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At least 361 records · Page 20

Performance Evaluation of Comparative Vacuum Monitoring and Piezoelectric Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring of Rotorcraft Components

The costs associated with the increasing maintenance and surveillance needs of aging structures are rising at an unexpected rate. Multi-site fatigue damage, hidden cracks in hard-to-reach locations, disbonded joints, erosion, impact, and corrosion are among the major flaws encountered in today’s extensive fleet of aging aircraft and space vehicles. Aircraft maintenance and repairs represent about a quarter of a commercial fleet’s operating costs. The application of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems using distributed sensor networks can reduce these costs by facilitating rapid and global assessments of structural integrity. The use of in-situ sensors for real-time health monitoring can overcome inspection impediments stemming from accessibility limitations, complex geometries, and the location and depth of hidden damage. Reliable, structural health monitoring systems can automatically process data, assess structural condition, and signal the need for human intervention. The ease of monitoring an entire on-board network of distributed sensors means that structural health assessments can occur more often, allowing operators to be even more vigilant with respect to flaw onset. SHM systems also allow for condition-based maintenance practices to be substituted for the current time-based or cycle-based maintenance approach thus optimizing maintenance labor. The Federal Aviation Administration has conducted a series of SHM validation and certification programs intended to comprehensively support the evolution and adoption of SHM practices into routine aircraft maintenance practices. This report presents one of those programs involving a Sandia Labs-aviation industry effort to move SHM into routine use for aircraft maintenance. The Airworthiness Assurance NDI Validation Center (AANC) at Sandia Labs, in conjunction with Sikorsky, Structural Monitoring Systems Ltd., Anodyne Electronics Manufacturing Corp., Acellent Technologies Inc., and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) carried out a trial validation and certification program to evaluate Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM) and Piezoelectric Transducers (PZT) as a structural health monitoring solution to specific rotorcraft applications. Validation tasks were designed to address the SHM equipment, the health monitoring task, the resolution required, the sensor interrogation procedures, the conditions under which the monitoring will occur, the potential inspector population, adoption of CVM and PZT systems into rotorcraft maintenance programs and the document revisions necessary to allow for their routine use as an alternate means of performing periodic structural inspections. This program addressed formal SHM technology validation and certification issues so that the full spectrum of concerns, including design, deployment, performance and certification were appropriately considered. Sandia Labs designed, implemented, and analyzed the results from a focused and statistically relevant experimental effort to quantify the reliability of a CVM system applied to Sikorsky S-92 fuselage frame application and a PZT system applied to an S-92 main gearbox mount beam application. The applications included both local and global damage detection assessments. All factors that affect SHM sensitivity were included in this program: flaw size, shape, orientation and location relative to the sensors, as well as operational and environmental variables. Statistical methods were applied to performance data to derive Probability of Detection (POD) values for SHM sensors in a manner that agrees with current nondestructive inspection (NDI) validation requirements and is acceptable to both the aviation industry and regulatory bodies. The validation work completed in this program demonstrated the ability of both CVM and PZT SHM systems to detect cracks in rotorcraft components. It proved the ability to use final system response parameters to provide a Green Light/Red Light (“GO” – “NO GO”) decision on the presence of damage. In additional to quantifying the performance of each SHM system for the trial applications on the S-92 platform, this study also identified specific methods that can be used to optimize damage detection, guidance on deployment scenarios that can affect performance and considerations that must be made to properly apply CVM and PZT sensors. These results support the main goal of safely integrating SHM sensors into rotorcraft maintenance programs. Additional benefits from deploying rotorcraft Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) may be realized when structural assessment data, collected by an SHM system, is also used to detect structural damage to compliment the operational environment monitoring. The use of in-situ sensors for health monitoring of rotorcraft structures can be a viable option for both flaw detection and maintenance planning activities. This formal SHM validation will allow aircraft manufacturers and airlines to confidently make informed decisions about the proper utilization of CVM and PZT technology. It will also streamline future regulatory actions and formal certification measures needed to assure the safe application of SHM solutions.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Passive Temperature Sensors for Nuclear Applications

In April 2007, the Department of Energy (DOE) designated the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) a National Scientific User Facility (NSUF) to advance US leadership in nuclear science and technology. By attracting new users from universities, laboratories, and industry, this program supports basic and applied nuclear research to help address the nation's energy security needs. In support of this program, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) established in-house capabilities to develop, fabricate, test, and qualify new and enhanced temperature sensors for irradiation testing. This effort is continuing today through the DOE?s Advanced Sensors and Instrumentation (ASI) program. Although most efforts emphasize sensors capable of providing real-time data, selected tasks have been completed to enhance passive sensors for irradiations where instrumentation leads cannot be included. These sensors include silicon carbide (SiC) monitors, melt wires and the sublime temperature monitor. SiC monitors are available to detect peak irradiation temperatures between 200°C and 800°C in reactor locations where instrumentation leads cannot be used. SiC monitors may be evaluated using specialized equipment installed at INL?s Measurement Sciences Laboratory (MSL). A melt wire inventory is also maintained at MSL. This inventory contains wires for specific use in irradiation experiments ranging in temperatures from 30°C to 1500°C. Melt wires and SiC monitors have had decades of research and application. Recent research has produced a passive monitor known as the sublime temperature monitor. This passive sensor has the capability of recording temperature gradients. This paper will discuss passive temperature sensors currently being researched and implemented under the ASI program.

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Efficient Topology Design Algorithms for Power Grid Stability

The dynamic response of power grids to small disturbances influences their overall stability. This letter examines the effect of network topology on the linearized time-invariant dynamics of electric power systems. The proposed framework utilizes H 2 -norm based stability metrics to study the optimal placement of lines on existing networks as well as the topology design of new networks. The design task is first posed as an NP-hard mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) that is exactly reformulated as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) using McCormick linearization. To improve computation time, graph-theoretic properties are exploited to derive valid inequalities (cuts) and tighten bounds on the continuous optimization variables. Moreover, a cutting plane generation procedure is put forth that is able to interject the MILP solver and augment additional constraints to the problem on-the-fly. Finally, the efficacy of our approach in designing optimal grid topologies is demonstrated through numerical tests on the IEEE 39-bus network.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

LK Scripting Language [SWR-16-07]

The LK scripting language is a simple and fast computer programming language designed for easy integration with existing software to enable automation of tasks. The LK language is used by NREL’s System Advisor Model (SAM), the SAM Software Development Kit (SDK), and SolTrace products. LK is easy extensible and adaptable to new software due to its small footprint and is designed to be statically linked into other software. It is written in standard C++, is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and OSX), and includes optional portions that enable direct integration with graphical user interfaces written in the open source C++ wxWidgets Version 3.0+ toolkit.

Source record↗

tether

Tether is a python module for benchmarking and assessing large language model (LLMs) performance at generic scientific tasks. The code generates benchmarks, uses the benchmark to prompt LLMs through automatic programming interfaces (APIs), and then logs the number of prompts an LLM correctly answers and presents the results as a completed benchmark.

Kaiser, Bryan [Los Alamos National Laboratory]↗

ADEPT: a domain independent sequence alignment strategy for gpu architectures

Bioinformatic workflows frequently make use of automated genome assembly and protein clustering tools. At the core of most of these tools, a significant portion of execution time is spent in determining optimal local alignment between two sequences. This task is performed with the Smith-Waterman algorithm, which is a dynamic programming based method. With the advent of modern sequencing technologies and increasing size of both genome and protein databases, a need for faster Smith-Waterman implementations has emerged. Multiple SIMD strategies for the Smith-Waterman algorithm are available for CPUs. However, with the move of HPC facilities towards accelerator based architectures, a need for an efficient GPU accelerated strategy has emerged. Existing GPU based strategies have either been optimized for a specific type of characters (Nucleotides or Amino Acids) or for only a handful of application use-cases. In this paper, we present ADEPT, a new sequence alignment strategy for GPU architectures that is domain independent, supporting alignment of sequences from both genomes and proteins. Our proposed strategy uses GPU specific optimizations that do not rely on the nature of sequence. We demonstrate the feasibility of this strategy by implementing the Smith-Waterman algorithm and comparing it to similar CPU strategies as well as the fastest known GPU methods for each domain. ADEPT’s driver enables it to scale across multiple GPUs and allows easy integration into software pipelines which utilize large scale computational systems. We have shown that the ADEPT based Smith-Waterman algorithm demonstrates a peak performance of 360 GCUPS and 497 GCUPs for protein based and DNA based datasets respectively on a single GPU node (8 GPUs) of the Cori Supercomputer. Overall ADEPT shows 10x faster performance in a node-to-node comparison against a corresponding SIMD CPU implementation. ADEPT demonstrates a performance that is either comparable or better than existing GPU strategies. We demonstrated the efficacy of ADEPT in supporting existing bionformatics software pipelines by integrating ADEPT in MetaHipMer a high-performance denovo metagenome assembler and PASTIS a high-performance protein similarity graph construction pipeline. Our results show 10% and 30% boost of performance in MetaHipMer and PASTIS respectively.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Complete Round-Robin Hydrogen Gas Analysis Capability Comparison (Milestone 2.6)

The Department of Energy (DOE) is currently evaluating strategies for the extended dry storage of aluminum-clad spent nuclear fuel (ASNF). Part of this assessment concerns the extent of radiolytic molecular hydrogen (H2) generation from the aluminum cladding’s oxyhydroxide corrosion layers. Understanding this radiation-induced process and the factors effecting it (e.g., system conditions such as temperature and gaseous environment) are essential for the development of predictive computer models to support the Technical Considerations and Challenges for Extended (> 50 yrs) Dry Storage of ASNF program. To achieve this goal and ensure that the experimental data gathered by Task 2 (Oxyhydroxide Layer Radiolytic Gas Generation Resolution) research groups (Idaho National Laboratory and Savannah River National Laboratory) are consistent, a round-robin H2 analysis capability comparison was initiated. Here we present the results from said round-robin and conclude that despite differences in sample preparation, irradiation parameters, and analytical procedures, the measured data are sufficiently consistent between the two laboratories (= 15%).

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

Methods and Usability Enhancements in Shift for Non-LWR Applications

Several development and analysis tasks were undertaken in FY21 under the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program to enhance modeling of non light–water reactors (LWRs) with Shift. Specifically, these efforts targeted enhancements for tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel modeling. A new Shift user interface was developed that allows for much better usability and ease of modeling for non-LWR problems and TRISO fuel. Performance studies were conducted using an HTR-10 fuel pebble model by comparing different geometry packages in Shift, KENO-VI, and Serpent. These studies showed that the new geometry package in Shift performs well compared to Serpent for TRISO fuel modeling with consistent tracking options between both packages. The studies also identified the most critical areas of improvement for more efficiently performing Monte Carlo transport on TRISO fuel models with Shift. Tally calculations in Shift were optimized for non-LWR cross section generation and depletion calculations, and areas for further optimization and accuracy improvements were identified. Finally, initial collaboration efforts were formed between Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use Shift for Comprehensive Reactor Analysis Bundle support.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

An Approach to Shared Research Systems

World-leading research requires state-of-the-art systems for research and innovation. Operational excellence is the key component of scientific excellence by implementing ubiquitous security, repeatable processes, streamlined policies, and reliable and robust infrastructure. Building a research environment to meet these needs is a complex and expensive task. In many cases, it can be financially advantageous for one or more programs, projects, and/or stakeholder(s) to pool resources to build a shared research system to meet common goals. However, such a system brings some unique challenges that need to be addressed. This document describes the process to mitigate these challenges by documenting how the interested parties contribute to the overall success of the system.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Overview of Carbon Conversion Life Cycle Analysis at NETL

A presentation providing an overview of the work the NETL life cycle analysis (LCA) team performs to support the U.S. DOE Carbon Conversion program, including the NETL CO2U LCA Guidance Toolkit and other LCA-related tasks. Presented at the 2022 Carbon Management Project Review Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA on August 15, 2022.

Krynock, Michelle↗

Classic and Quantum Task-Based Intelligent Runtime for QIRs Running on Multiple QPUs

High-performance computing systems are rapidly evolving into heterogeneous platforms that fuse quantum accelerators with traditional classical processing units (CPUs) and graphical processing units (GPUs). This convergence calls for runtimes capable of managing both classical and quantum workloads in a unified manner. We introduce an intelligent, task-based runtime that marries the Intelligent RuntIme System (IRIS) asynchronous scheduler with a quantum programming stack through the Quantum Intermediate Representation Execution Engine (QIR-EE). Our design allows programs written in the quantum intermediate representation (QIR) to be dispatched concurrently to a variety of back-ends, including multiple quantum simulators and nascent quantum processors, enabling genuine hybrid execution on a single node. To illustrate its practicality, we partition a 4-qubit and 20-qubit circuit into three sub-circuits using quantum circuit cutting via the QCut library. Each sub-circuit is simulated independently by the QIR-EE driver within IRIS, after which a classical post-processing step merges the simulation results to recover the outcome of the original full-circuit computation. This case study demonstrates how finer task granularity can enable the parallel execution and lower the simulation burden per quantum task while preserving overall accuracy, highlighting the feasibility of our hybrid approach.

Miniskar, Narasinga Rao [ORNL] (ORCID:000000018259↗

Well-Controlled Hydro-thermo-chemical Stimulation of a Coso Geothermal Well to Enhance Productivity

The goal of this project was to demonstrate controlled fracturing and permeability increase to enhance resource production and power generation at Coso. It was planned to stimulate at least two intervals in the Well 73-18RD with zonal isolation using advanced high-temperature packer technology. The anticipation was that a hydraulic fracture would form in one zone and in the second zone natural fractures would reopen, shear and extend, thereby increasing fluid communication in the field. In both cases, the intent was to carefully design the stimulation to take advantage of the relative roles of hydraulic pressure, thermal stress and chemical (“hydro-thermo-chemical”) dissolution. The project had planned to use the Welltec Annular Barrier (WAB) system developed as part of another DOE-funded project which was on schedule to be ready for field deployment. If successful, the Coso Operating Company would incorporate this approach into their ongoing well maintenance in other wells increasing the total MWs produced. The project had multiple tasks and the objective of Task 1 was to develop a workover plan, to build a geologic model, to design a stimulation program, and to work with the operating and services companies to develop a detailed budget and obtain the necessary permits and sundry notices. In Phase 2 the workover plan would be implemented, the designed stimulation would be carried out, and subsequently the well would logged and tested to measure the impact of stimulation. Per sponsor request, a Pre-Task 1 activity with a Go/No Go decision point was scheduled in Task 1.

02 PETROLEUM↗

FleCSPH notes

FleCSI is a compile-time con gurable framework designed to support multi-physics application development. As such, FleCSI provides a very general set of infrastructure design patterns that can be specialized and extended to suit the needs of a broad variety of solver and data requirements. FleCSI currently supports multi-dimensional mesh topology, geometry, and adjacency information, as well as n-dimensional hashed-tree data structures, graph partitioning interfaces, and dependency closures. FleCSI introduces a functional programming model with control, execution, and data abstractions that are consistent both with MPI and with state-of-the-art, task-based runtimes such as Legion and Charm++. The abstraction layer insulates developers from the underlying runtime, while allowing support for multiple runtime systems including conventional models like asynchronous MPI. The intent is to provide developers with a concrete set of user-friendly programming tools that can be used now, while allowing exibility in choosing runtime implementations and optimization that can be applied to future architectures and runtimes. FleCSI's control and execution models provide formal nomenclature for describing poorly understood concepts such as kernels and tasks. FleCSI's data model provides a low-buy-in approach that makes it an attractive option for many application projects, as developers are not locked into particular layouts or data structure representations. FleCSI currently provides a parallel but not distributed implementation of Binary, Quad and Oct-tree topology. This implementation is base on space lling curves domain decomposition, the Morton order. The current FleCSI version requires the implementation of a driver and a specialization driver. The role of the specialization driver is to provide the data distribution. This feature is not complete in FleCSI code and we provide it. The next step will be to incorporate it directly from FleCSPH to FleCSI as we reach a good level of performance. Then the driver represent the general execution of the resolution without worrying of the data locality and communications. As FleCSI is an On-Development code the structure may change in the future and we keep track of these changes in FleCSPH.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

An Infrared Database of n/k Optical Constants for Calculating Aerosol Spectra for the PICARD Program

The objective of the PICARD Program is to develop fieldable sensing platforms for the rapid chemical identification of aerosol particles in plumes. Standoff detection involves interrogating the aerosol cloud from a distance using optical methods and probing the signal returned from direct backscattering from the aerosol particles or transmitted through the plume after reflection from a retroreflector or surface of opportunity (SOO). The identification of chemical species, however, in aerosols is complicated by their complex compositions and morphologies, chemical interferants, and non-uniform particle sizes. To advance standoff detection of aerosols, modelling the infrared transmittance, reflectance and scattering spectra of aerosolized liquid and solid chemical compounds is required, and then testing that model experimentally via laboratory and field experiments. To perform accurate modeling, the infrared optical constants (n/k), i.e., the complex refractive index, of the compounds of interest are required. Thus, PNNL was tasked to provide the optical constants for a set of analytes relevant to the PICARD program. This report describes the experimental techniques used to derive the optical constants of both liquid and solid compounds using established “gold-standard” protocols, how the experimental data are processed to produce the wavenumber dependent optical constant vectors, and how the data are used in the aerosol absorption spectra modeling.

complex refractive index↗

Agile Task Tracking Tool

The work was created to provide a tool for the purpose of improving the management of tasks associated with Agile projects. Agile projects are typically completed in an iterative manner with many short duration tasks being performed as part of iterations. These iterations are generally referred to as sprints. The objective of this work is to create a single tool that enables sprint teams to manage all of their tasks in multiple sprints and automatically produce all standard sprint performance charts with minimum effort. The format of the printed work is designed to mimic a standard Kanban board. The work is developed as a single Excel file with worksheets capable of managing up to five concurrent sprints and up to one hundred tasks. It also includes a summary worksheet providing performance information from all active sprints. There are many commercial project management systems typically designed with features desired by larger organizations with many resources managing multiple programs and projects. The audience for this work is the small organizations and Agile project teams desiring an inexpensive, simple, user-friendly, task management tool. This work uses standard readily available software, Excel, requiring minimum data entry and automatically creating summary charts and performance data. It is formatted to print out and resemble standard flip charts and provide the visuals associated with this type of work.

Duke, Roger T.↗

A review of machine learning in building load prediction

The surge of machine learning in recent years has been empowering engineer modeling in various fields. The decreasing hardware cost, increasing data accessibility, and advances of building automation system (BAS) allow the collection and storage of a significant amount of building operation data. The two facts provide great opportunities of applying machine learning to building energy systems modeling and analysis. There are a great number of research papers on this topic but there lacks a comprehensive and general review to summarize the current development, limitations, gaps and future trend. In this review paper series, machine learning techniques in building energy system modeling and analysis are reviewed under the organization and logic of the machine learning definition by Tom M. Mitchell: a computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E. This paper is the first part of the review paper series, which focuses on building load prediction. First, the applications of building load prediction model (task T) are reviewed. Then, the modeling algorithms improving machine learning performance and accuracy (performance P) are reviewed. At the same time, the literature on the data perspective for modeling (experience E), including data engineering from sensors level to data level, pre-processing, feature extraction and selection, is reviewed. Finally, what is well-studied and what is lacking but with great potential are concluded; the gaps between present and future utilization of machine learning techniques are identified; the future trend and development are also predicted. The target readers of this paper are not only researchers from the building side who can get exposed to cutting edge machine learning tools, but also those from machine learning side who can understand the potential and challenge to apply machine learning in buildings.

Liang, Zhang↗

Appalachian Basin Play Fairway Analysis Analyses and Results

*This submission updates a 2015 submission for the utilization analysis (https://gdr.openei.org/submissions/623)* The files document the analysis of utilization potential in support of Phase 1 Low Temperature Geothermal Play Fairway Analysis for the Appalachian Basin. This 2016 submission includes data pertinent to the methods and results of an analysis of the Surface Levelized Cost of Heat (SLCOH) for US Census Bureau 'Places' within the study area. The SLCOHis was calculated using a modification of a program called GEOPHIRES, available at http://koenraadbeckers.net/geophires/index.php. In addition to calculating SLCOH, this task also identified many industrial sites that may be prospects for use of a geothermal district heating system, based on their size and industry, rather than on the SLCOH. An industry sorted listing and maps of the sites have been plotted as a layer onto different iterations of maps combining the three geologic risk factors (Thermal Quality, Natural Reservoir Quality, and Risk of Seismicity). In addition, a shapefile of the industrial sites is also included with 7 associated files. Supporting files are also supplied.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Scale-Up of Coal-Based Supercritical CO 2 cycle technology

The Allam Cycle is a transformational technology that enables a step change in the performance, efficiency, and cost of electricity for electrical generating units by using supercritical CO 2 (sCO 2 ) as the working fluid in the turbine for power generation. The objectives of this Phase I effort were to select a host site for a large pilot system through a process of down selection, develop a conceptual design, and conduct a pre-front-end engineering design (pre-FEED) study for a sCO 2 cycle pilot plant that uses domestic coal reserves as the primary feedstock, thereby furthering technology development of the coal-based Allam Cycle. The project was divided into four main tasks: 1) Project Management and Planning; 2) Conceptual Pilot Plant Definition and Host Site Selection; 3) Preliminary Design, Cost, and Schedule Development; and 4) Commitments and Environmental Information Volume (EIV). All project management activities occurred in Task 1. Host site selection was conducted in Task 2, while conceptual design and pre-FEED activities took place under Task 3. Task 4 enhanced the project by securing commitments for the next phase of the program and completing an initial EIV. The Great Plains Synfuels Plant (GPSP) has been selected as the host site for the large-scale pilot, and its owner, Dakota Gasification Company (DGC), is a committed partner. GPSP was compared to two other host site candidates during Phase I: the existing natural gas Allam Cycle facility in La Porte, Texas, and the Energy & Environmental Research Center’s (EERC) high-bay demonstration facility in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Costs for hosting the pilot plant were estimated for each facility, and those costs are shown in Table ES-1. Based on these estimates, the DGC site was clearly shown to be the lowest cost option and was selected as the host site for the project.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗