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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 37 records · Page 2

Design of Object-Oriented Distributed Simulation Classes

Distributed simulation of aircraft engines as part of a computer aided design package being developed by NASA Lewis Research Center for the aircraft industry. The project is called NPSS, an acronym for "Numerical Propulsion Simulation System". NPSS is a flexible object-oriented simulation of aircraft engines requiring high computing speed. It is desirable to run the simulation on a distributed computer system with multiple processors executing portions of the simulation in parallel. The purpose of this research was to investigate object-oriented structures such that individual objects could be distributed. The set of classes used in the simulation must be designed to facilitate parallel computation. Since the portions of the simulation carried out in parallel are not independent of one another, there is the need for communication among the parallel executing processors which in turn implies need for their synchronization. Communication and synchronization can lead to decreased throughput as parallel processors wait for data or synchronization signals from other processors. As a result of this research, the following have been accomplished. The design and implementation of a set of simulation classes which result in a distributed simulation control program have been completed. The design is based upon MIT "Actor" model of a concurrent object and uses "connectors" to structure dynamic connections between simulation components. Connectors may be dynamically created according to the distribution of objects among machines at execution time without any programming changes. Measurements of the basic performance have been carried out with the result that communication overhead of the distributed design is swamped by the computation time of modules unless modules have very short execution times per iteration or time step. An analytical performance model based upon queuing network theory has been designed and implemented. Its application to realistic configurations has not been carried out.

Schoeffler, James D.↗

Effects of thermal conductivity of liquid layer in NIF wetted foam experiments

Numerical simulation of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsule implosion experiments needs many plasma parameters corresponding to different materials and their mixtures for a wide range of densities and temperatures. Thermal conduction plays a crucial role in coupling energy to the capsule, is one of the primary mechanisms of energy loss during implosion, has a significant effect on hot-spot formation, and impacts the growth of hydrodynamic instabilities. The determination of accurate thermal conductivity of ICF relevant materials is thus important for understanding capsule performance. Analytic models such as Spitzer or Lee-More models have been extensively used in simulations due to the limited availability of experimental data. First principles calculations have shown that these analytic models tend to underestimate electron thermal conductivity in the warm dense plasma regime for ICF related materials. Here, we numerically investigate the effects of different models for the electron heat conductivity coefficients, including both analytic and Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD)-based models, for mixed materials in ICF. We also investigate the impact of how conductivities are calculated in mixed cells from constituent material conductivities. We apply this to the modeling of recent wetted foam capsule implosions on the National Ignition Facility, in which a foam layer on the inside of the capsule is wetted with deuterium-tritium (DT) liquid. We have found that electron heat conductivity affects the initial hot-spot formation and its evolution. Strikingly, we observe that capsule performance is more sensitive to the method used to mix material conductivities in mixed cells than how individual material conductivity coefficients are calculated. Furthermore, we have found that using the first principles QMD-based conductivity model along with an appropriate model for mixed-cell conductivities yields better agreement with experimental results compared to the established modeling strategies. We also investigate the impact of mixed material conductivity modeling on the process of ablator material mixing with DT ice in a plastic ice-layer capsule. In our simulations, the heat conductivity model affects the calculated mix widths at the fuel-ablator interface, particularly near the tent scar. Additional mixing between the DT fuel and the ablator in turn increases the implosion adiabat, which results in a lower hot-spot pressure.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

V/STOL Conference, Palo Alto, Calif., June 6-8, 1977, Technical Papers

Papers are presented on practical aspects of commercial STOL operations, a Vertical Attitude Takeoff and Landing (VATOL) program, powered-lift STOL ground effects, conceptual design studies of Navy Type A V/STOL aircraft, and a V/STOL shaft propulsion system analytical performance model. Also considered are the management of swirling flows with application to wind tunnel design and V/STOL testing, flight control testing of the VAK-191B, and surface fluctuating pressure measurements on a 1/4-scale YC-14 boilerplate model.

Source record↗

Development of the structural technology of a large deployable antenna

The current NASA-sponsored Antenna Technology Development Program of the offset wrap-rib antenna concept is based on a ground test program of 'proof of concept' hardware whose potential on-orbit performance is based on analytical estimates. The ground demonstration hardware represents a partial 55-meter diameter reflector and feed support structure. Testing will include automated deployment, reflector surface quality evaluation and validation of analytical performance models. Test results and hardware fabrication costs will be used to refine the models that will be the basis for the preliminary design of a 100-meter diameter wrap-rib antenna system. Additionally, the design, processes, tooling, fabrication techniques, fixturing and assembly approaches used for the 'proof of concept' hardware are directly applicable to building flight systems up to 100 meters in diameter.

Wada, B. K.↗

Iterative solution of large, sparse linear systems on a static data flow architecture - Performance studies

The applicability of static data flow architectures to the iterative solution of sparse linear systems of equations is investigated. An analytic performance model of a static data flow computation is developed. This model includes both spatial parallelism, concurrent execution in multiple PE's, and pipelining, the streaming of data from array memories through the PE's. The performance model is used to analyze a row partitioned iterative algorithm for solving sparse linear systems of algebraic equations. Based on this analysis, design parameters for the static data flow architecture as a function of matrix sparsity and dimension are proposed.

Reed, D. A.↗

Automated clustering-based workload characterization

The demands placed on the mass storage systems at various federal agencies and national laboratories are continuously increasing in intensity. This forces system managers to constantly monitor the system, evaluate the demand placed on it, and tune it appropriately using either heuristics based on experience or analytic models. Performance models require an accurate workload characterization. This can be a laborious and time consuming process. It became evident from our experience that a tool is necessary to automate the workload characterization process. This paper presents the design and discusses the implementation of a tool for workload characterization of mass storage systems. The main features of the tool discussed here are: (1)Automatic support for peak-period determination. Histograms of system activity are generated and presented to the user for peak-period determination; (2) Automatic clustering analysis. The data collected from the mass storage system logs is clustered using clustering algorithms and tightness measures to limit the number of generated clusters; (3) Reporting of varied file statistics. The tool computes several statistics on file sizes such as average, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, frequency, as well as average transfer time. These statistics are given on a per cluster basis; (4) Portability. The tool can easily be used to characterize the workload in mass storage systems of different vendors. The user needs to specify through a simple log description language how the a specific log should be interpreted. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section two presents basic concepts in workload characterization as they apply to mass storage systems. Section three describes clustering algorithms and tightness measures. The following section presents the architecture of the tool. Section five presents some results of workload characterization using the tool.Finally, section six presents some concluding remarks.

Pentakalos, Odysseas I.↗

Test Data Analysis of a Spray Bar Zero-Gravity Liquid Hydrogen Vent System for Upper Stages

To support development of a zero-gravity pressure control capability for liquid hydrogen (LH2), a series of thermodynamic venting system (TVS) tests was conducted in 1996 and 1998 using the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) multipurpose hydrogen test bed (MHTB). These tests were performed with ambient heat leaks =20 and 50 W for tank fill levels of 90%, 50%, and 25%. TVS performance testing revealed that the spray bar was highly effective in providing tank pressure control within a 7-kPa band (131-138 Wa), and complete destratification of the liquid and the ullage was achieved with all test conditions. Seven of the MHTB tests were correlated with the TVS performance analytical model. The tests were selected to encompass the range of tank fill levels, ambient heat leaks, operational modes, and ullage pressurants. The TVS model predicted ullage pressure and temperature and bulk liquid saturation pressure and temperature obtained from the TVS model were compared with the test data. During extended self-pressurization periods, following tank lockup, the model predicted faster pressure rise rates than were measured. However, once the system entered the cyclic mixing/venting operational mode, the modeled and measured data were quite similar.

Hedayat, A.↗

Fault Injection and Monitoring Capability for a Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computation System

The Configurable Fault-Injection and Monitoring System (CFIMS) is intended for the experimental characterization of effects caused by a variety of adverse conditions on a distributed computation system running flight control applications. A product of research collaboration between NASA Langley Research Center and Old Dominion University, the CFIMS is the main research tool for generating actual fault response data with which to develop and validate analytical performance models and design methodologies for the mitigation of fault effects in distributed flight control systems. Rather than a fixed design solution, the CFIMS is a flexible system that enables the systematic exploration of the problem space and can be adapted to meet the evolving needs of the research. The CFIMS has the capabilities of system-under-test (SUT) functional stimulus generation, fault injection and state monitoring, all of which are supported by a configuration capability for setting up the system as desired for a particular experiment. This report summarizes the work accomplished so far in the development of the CFIMS concept and documents the first design realization.

Torres-Pomales, Wilfredo↗

Development of an Instrument Performance Simulation Capability for an Infrared Correlation Radiometer for Troposheric Carbon Monoxide Measurements From Geo

We present the progress toward an analytical performance model of a 2.3 micron infrared correlation radiometer (IRCRg) prototype subsystem for a future geostationary space-borne instrument. The prototype is designed specifically to measure carbon monoxide (CO) from geostationary orbit. NASA's Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) mission, one of the United States Earth Science and Applications Decadal Survey missions, specifies the use of infrared correlation radiometry to measure CO in two spectral regions for this mission. GEO-CAPE will use the robust IRCR measurement technique at geostationary orbit, nearly 50 times farther away than the Terra/MOPITT orbit, to determine hourly changes in CO across a continental domain. The abundance of CO in Earth's troposphere directly affects the concentration of hydroxyl, which regulates the lifetimes of many tropospheric pollutants. In addition, CO is a precursor to ozone formation; CO is used as a tracer to study the transport of global and regional pollutants; and CO is used as an indicator of both natural and anthropogenic air pollution sources and sinks. We have structured our development project to enable rapid evaluation of future spaceborne instrument designs. The project is part of NASA's Instrument Incubator Program. We describe the architecture of the performance model and the planned evaluation of the performance model using laboratory test data.

OsowskiNeil, Doreen↗

Electrochemical Mitigation of Corrosion in Molten Chloride Salts During CSP Plant Operation

We are designing an electrochemical flow-cell for removal of corrosive impurities from molten chloride salt Gen3 Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants during plant operation. Corrosive impurities will inevitably form in molten chloride salts upon exposure to air and moisture. We previously showed that even small amounts of these impurities, especially MgOHCl, will be detrimental in Gen3 CSP plants, necessitating prohibitively expensive containment alloys and frequent replacement of corroded components. Pre-purification of salt with Mg metal at temperatures above 650 degrees C is the current method for removing corrosive impurities from chloride salts before they are introduced to CSP systems. However, this is not a suitable method for impurity removal during plant operation. First, this method will produce MgO particulates which will damage plant components. Second, Mg metal is solid at the low temperature point (500 degrees C), so the purification will not proceed at a fast rate. At the high temperature point, Mg is soluble. In this case, fast purification may proceed, but dissolved metal is likely to precipitate out in cold-temperature point components, causing damage. In contrast, our electrochemically driven method allows fast Mg-based purification to proceed at the low temperature point, without formation of harmful particulates and without the risk of Mg metal precipitation. This novel approach is inspired by electrorefining techniques that are widely employed in industrial metallurgy for removal of impurities from metals. Impurities in the incoming molten salt will be reduced to inert MgO at the cathode, which can be removed by periodically washing the cell with acid. Simultaneously, Mg dissolution at the anode will ensure salt composition is maintained, with no net removal of Mg2+. We have validated this electrochemical approach at lab scale under static conditions with batch rectors. Furthermore, we have performed analytical modeling and technoeconomic analysis to produce a preliminary engineering design for the purification flow cell.

CSP↗

Error detection process - Model, design, and its impact on computer performance

An analytical model is developed for computer error detection processes and applied to estimate their influence on system performance. Faults in the hardware, not in the design, are assumed to be the potential cause of transition to erroneous states during normal operations. The classification properties and associated recovery methods of error detection are discussed. The probability of obtaining an unreliable result is evaluated, along with the resulting computational loss. Error detection during design is considered and a feasible design space is outlined. Extension of the methods to account for the effects of extant multiple faults is indicated.

Shin, K. G.↗

Collective I/O Tuning Using Analytical and Machine-Learning Models

The ever larger demand of scientific applications for computation and data is currently driving a continuous increase in scale of parallel computers. The inherent complexity of scaling up a computing systems in terms of both hardware and software stack exposes an increasing number of factors impacting the performance and complicating the process of optimization. In particular, the optimization of parallel I/O has become increasingly challenging due to increasing storage hierarchy and well known performance variability of shared storage systems. This paper focuses on model-based autotuning of the two-phase collective I/O algorithm from a popular MPI distribution on the Blue Gene/Q architecture. We propose a novel hybrid model, constructed as a composition of analytical models for communication and storage operations and black-box models for the performance of the individual operations. We perform an in-depth study of the complexity involved in performance modeling including architecture, software stack and noise. In particular we address this challenges of modeling the performance of shared storage systems by building a benchmark that helps synthesizing factors such as topology, file caching, and noise. The experimental results show that the hybrid approach produces significantly better results than state-of-the-art machine learning approaches and shows a higher robustness to noise, at the cost of a higher modeling complexity

I/O performance modeling↗

Multi-crew Model Analytic Assessment of Landing Performance and Decision-making Demands

Some of the relative merits of the PROCRU approach to modelling multi-crew flight deck activity during approach to landing are discussed. On the basis of two realistic flight scenarios, the ability of the model to simulate different vectored approaches is demonstrated. A secondary exemplary analysis of a nominal and an accelerated final approach is performed, illustrating the potential of the expected net gain (ENGP) functions as a measure of decision-making load.

Milgram, P.↗

A predictive analytic model for high-performance tunneling field-effect transistors approaching non-equilibrium Green's function simulations

A new compact modeling approach is presented which describes the full current-voltage (I-V) characteristic of high-performance (aggressively scaled-down) tunneling field-effect-transistors (TFETs) based on homojunction direct-bandgap semiconductors. The model is based on an analytic description of two key features, which capture the main physical phenomena related to TFETs: (1) the potential profile from source to channel and (2) the elliptic curvature of the complex bands in the bandgap region. It is proposed to use 1D Poisson's equations in the source and the channel to describe the potential profile in homojunction TFETs. This allows to quantify the impact of source/drain doping on device performance, an aspect usually ignored in TFET modeling but highly relevant in ultra-scaled devices. The compact model is validated by comparison with state-of-the-art quantum transport simulations using a 3D full band atomistic approach based on non-equilibrium Green's functions. It is shown that the model reproduces with good accuracy the data obtained from the simulations in all regions of operation: the on/off states and the n/p branches of conduction. This approach allows calculation of energy-dependent band-to-band tunneling currents in TFETs, a feature that allows gaining deep insights into the underlying device physics. The simplicity and accuracy of the approach provide a powerful tool to explore in a quantitatively manner how a wide variety of parameters (material-, size-, and/or geometry-dependent) impact the TFET performance under any bias conditions. The proposed model presents thus a practical complement to computationally expensive simulations such as the 3D NEGF approach.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗