic coating layer resulting from propagation of a dominant near interface crack. Examination of fractionally exposed specimens indicated that dominant crack formation results from progressive structural damage in the form of subcritical microcrack link-up. Tests conducted to isolate important life drivers have shown MCrAlY oxidation to significantly affect the rate of damage accumulation. Mechanical property testing has shown the plasma deposited ceramic to exhibit a non-linear stress-strain response, creep and fatigue. The fatigue based life prediction model developed accounts for the unusual ceramic behavior and also incorporates an experimentally determined oxide rate model. The model predicts the growth of this oxide scale to influence the intensity of the mechanic driving force, resulting from cyclic strains and stresses caused by thermally induced and externally imposed mechanical loads.

Demasi, Jeanine T.↗

Predictive Modeling for Differential Diagnosis and Mortality Risk Assessment

The prevalence of electronic health record (EHR) systems has brought prodigious biomedical informatics opportunity. Automated machine learning methods can effectively utilize such data and have become common tools for healthcare predictive modeling. Researches in medical informatics have explored the potential of deep learning and classical models in emergent care scenarios. In particular, predicting differential diagnoses for admissions have proven useful in decreasing unnecessary lab tests and improving inpatient triage decision-making. Moreover, identification of high-risk patients for in-hospital mortality is vitally important to maximize allocation of medical resources.The Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC-III) database, containing de-identified critical care inpatient was used in our study. This data set captures hospital patient laboratory measurements, pharmacologic prescriptions, diagnostic data and procedure event recordings. When considering adult patients and discounting admissions with ICU length of stay less than 24 hours, there were 37,787 unique admissions and 30,414 total patients. We examined the top 25 most prevalent ICD-9 group-level disease specificities in MIMIC-III using a multi-label classification model. In-hospital mortality was modeled as binary classification with 4,155 (13%) adult patients that expired, of which 3,138 (75.5%) were in the ICU setting. The metrics AUC, F1 score, sensitivity and specificity values calculated for each disease label measured prediction performance.The usage of ICD-9 group codes reduced feature dimension from 14,567 to 942 and greatly improved distribution of patient diagnostic categories. Disease temporal patterns were captured by considering the most frequently sampled 6 vital signs and 13 laboratory values. Missing data were imputed at each time-stamp. Time-series raw hourly average values were converted into 5 summary features (mean, standard deviation, number of observations, min & max values). Patient demographic variables such as age, gender, marital status and ethnicity were also factored into the modeling. Choi et al showed that contextual embedding of medical data, diagnostic and procedural codes alone can predict future diagnoses with sensitivity as high as 0.79. We utilized an embedding technique called word2vec which allowed sparse representations of medical history to be transformed into dense word vectors. The mappings captured contextual information by treating each admission as a sentence and learning the most likely neighboring words in a sliding window fashion. Binary and multi-label classification was achieved via collapse models, which do not consider temporal information, as well as recurrent neural networks with regularization, Softmax output layer activation together with categorical cross-entropy as the loss function.

US Army collaboration↗

Stochastic Model Predictive Control for Demand Response in a Home Energy Management System: Preprint

This paper presents a chance constrained, model predictive control (MPC) algorithm for demand response (DR) in a home energy management system (HEMS). The HEMS optimally schedules controllable appliances given user preferences such as thermal comfort and energy cost sensitivity, and available residentially-owned power sources such as photovoltaic (PV) generation and home battery systems. The proposed control architecture ensures both the DR event and indoor thermal comfort are satisfied with a high probability given the uncertainty in available PV generation and the outdoor temperature forecast. The uncertainties are incorporated into the MPC formulation using probabilistic constraints instead of computationally limiting sampling-based approaches. Simulation results for various user preferences and probabilistic model parameters show the effectiveness of the HEMS algorithm response to DR requests.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

A Sequential Model Predictive and Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Controller for Distribution System Outage Mitigation under Hurricane Events

This paper proposes a proactive outage mitigation framework for power distribution networks to withstand hurricane-induced disruptions. It leverages Model Predictive Control (MPC) to identify safe lines for proactive switching during hurricanes, minimizing the risk of cascading failures and voltage violations. The switching strategies optimized by MPC are sequentially integrated with a Deep Reinforcement Learning agent using the Advantage Actor-Critic algorithm, enabling dynamic line switching to maximize connected buses and minimize voltage violations in real time. Using a probabilistic hurricane model, the framework predicts line failures and adapts to varying conditions to enhance grid resilience. Simulations on the IEEE 123-bus system demonstrate its effectiveness in maintaining high connectivity and minimizing disruptions. Real-time testing with an RTDS confirms the practicality and reliability of the proposed approach.

Selim, Alaa [University of Connecticut]↗

Swarm intelligence–based distributed stochastic model predictive control for transactive operation of networked building clusters

To maximize potential energy and cost savings, networked clusters of local buildings are formed for energy transactions. Both centralized and distributed decision approaches were explored in past decades as a way to enable efficient transactive operations. However, online distributed stochastic transactive operation has been overlooked in the literature. To bridge gaps in the research, a bi-level distributed stochastic model predictive control framework was proposed to study the transactive operations of building clusters where a system-level agent is employed to coordinate multiple building agents at the subsystem level. The energy transaction is optimized by a marginal price-based particle swarm optimizer at the system level. Given the energy transaction decisions, each building can independently solve a scenario-based two-stage stochastic model to optimally dispatch the electricity and ancillary services for optimal energy performance. The effectiveness of the proposed framework and coordination algorithm are demonstrated in deterministic, stochastic, and online operations and compared to centralized decisions using several sets of experiments. Additionally, the proposed approach can realize autonomous transactive operation and be extended to community-level building clusters in a plug-and-play way.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Model Predictive Control of parametric excited pitch-surge modes in wave energy converters

For a heave-pitch-surge three-degrees-of-freedom wave energy converter, the heave mode is usually decoupled from the pitch-surge modes for small motions. The pitch-surge modes are usually coupled and are parametrically excited by the heave mode, depending on the buoy geometry. In this paper, a Model Predictive Control is applied to the parametric excited pitch-surge motion, while the heave motion is optimized independently. The optimality conditions are derived, and a gradient-based numerical optimization algorithm is used to search for the optimal control. Numerical tests are conducted for regular and Bretschneider waves. The results demonstrate that the proposed control can be implemented to harvest more than three times the energy that can be harvested using a heave-only wave energy converter. As a result, the energy harvested using a parametrically excited model is higher than that is harvested when using a linear model.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

Hybrid predictive modeling approach simulated evapotranspiration and ecosystem respiration data

This dataset includes measured data used for developing hybrid-predictive-modeling (HPM) approach and simulated evapotranspiration and ecosystem respiration data across several Fluxnet sites, SNOTEL sites and East River locations (Chen et al., 2020 in review). Fluxnet sites considered in this study include: CA-OAS, CA-OBS, US-NR1, US-TON, US-VAR, US-SRM, US-WHS, US-WKG. Snotel sites Butte (ER-BT), Porphyry Creek (ER-PK) and Schofield Pass (ER-SP) are included as well 16 east river locations with different vegetation types denoted by evergreen forests (EF), deciduous forests (DF), riparian shrublands (RS) and meadow grassland (MS). This data package includes: 1) A summary spread sheet of the sites and acronyms for data variables. 2) Processed Fluxnet datasets that are obtained from Fluxnet.fluxdata.org with HPM estimated evapotranspiration (ET) and ecosystem respiration (RECO). Trained models and metrics for parameters for the Fluxnet sites were added in an update on November 2, 2020; 3) Processed SNOTEL datasets obtained from www.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/ and HPM estimated ET and RECO; 4) Weather data at east river locations obtained from DAYMET (daymet.ornl.gov) as well as HPM estimated ET and RECO. NDVI datasets are obtained from Landsat 5, 7 and 8 on Google Earth Engine platform. Detailed QA/QC and sampling methods of measured data are available at the original data source.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Atmospheric prediction model survey

As part of the SEASAT Satellite program of NASA, a survey of representative primitive equation atmospheric prediction models that exist in the world today was written for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Seventeen models developed by eleven different operational and research centers throughout the world are included in the survey. The surveys are tutorial in nature describing the features of the various models in a systematic manner.

Wellck, R. E.↗

Multiscale modeling and nonlinear model predictive control for flue gas desulfurization

The primary source of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) emissions is flue gas from fossil fuels-based power plants. SO 2 emissions are known to not only cause health issues, but also have an adverse effect on the environment in various ways. Several Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) technologies have been incorporated in power plants. The most popular technology is Wet FGD, where a limestone slurry is used to absorb SO 2 from the flue gas. A detailed droplet scale model describing the instantaneous and finite rate chemistry is developed. The ill-posed Differential-Algebraic Equation (DAE) droplet model is reformulated to a well-posed index-1 DAE through index reduction. The droplet model is integrated with the bulk phase by incorporating gas-liquid mass transfer, and an oxidation reactor model to simulate the dynamic operation of the counter-current spray scrubber. As a result, the model has a well-conditioned Jacobian and overcomes the modeling challenges of previous works and enables numerical solution without requiring carefully selected initialization or specialized solution procedures. The model is successfully validated using power plant measurements, and nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) studies are demonstrated to optimize recycle stream flowrates to minimize pumping costs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Comparison of Fire Model Predictions with Experiments Conducted in a Hangar With a 15 Meter Ceiling

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive capabilities of fire models using the results of a series of fire experiments conducted in an aircraft hangar with a ceiling height of about 15 m. This study is designed to investigate model applicability at a ceiling height where only a limited amount of experimental data is available. This analysis deals primarily with temperature comparisons as a function of distance from the fire center and depth beneath the ceiling. Only limited velocity measurements in the ceiling jet were available but these are also compared with those models with a velocity predictive capability.

MATHEMATICAL MODELS↗

Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Based on Real-Time Iteration Scheme for Wave Energy Converters Using WEC-Sim

One of several challenges that wave energy technologies face is their inability to generate electricity cost-competitively with other grid-scale energy generation sources. Several studies have identified two approaches to lower the levelised cost of electricity: reduce the cost over the device's lifetime or increase its overall electrical energy production. Several advanced control strategies have been developed to address the latter. However, only a few take into account the overall efficiency of the power take-off (PTO) system, and none of them solve the optimisation problem that arises at each sampling time on real-time. In this paper, a detailed Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) approach based on the real-time iteration (RTI) scheme is presented, and the controller performance is evaluated using a time-domain hydrodynamics model (WEC-Sim). The proposed control law incorporates the PTO system's efficiency in a control law to maximise the energy extracted. The study also revealed that RTI-NMPC clearly outperforms a simple resistive controller.

model predictive control↗

Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Based on Real-Time Iteration Scheme for Wave Energy Converters Using WEC-Sim: Preprint

One of several challenges that wave energy technologies face is their inability to generate electricity cost-competitively with other grid-scale energy generation sources. Several studies have identified two approaches to lower the levelised cost of electricity: reduce the cost over the device's lifetime or increase its overall electrical energy production. Several advanced control strategies have been developed to address the latter. However, only a few take into account the overall efficiency of the power take-off (PTO) system, and none of them solve the optimisation problem that arises at each sampling time on real-time. In this paper, a detailed Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) approach based on the real-time iteration (RTI) scheme is presented, and the controller performance is evaluated using a time-domain hydrodynamics model (WEC-Sim). The proposed control law incorporates the PTO system's efficiency in a control law to maximise the energy extracted. The study also revealed that RTI-NMPC clearly outperforms a simple resistive controller.

model predictive control↗

Parallelized POD-based suboptimal economic model predictive control of a state-constrained Boussinesq approximation

Motivated by an energy efficient building application, we want to optimize a quadratic cost functional subject to the Boussinesq approximation of the Navier-Stokes equations and to bilateral state and control constraints. Since the computation of such an optimal solution is numerically costly, we design an efficient strategy to compute a sub-optimal (but applicationally acceptable) solution with significantly reduced computational effort. We employ an economic Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy to obtain a feedback control. The MPC sub-problems are based on a linear-quadratic optimal control problem subjected to mixed control and state constraints and a convection-diffusion equation, reduced with proper orthogonal decomposition. Finally, to solve each sub-problem, we apply a primal-dual active set strategy. The method can be fully parallelized, which enables the solution of large problems with real-world parameters.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hybrid model predictive control techniques for safety factor profile and stored energy regulation while incorporating NBI constraints

Abstract A novel hybrid Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm has been designed for simultaneous safety factor ( q ) profile and stored energy ( w ) control while incorporating the pulse-width-modulation constraints associated with the neutral beam injection (NBI) system. Regulation of the q -profile has been extensively shown to be a key factor for improved confinement as well as non-inductive sustainment of the plasma current. Simultaneous control of w is necessary to prevent the triggering of pressure-driven magnetohydrodynamic instabilities as the controller shapes the q profile. Conventional MPC schemes proposed for q -profile control have considered the NBI powers as continuous-time signals, ignoring the discrete-time nature of these actuators and leading in some cases to performance loss. The hybrid MPC scheme in this work has the capability of incorporating the discrete-time actuator dynamics as additional constraints. In nonlinear simulations, the proposed hybrid MPC scheme demonstrates improved q -profile+ w control performance for NSTX-U operating scenarios.

Physics↗