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At least 361 records · Page 20

Minimizing Fraud in the Carbon Offset Market Using Blockchain Technologies

Fraud in the Environmental Benefit Credit (EBC) markets is pervasive. To make matters worse, the cost of creating EBCs is often higher than the market price. Consequently, a method to create, validate, and verify EBCs and their relevance is needed to mitigate fraud. The EBC market has focused on geologic (fossil fuel) CO 2 sequestration projects that are often over budget and behind schedule and has failed to capture the "lowest hanging fruit" EBCs - terrestrial sequestration via the agricultural industry. This project reviews a methodology to attain possibly the least costly EBCs by tracking the reduction of inputs required to grow crops. The use of bio- stimulant products, such as humate, allows a farmer to use less nitrogen without adversely affecting crop yield. Using less nitrogen qualifies for EBCs by reducing nitrous oxide emissions and nitrate runoff from a farmer's field. A blockchain that tracks the bio-stimulant material from source to application provides a link between a tangible (bio-stimulant commodity) and the associated intangible (EBCs) assets. Covert insertion of taggants in the bio-stimulant products creates a unique barcode that allows a product to be digitally tracked from beginning to end. This process (blockchain technology) is so robust, logical, and transparent that it will enhance the value of the associated EBCs by mitigating fraud. It provides a real time method for monetizing the benefits of the material. Substantial amounts of energy are required to produce, transport, and distribute agricultural inputs including fertilizer and water. Intelligent optimization of the use of agricultural inputs can drive meaningful cost savings. Tagging and verification of product application provides a valuable understanding of the dynamics in the water/food energy nexus, a major food security and sustainability issue. As technology in agriculture evolves so to must methods to verify the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) potential of innovative solutions. The technology reviewed provides the ability to combine blockchain and taggants ("taggant blockchains") as the engine by which to (1) mitigate fraudulent carbon credits; (2) improve food chain security, and (3) monitor and manage sustainability. The verification of product quality and application is a requirement to validate benefits. Recent upgrades to humic and fulvic quality protocols known as ISO CD 19822 TC134 offers an analytical procedure. This work has been assisted by the Humic Products Trade Association and International Humic Substance Society. In addition, providing proof of application of these products and verification of the correct application of prescriptive humic and bio-stimulant products is required. Individual sources of humate have unique and verifiable characteristics. Additionally, methods for prescription of site- specific agricultural inputs in agricultural fields are available. (See US Patents 734867B2, US 90658633B2.) Finally, a method to assure application rate is required through the use of taggants. Sensors using organic solid to liquid phase change nanoparticles of various types and melting temperatures added to the naturally occurring materials provide a barcode. Over 100 types of nanoparticles exist ensuring numerous possible barcodes to reduce industry fraud. Taggant materials can be collected from soil samples of plant material to validate a blockchain of humic, fulvic and other soil amendment products. Other non-organic materials are also available as taggants; however, the organic tags are biodegradable and safe in the environment allowing for use during differing application timeliness.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Fully Implicit Monte Carlo (FIMC) (September 2019-September 2020 Progress Report)

This research is focused on applying the NLem method to the full thermal radiative transfer (TRT) equations in the context of a Monte Carlo solution strategy. A framework has been developed for obtaining a solution to the TRT equations using the nonlinear elimination method (NLem) method. Current efforts are focused of the development and verification of the required Monte Carlo algorithm, diffusion algorithm, and material energy solver. Once all three pieces have been verified, the algorithms will then be coupled into a fully functioning method for applying NLem to the TRT equations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Detailed analyses of a TRISO-fueled microreactor: Modeling of a Micro-Reactor System using NEAMS Tools

Our analysis provides preliminary confirmation of the feasibility of applying the NEAMS codes for multiphysics simulations to model load following transients and accidental scenarios. Detailed demonstration was performed on a simple unit-cell model to perform transient simulations, while verifying accuracy of the multiphysics solution obtained with the NEAMS codes. Results on the full core focused on showcasing the multiphysics workflow rather than detailed verification of the results, at least for this report.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Roxana Paramo Ramirez: MSIIP 2025-2026 Internship [Poster]

At Sandia National Laboratories, there is a high level of importance placed on identifying and developing solutions to the nation’s current and future security problems. One of these problem would be hardware electronics validation and verification.

42 ENGINEERING↗

The design of a common lunar lander

The Austin Cynthesis Corporation was formed to respond to a Request for Proposal for the design of a Common Lunar Lander (CLL) capable of carrying lightweight (less than 500 kg), unspecified payload to the moon. This Final Design Report Document includes information on the requirements for the design project; the ideas proposed as solutions to the design problem; the work which has been completed in support of the design effort; justifications, validations, and verifications of decisions made during the project; and suggestions for future work to be done in support of the project. A project schedule, including current status of the items included on the schedule, as well as cost and management summaries is also included.

Driggers, Dan↗

Using program visualization to enhance maintainability and promote reuse

Our intuition is that comprehension of visual representations is often quicker than of equivalent text. In the work described in this paper, we explore the application of this intuition to programming languages. The goal of this project is to create visual representation of segments of computer programs that improve the maintenance and reusability of this code. We describe a software tool, a program browser, that provides a visual representation of the function call graph of any C program. This tool is the first in a series of tools that aids program comprehension, making reuse of existing programs more likely. The development of the program browser is itself an example of code reuse as described in the section on implementation. Although our intuition is that some visual display of programs aid understandability, we are looking for experimental verification. Several human factors experiments in this area have contradicted this intuition. We describe reasons for these contradictions, and potential solutions to overcome them.

Ames, Chuck↗

Growth Defects in Biomacromolecular Crystals

NASA's ground based program confirmed close similarity between protein and small molecules crystal growth, but also revealed essential differences. No understanding exists as to why and when crystals grown in space are, in approx. 20 percent of cases, of higher quality. More rationale is needed in flight experiments. Ferritin crystals grown in space are 2.5 times cleaner than their terrestrial counterparts. This may occur because of the existence of a zone depleted with respect to impurities around a crystal growing in stagnant solution. This zone should appear since the distribution coefficient for homologous impurities exceeds unity. This impurity depletion zone hypothesis requires verification and development. Thorough purification from homologous impurities brought about resolution improvement from 2.6 to 1.8 angstroms for ferritin and from 2.6 to 2.0 angstroms for canavalin.

Source record↗

Multiscale Experiments and Multiphysics Simulation of Multiphase Flow for Transportable Small Modular Reactors

A new type of safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address the intense and ever-growing global demand for energy produced via a resilient, carbon-free energy source. In this regard, transportable small modular reactors (SMRs) are being designed and developed for electricity generation within small/micro-grid/off-grid isolated systems, as well as for heat generation in industrial/residential applications. These reactors feature the capability to be fully factory fabricated and then directly transported to utilities’ sites as “plug-and-play” systems. Research and development (R&D) programs are underway at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to successfully design, develop, and demonstrate such safe-by-design mobile reactor technologies, in collaboration with partner organizations. Multiscale experimental facilities and multiphysics simulation tools are required for reactor design verification and validation (V&V), and licensing. These advanced reactors are intended to feature passive safety systems such as passive containment cooling systems (PCCS), which consist of multiphase flows and multispecies distributions. This seminar talk will focus on designing and analyzing transportable SMR PCCS by using multiscale experiments and multiphysics computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to support reactor licensing and safety. The corresponding research challenges are addressed via supportive verification and validation results generated by the models and simulation tools in combination with selective parametric and uncertainty analysis. This solution approach could blaze the trail for commercial adoption of such technologies. The facilities, simulation capabilities, and research opportunities available at INL in regard to such reactors and the integrated energy systems with which they go hand in hand are also discussed briefly, and may spark interest in deeper research as well as new collaborative projects.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Verification of a Fluid-Based Plasma-Edge Model Within the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) Framework

As the goal of achieving fusion power on the grid comes closer to fruition, fully coupled multiphysics models of fusion devices will be crucial. These models must incorporate the interconnected phenomena of these devices, including plasma physics, neutronics, first wall interactions, and tritium transport. Currently, there are two main approaches to developing these platforms: (1) loosely coupled, where one couples existing codes and solvers together through input and output parameters and data, and (2) tightly coupled, where one develops the necessary models within a singular, integrated framework. This work focuses on the latter approach for magnetically confined fusion devices by developing a fluid-based plasma-edge model within the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) Framework. This effort is coordinated with other efforts to develop, test, demonstrate, and deploy fusion relevant multiphysics capabilities including electromagnetics, particle-in-cell plasma, tritium transport, and fusion blanket design. This new model is an expansion of the MOOSE-based plasma application, Zapdos, which was originally formulated to model low-temperature, non-magnetized plasma processes. Verification studies have been conducted using newly developed magnetic plasma capabilities. These involved convergence analyses utilizing the method of manufactured solutions to verify new operators and case studies. A modular approach was taken here to demonstrate increasingly complicated simulation scenarios, which included a singular fluid with uniform magnetic field case, a singular fluid with spatially varying magnetic field case, and a coupled multifluid case.

70 - PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Verification of Viscous Goal-Based Anisotropic Mesh Adaptation

Adaptive unstructured mesh techniques have a limited, but growing impact on production analysis workflows where the control of discretization error is critical to obtaining reliable simulation results. Recent progress has matured a number of independent implementations of flow solvers, anisotropic metric construction methods, and anisotropic mesh adaptation mechanics. A key ingredient for the broader acceptance of unstructured mesh adaptation is the verification of these implementations. Anisotropic metric construction methods are evaluated with analytically defined primal fields and the corresponding entropy variables as adjoint fields. This allows the comparison of different metric formulations and different implementations of the same formulation without the complications of a flow and adjoint solution method. The convergence of the output associated with the entropy variable adjoint is studied for mesh adaptation to these fields and a manufactured solution. Mesh adapted drag output is studied for two simple wings in compressible laminar flow to show fine-mesh convergence of multiple metric construction methods to less than a single drag count. The documentation of these verification exercises helps to prepare these goal-based methods for routine use in more complex simulations for production workflows.

mesh adaptation↗

Grain boundary solute segregation across the 5D space of crystallographic character

Solute segregation in materials with grain boundaries (GBs) has emerged as a popular method to thermodynamically stabilize nanocrystalline structures. However, the impact of varied GB crystallographic character on solute segregation has never been thoroughly examined. Here, this work examines Co solute segregation in a dataset of 7272 Al bicrystal GBs that span the 5D space of GB crystallographic character. Considerable attention is paid to verification of the calculations in the diverse and large set of GBs. In addition, the results of this work are favorably validated against similar bicrystal and polycrystal simulations. As with other work, we show that Co atoms exhibit strong segregation to sites in Al GBs and that segregation correlates strongly with GB energy and GB excess volume. Segregation varies smoothly in the 5D crystallographic space but has a complex landscape without an obvious functional form.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Observations on CFD Verification and Validation from the AIAA Drag Prediction Workshops

The authors provide observations from the AIAA Drag Prediction Workshops that have spanned over a decade and from a recent validation experiment at NASA Langley. These workshops provide an assessment of the predictive capability of forces and moments, focused on drag, for transonic transports. It is very difficult to manage the consistency of results in a workshop setting to perform verification and validation at the scientific level, but it may be sufficient to assess it at the level of practice. Observations thus far: 1) due to simplifications in the workshop test cases, wind tunnel data are not necessarily the “correct” results that CFD should match, 2) an average of core CFD data are not necessarily a better estimate of the true solution as it is merely an average of other solutions and has many coupled sources of variation, 3) outlier solutions should be investigated and understood, and 4) the DPW series does not have the systematic build up and definition on both the computational and experimental side that is required for detailed verification and validation. Several observations regarding the importance of the grid, effects of physical modeling, benefits of open forums, and guidance for validation experiments are discussed. The increased variation in results when predicting regions of flow separation and increased variation due to interaction effects, e.g., fuselage and horizontal tail, point out the need for validation data sets for these important flow phenomena. Experiences with a recent validation experiment at NASA Langley are included to provide guidance on validation experiments.

Computational Fluid Dynamics↗

Sierra/SD Verification Test Manual (V.5.24)

Tests from the Sierra Structural Dynamics verification test suite are reviewed. For each of the tests presented in this document the test setup, derivation of the analytic solution, and comparison of the Sierra code results to the analytic solution is provided. This document can be used to confirm that a given code capability is verified or referenced as a compilation of example problems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Sierra/SD – Verification Test Manual – 5.30

Tests from the Sierra Structural Dynamics verification test suite are reviewed. For each of the tests presented in this document the test setup, derivation of the analytic solution, and comparison of the Sierra code results to the analytic solution is provided. This document can be used to confirm that a given code capability is verified or referenced as a compilation of example problems.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Continuous-Energy Verification of MCNP Calculations Using One-Group Spherical and Slab Criticality Benchmarks

This work presents a continuous-energy Monte Carlo verification study of one group spherical and slab criticality benchmarks using the MCNP ®1 code. Classical tabulations and newly generated benchmark solutions obtained by direct numerical evaluation by the author are considered. The benchmarks span weakly to strongly multiplying regimes and provide analytically defined critical radii as functions of a single parameter, c .

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Sierra/SD Verification Test Manual 5.32

Tests from the Sierra Structural Dynamics verification test suite are reviewed. For each of the tests presented in this document the test setup, derivation of the analytic solution, and comparison of the Sierra code results to the analytic solution is provided. This document can be used to confirm that a given code capability is verified or referenced as a compilation of example problems.

Beale, Dagny Marie [Sandia National Laboratories (↗

Hypersonic Chemically Reacting Boundary-Layer Stability using LASTRAC

Hypersonic boundary layer transition is critical to the design of all hypersonic vehicles due to its effect on the heat transfer into the vehicle surface and potential drag enhancement or reduction during reentry. Boundary layer transition and boundary layer stability analysis under hypersonic conditions has been studied for decades, yet there is ample room for improved accuracy and further investigations into the relevant phenomena. In this work, we present a recent implementation of chemical equilibrium, finite-rate chemistry, and thermochemical nonequilibrium capabilities into LASTRAC, an existing well-established boundary-layer stability analysis code. Verification against existing numerical results in the literature are presented. LASTRAC was previously able to address calorically perfect flows. By using solutions of the Parabolized Stability Equations (PSE) with chemical and thermal nonequilibrium, we are able to investigate the effects of chemical and thermal nonequilibrium on a variety of phenomena including stationary crossflow instability on a swept wing and 2nd mode instabilities over a wedge.

Kline, H. L.↗

Verification of Autonomous Systems for Space Applications

Autonomous software, especially if it is based on model, can play an important role in future space applications. For example, it can help streamline ground operations, or, assist in autonomous rendezvous and docking operations, or even, help recover from problems (e.g., planners can be used to explore the space of recovery actions for a power subsystem and implement a solution without (or with minimal) human intervention). In general, the exploration capabilities of model-based systems give them great flexibility. Unfortunately, it also makes them unpredictable to our human eyes, both in terms of their execution and their verification. The traditional verification techniques are inadequate for these systems since they are mostly based on testing, which implies a very limited exploration of their behavioral space. In our work, we explore how advanced V&V techniques, such as static analysis, model checking, and compositional verification, can be used to gain trust in model-based systems. We also describe how synthesis can be used in the context of system reconfiguration and in the context of verification.

Brat, G.↗