Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “ARMS”

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.

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

At least 361 records · Page 20
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1999

Unequal-Arms Michelson Interferometers

Michelson interferometers allow phase measurements many orders of magnitude below the phase stability of the laser light injected into their two almost equal-length arms. If, however, the two arms are unequal, the laser fluctuations can not be removed by simply recombining the two beams. This is because the laser jitters experience different time delays in the two arms, and therefore can not cancel at the photo detector. We present here a method for achieving exact laser noise cancellation, even in an unequal-arm interferometer. The method presented in this paper requires a separate readout of the relative phase in each arm, made by interfering the returning beam in each arm with a fraction of the outgoing beam. By linearly combining the two data sets with themselves, after they have been properly time-shifted, we show that it is possible to construct a new data set that is free of laser fluctuations. An application of this technique to future planned space-based laser interferometer detectors of gravitational radiation is discussed.

Tinto, Massimo↗
NASA NTRS2010

A Comparison of MERRA and NARR Reanalysis Datasets with the DOE ARM SGP Continuous Forcing data

In this study, the atmospheric state, precipitation, cloud fraction, and radiative fluxes from Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) and North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) are collected and compared with the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) continuous forcing during the period 1999-2001. For the atmospheric state, the three datasets have excellent agreement for the horizontal wind components and air temperature. NARR and ARM have generally good agreement for humidity, except for several biases in the PBL and in the upper troposphere. MERRA, on the other hand, suffers from a year-round negative bias in humidity except for the month of June. For the vertical pressure velocity, significant differences exist with the largest biases occurring during the spring upwelling and summer downwelling periods. Although NARR and MERRA share many resemblances to each other, ARM outperforms these reanalyses in terms of correlation with cloud fraction. Because the ARM forcing is constrained by observed precipitation that gives the adequate mass, heat, and moisture budgets, much of the precipitation (specifically during the late spring/early summer) is caused by smaller-scale forcing that is not captured by the reanalyses. Both NARR and MERRA capture the seasonal variation of CF observed by ARM radar-lidar and GOES with high correlations (0.92-0.78), but having negative biases of 14% and 3%, respectively. Compared to the ARM observations, MERRA shows a better agreement for both SW and LW fluxes except for LW-down (due to a negative bias in water vapor), NARR has significant positive bias for SW-down and negative bias for LW-down under clear- and all-sky conditions . The NARR biases result from a combination of too few clouds and a lack of sufficient extinction by aerosols and water vapor in the atmospheric column. The results presented here represent only one location for a limited time period, and more comparisons at different locations and longer time period are needed.

Kennedy, Aaron D.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Developing a 3-DOF Compliant Perching Arm for a Free-Flying Robot on the International Space Station

This paper presents the design and control of the 3-DOF compliant perching arm for the free-flying Astrobee robots that will operate inside the International Space Station (ISS). The robots are intended to serve as a flexible platform for future guest scientists to use for zero-gravity robotics research - thus, the arm is designed to support manipulation research. It provides a 1-DOF underactuated tendon-driven gripper capable of enveloping a range of objects of different shapes and sizes. Co-located RGB camera and LIDAR sensors provide perception. The Astrobee robots will be capable of grasping each other in flight, to simulate orbital capture scenarios. The arm's end-effector module is swappable on-orbit, allowing guest scientists to add upgraded grippers, or even additional arm degrees of freedom. The design of the arm balances research capabilities with Astrobee's operational need to perch on ISS handrails to reduce power consumption. Basic arm functioning and grip strength were evaluated using an integrated Astrobee prototype riding on a low-friction air bearing.

Park, In-Won↗
DOE OSTI2017

Biomass Burning Research Using DOE ARM Single-Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) Field Campaign Report

The focus of this laboratory study was to investigate the chemical and optical properties, and the detection efficiencies, of tar balls generated in the laboratory using the same instruments deployed on the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility Gulfstream-1 (G-1) aircraft during the 2013 Biomass Burning Observation Project (BBOP) field study, during which tar balls were observed in wildland biomass burning particulate emissions. Key goals of this laboratory study were: (a) measuring the chemical composition of tar balls to provide insights into the atmospheric processes that form (evaporation/oxidation) and modify them in biomass burning plumes, (b) identifying whether tar balls contain refractory black carbon, (c) determining the collection efficiencies of tar balls impacting on the 600oC heated tungsten vaporizer in the Aerodyne Soot Particle Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (SP-AMS) (i.e., given the observed low volatilities, AMS measurements might underestimate organic biomass burning plume loadings), and (d) measuring the wavelength-dependent, mass-specific absorption cross-sections of brown carbon components of tar balls. This project was funded primarily by the DOE Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program, and the ARM Facility made their single-particle soot photometer (SP2) available for September 1-September 31, 2016 in the Aerodyne laboratories. The ARM mentor (Dr. Sedlacek) requested no funds for mentorship or data reduction. All ARM SP2 data collected as part of this project are archived in the ARM Data Archive in accordance with established protocols. The main objectives of the ARM Biomass Burning Observation Period (BBOP, July-October, 2013) field campaign were to (1) assess the impact of wildland fires in the Pacific Northwest on climate, through near-field and regional intensive measurement campaigns, and (2) investigate agricultural burns to determine how those biomass burn plumes differ from those from wildland fires. During BBOP, tar balls, small solid particles of organic substances, were observed downwind from wildland fires (at plume ages of 0-3 hours), but not agricultural burns. Observations of the tar balls on transmission electron microscope (TEM) grids suggest that they formed during atmospheric transport, likely due to the same atmospheric processes that increased the oxidation levels of the organic aerosol. Preliminary analyses suggest that tar balls may account for almost 50% of the total particle number, and 30% of the total organic particle mass, of the aerosol emitted from the burning events. These BBOP observations are described in detail in a manuscript in preparation (Sedlacek et al., 2017). The current laboratory study lasted four weeks and was conducted in the aerosol laboratories located at Aerodyne Research, Inc. in Billerica, Massachusetts. Tar balls were generated from several different biomass fuels, including samples from BBOP-related field sites, following literature procedures (Hoffer, Tóth, Nyirö-Kósa, Pósfai, and Gelencsér, 2016; Tóth, Hoffer, Nyirö-Kósa, Pósfai, and Gelencsér, 2014), and they were characterized using the same equipment used during the 2013 BBOP study, specifically the SP-AMS, SP2 and TEM. This study determined that laboratory-generated tar balls (1) are refractory with respect to TEM analysis in a similar manner to those collected during BBOP from wildland fires, (2) are composed of organic material with some refractory carbon components, (3) can be measured quantitatively by the SP-AMS, strengthening observations during BBOP, (4) absorb visible light, and (4) are dominated by unsaturated hydrocarbons that may be responsible for their light-absorbing properties. The results from this project are already being incorporated into our analysis of the formation processes and emission rates of tar balls as a function of fuel and combustion conditions from wildland fires.

Aerodyne Soot Particle Aerosol Mass Spectrometer↗
DOE OSTI2020

Long Reach Robotic Arm

The Accelerator Division at Fermilab began a robotics program, known as the AD Robotics Initiative. A multi-axis robotic arm was proposed to be included in the program. This summer internship, our team began the planning and design for this project, called the Long Reach Robotic Arm. The problem is that critical systems around the magnets require analysis when water leaks cause them to fail. However, the tightly compacted parts and the quadrupole magnet, weighing approximately 1,000 pounds, cause access viewing problems. The process of having to dismantle and remove the magnet is time-consuming; it is not an efficient solution. The goal for the Long Reach Robotic Arm was to extend and reach behind the component of the Main Injector while "snaking" around and avoiding obstructions. At the start of the project, my teammate, Amanda Hoeksema, and I coded a program in the C language that will determine the number of links and their respective lengths for the robot arm. After, we began the 3D CAD model of the robot arm, base, and counterweight system. The design of the Long Reach Robotic Arm provided a learning experience in learning how to code in the C programming language, using SDL libraries and understanding mechanical engineering.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Switchable rocker arm

A rocker arm includes an outer arm and an inner arm which selectively pivots relative to the outer arm. The rocker arm also includes a lock pin which is displaced along a lock pin axis between a coupled position and a decoupled position. The rocker arm also includes a linkage and a linkage guide which guides the linkage along a linkage axis. One surface of the linkage engages an actuator while another surface of the linkage engages the lock pin such that the linkage translates motion from the actuator to motion of the lock pin.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2019

A performance analysis of the first generation of HPC‐optimized Arm processors

Summary In this paper, we present performance results from Isambard, the first production supercomputer to be based on Arm CPUs that have been optimized specifically for HPC. Isambard is the first Cray XC50 “Scout” system, combining Cavium ThunderX2 Arm‐based CPUs with Cray's Aries interconnect. The full Isambard system will be delivered in the summer of 2018, when it will contain over 10 000 Arm cores. In this work, we present node‐level performance results from eight early‐access nodes that were upgraded to B0 beta silicon in March 2018. We present node‐level benchmark results comparing ThunderX2 with mainstream CPUs, including Intel Skylake and Broadwell, as well as Xeon Phi. We focus on a range of applications and mini‐apps important to the UK national HPC service, ARCHER, as well as to the Isambard project partners and the wider HPC community. We also compare performance across three major software toolchains available for Arm: Cray's CCE, Arm's version of Clang/Flang/LLVM, and GNU.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2013

Cloud Effects on Radiative Heating Rate Profiles over Darwin using ARM and A-train Radar/Lidar Observations

Observations of clouds from the ground-based U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program (ARM) and satellite-based A-train are used to compute cloud radiative forcing profiles over the ARM Darwin, Australia site. Cloud properties are obtained from both radar (the ARM Millimeter Cloud Radar (MMCR) and the CloudSat satellite in the A-train) and lidar (the ARM Micropulse lidar (MPL) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite in the A-train) observations. Cloud microphysical properties are taken from combined radar and lidar retrievals for ice clouds and radar only or lidar only retrievals for liquid clouds. Large, statistically significant differences of up to 1.43 K/day exist between the mean ARM and A-train net cloud radiative forcing profiles. The majority of the difference in cloud radiative forcing profiles is shown to be due to a large difference in the cloud fraction above 12 km. Above this altitude the A-train cloud fraction is significantly larger because more clouds are detected by CALIPSO than by the ground-based MPL. It is shown that the MPL is unable to observe as many high clouds as CALIPSO due to being more frequently attenuated and a poorer sensitivity even in otherwise clear-sky conditions. After accounting for cloud fraction differences and instrument sampling differences due to viewing platform we determined that differences in cloud radiative forcing due to the retrieved ice cloud properties is relatively small. This study demonstrates that A-train observations are better suited for the calculation cloud radiative forcing profiles. In addition, we find that it is necessary to supplement CloudSat with CALIPSO observations to obtain accurate cloud radiative forcing profiles since a large portion of clouds at Darwin are detected by CALIPSO only.

A-train↗
DOE OSTI2013

Effect of Shim Arm Depletion in the NBSR

The cadmium shim arms in the NBSR undergo burnup during reactor operation and hence, require periodic replacement. Presently, the shim arms are replaced after every 25 cycles to guarantee they can maintain sufficient shutdown margin. Two prior reports document the expected change in the 113Cd distribution because of the shim arm depletion. One set of calculations was for the present high-enriched uranium fuel and the other for the low-enriched uranium fuel when it was in the COMP7 configuration (7 inch fuel length vs. the present 11 inch length). The depleted 113Cd distributions calculated for these cores were applied to the current design for an equilibrium low-enriched uranium core. This report details the predicted effects, if any, of shim arm depletion on the shim arm worth, the shutdown margin, power distributions and kinetics parameters.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2016

A SUBSTRUCTURE INSIDE SPIRAL ARMS, AND A MIRROR IMAGE ACROSS THE GALACTIC MERIDIAN

Though the galactic density wave theory is over 50 years old and is well known in science, it has been difficult to say whether it fits our own Milky Way disk. Here we show a substructure inside the spiral arms. This substructure is reversing with respect to the Galactic Meridian (longitude zero), and crosscuts of the arms at negative longitudes appear as mirror images of crosscuts of the arms at positive longitudes. Four lanes are delineated: a mid-arm (extended {sup 12}CO gas at the mid-arm, H i atoms), an in-between offset by about 100 pc (synchrotron, radio recombination lines), an in-between offset by about 200 pc (masers, colder dust), and an inner edge (hotter dust seen in mid-IR and near-IR)

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

A Visual Analytics Approach to Structured Data Analysis to Enhance Nonproliferation and Arms Control Verification Activities

Analysis activities for Nonproliferation and Arms Control verification require the use of many types of data. Tabular structured data, such as Excel spreadsheets and relational databases, have traditionally been used for data mining activities, where specific queries are issued against data to look for matching results. The application of visual analytics tools to structured data enables further exploration of datasets to promote discovery of previously unknown results. This paper discusses the application of a specific visual analytics tool to datasets related to the field of Arms Control and Nonproliferation to promote the use of visual analytics more broadly in this domain. Visual analytics focuses on analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces (Wong and Thomas 2004). It promotes exploratory analysis of data, and complements data mining technologies where known patterns can be mined for. Also with a human in the loop, they can bring in domain knowledge and subject matter expertise. Visual analytics has not widely been applied to this domain. In this paper, we will focus on one type of data: structured data, and show the results of applying a specific visual analytics tool to answer questions in the Arms Control and Nonproliferation domain. We chose to use the T.Rex tool, a visual analytics tool developed at PNNL, which uses a variety of visual exploration patterns to discover relationships in structured datasets, including a facet view, graph view, matrix view, and timeline view. The facet view enables discovery of relationships between categorical information, such as countries and locations. The graph tool visualizes node-link relationship patterns, such as the flow of materials being shipped between parties. The matrix visualization shows highly correlated categories of information. The timeline view shows temporal patterns in data. In this paper, we will use T.Rex with two different datasets to demonstrate how interactive exploration of the data can aid an analyst with arms control and nonproliferation verification activities. Using a dataset from PIERS (PIERS 2014), we will show how container shipment imports and exports can aid an analyst in understanding the shipping patterns between two countries. We will also use T.Rex to examine a collection of research publications from the IAEA International Nuclear Information System (IAEA 2014) to discover collaborations of concern. We hope this paper will encourage the use of visual analytics structured data analytics in the field of nonproliferation and arms control verification. Our paper outlines some of the challenges that exist before broad adoption of these kinds of tools can occur and offers next steps to overcome these challenges.

arms control↗
DOE OSTI2017

Committee ARM User Executive Committee Meeting Summary March 30-31, 2016

This meeting was held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab, Boulder, Colorado. Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility User Executive Committee (UEC) members present were: Chuck Long, Ernie Lewis, Larry Berg, Hailong Wang, Matt Shupe, Andrew Gettelman, and Dave Turner. Rob Wood joined the discussion at several points via conference call, as he was unable to attend in person. Gannet Hallar and Pavlos Kollias were unable to attend. ARM Infrastructure members present were: Jim Mather, Jennifer Comstock, Jimmy Voyles, Ken Kehoe, Doug Sisterson, Hanna Goss, and Giri Prakash. The ARM UEC met face to face for the first time since the committee was formed in December, 2014 at the NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder. Prior to this point, all UEC meetings were done via telephone, usually with the aid of collaboration software (e.g., Lync, GoToMeeting) allowing the entire committee to see a common presentation. These conference calls covered a wide range of topics, many of them on a recurrent basis; however, since the calls were limited to less than 90 minutes it was felt that a more dedicated meeting would allow us to delve more deeply into some of these topics. Three topics for this meeting came from previous conference call discussions: (1) data quality, (2) uncertainty quantification, and (3) improved communications. Two other topics were discussed during this meeting: (4) an overview of the LES (large-eddy simulation) ARM Symbiotic Simulation and Observation (LASSO) project and (5) the process for electing new UEC members. Summaries of each of these topics are provided below, along with recommendations that the UEC feels should be considered by the ARM Facility (which will be highlighted using italics).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Big Federal Data Centers Implementing FAIR Data Principles: ARM Data Center Example

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) is a multi-laboratory/multi-institutional, US Department of Energy Office of Science National User Facility. ARM’s data is currently hosted at the ARM Data Center (ADC) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The ADC holds more than 12,000 data products, with a total holding of more than 1.8 PB of data that dates back to 1992. This includes data from instruments, value-added products, model outputs, field campaigns, and principle investigator contributed data. In this paper, we discuss how big federal scientific data centers, such as ARM, that use modern and scalable architecture apply findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data principles to improve overall efficiency. These principles mainly emphasize machine-to-machine interactions that are directly applicable to ARM because of its data volume.

Devarakonda, Ranjeet↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-T-598: The Effects of Arm Speed for Quality Assurance and Commissioning Measurements in Rectangular and Cylindrical Scanners

Purpose: Cylindrical and rectangular scanning water tanks are examined with different scanning speeds to investigate the TG-106 criteria and the errors induced in the measurements. Methods: Beam profiles were measured in a depth of R50 for a low-energy electron beam (6 MeV) using rectangular and cylindrical tanks. The speeds of the measurements (arm movement) were varied in different profile measurements. Each profile was measured with a certain speed to obtain the average and standard deviation as a parameter for investigating the reproducibility and errors. Results: At arm speeds of ∼0.8 mm/s the errors were as large as 2% and 1% with rectangular and cylindrical tanks, respectively. The errors for electron beams and for photon beams in other depths were within the TG-106 criteria of 1% for both tank shapes. Conclusion: The measurements of low-energy electron beams in a depth of R50, as an extreme case scenario, are sensitive to the speed of the measurement arms for both rectangular and cylindrical tanks. The measurements in other depths, for electron beams and photon beams, with arm speeds of less than 1 cm/s are within the TG-106 criteria. An arm speed of 5 mm/s appeared to be optimal for fast and accurate measurements for both cylindrical and rectangular tanks.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

Compressed-sensing-based content-driven hierarchical reconstruction: Theory and application to C-arm cone-beam tomography

Purpose: This paper addresses the reconstruction of x-ray cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) for interventional C-arm systems. Subsampling of CBCT is a significant issue with C-arms due to their slow rotation and to the low frame rate of their flat panel x-ray detectors. The aim of this work is to propose a novel method able to handle the subsampling artifacts generally observed with analytical reconstruction, through a content-driven hierarchical reconstruction based on compressed sensing. Methods: The central idea is to proceed with a hierarchical method where the most salient features (high intensities or gradients) are reconstructed first to reduce the artifacts these features induce. These artifacts are addressed first because their presence contaminates less salient features. Several hierarchical schemes aiming at streak artifacts reduction are introduced for C-arm CBCT: the empirical orthogonal matching pursuit approach with the ℓ{sub 0} pseudonorm for reconstructing sparse vessels; a convex variant using homotopy with the ℓ{sub 1}-norm constraint of compressed sensing, for reconstructing sparse vessels over a nonsparse background; homotopy with total variation (TV); and a novel empirical extension to nonlinear diffusion (NLD). Such principles are implemented with penalized iterative filtered backprojection algorithms. For soft-tissue imaging, the authors compare the use of TV and NLD filters as sparsity constraints, both optimized with the alternating direction method of multipliers, using a threshold for TV and a nonlinear weighting for NLD. Results: The authors show on simulated data that their approach provides fast convergence to good approximations of the solution of the TV-constrained minimization problem introduced by the compressed sensing theory. Using C-arm CBCT clinical data, the authors show that both TV and NLD can deliver improved image quality by reducing streaks. Conclusions: A flexible compressed-sensing-based algorithmic approach is proposed that is able to accommodate for a wide range of constraints. It is successfully applied to C-arm CBCT images that may not be so well approximated by piecewise constant functions.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

The ARM Radar Network: At the Leading-edge of Cloud and Precipitation Observations

The ARM observatories include radars that span a range of frequencies and capabilities to characterize the three-dimensional structure and properties of atmospheric hydrometeors. Improving our ability to predict future weather and climate conditions is strongly linked to achieving significant advancements in our understanding of cloud and precipitation processes. Observations are critical to making these advancements because they both improve our understanding of these processes and provide constraints on numerical models. Historically, instruments for observing cloud properties have limited cloud-aerosol investigations to a small subset of cloud-process interactions. To address these challenges, the last decade has seen the U.S. DOE ARM facility significantly upgrade and expand its surveillance radar capabilities towards providing holistic and multi-scale observations of clouds and precipitation. These upgrades include radars that operate at four frequency bands covering a wide range of scattering regimes, improving upon the information contained in earlier ARM observations. The traditional ARM emphasis on the vertical column is maintained, providing more comprehensive, calibrated, and multiparametric measurements of clouds and precipitation. Furthermore, the ARM radar network now features multiple scanning dual-polarization Doppler radars to exploit polarimetric and multi-Doppler capabilities that provide a wealth of information on storm microphysics and dynamics under a wide range of conditions. While the diversity in wavelengths and detection capabilities are unprecedented, there is still considerable work ahead before the full potential of these radar advancements is realized. This includes synergy with other observations, improved forward and inverse modeling methods, and well-designed data-model integration methods. The overarching goal is to offer a comprehensive characterization of a complete volume of the cloudy atmosphere and to act as a natural laboratory for the study of cloud processes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

ARM Airborne Carbon Measurements VI (ACME VI) Science Plan

From October 1 through September 30, 2016, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Aerial Facility will deploy the Cessna 206 aircraft over the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site, collecting observations of trace-gas mixing ratios over the ARM’s SGP facility. The aircraft payload includes two Atmospheric Observing Systems, Inc., analyzers for continuous measurements of CO2 and a 12-flask sampler for analysis of carbon cycle gases (CO2, CO, CH4, N2O, 13CO2, 14CO2, carbonyl sulfide, and trace hydrocarbon species, including ethane). The aircraft payload also includes instrumentation for solar/infrared radiation measurements. This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARM Climate Research Facility and Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program and builds upon previous ARM Airborne Carbon Measurements (ARM-ACME) missions. The goal of these measurements is to improve understanding of 1) the carbon exchange at the SGP site, 2) how CO2 and associated water and energy fluxes influence radiative forcing, convective processes and CO2 concentrations over the SGP site, and 3) how greenhouse gases are transported on continental scales.

Biraud, S↗
DOE OSTI2017

ARM Cloud Radar Simulator Package for Global Climate Models

It has been challenging to directly compare U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility ground-based cloud radar measurements with climate model output because of limitations or features of the observing processes and the spatial gap between model and the single-point measurements. To facilitate the use of ARM radar data in numerical models, an ARM cloud radar simulator was developed to converts model data into pseudo-ARM cloud radar observations that mimic the instrument view of a narrow atmospheric column (as compared to a large global climate model [GCM] grid-cell), thus allowing meaningful comparison between model output and ARM cloud observations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗