NS&T Highlights November/December 2019
Research and recognition highlights for the NS&T group
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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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Research and recognition highlights for the NS&T group
This presentation was prepared for the request from Northern New Mexico College. "For your talk I’m thinking a bit more detail about the specific sampler you’re bringing, and the types in use at LANL, then setup and ops check, loading and removing a filter, cutting out the right size circle, reading the sample (we have a couple Eberline SAC-4s and Ludlum 2929s here), and radon/daughters corrections."
Sandia National Laboratories has tested and evaluated two variations of a new model of infrasound sensor, the Hyperion 5313A and 5119A. The purpose of this infrasound sensor evaluation is to measure the performance characteristics in such areas as power consumption, sensitivity, full scale, self-noise, dynamic range, response, passband, sensitivity variation due to changes in static pressure and temperature, and sensitivity to vertical acceleration. The Hyperion infrasound sensors are being evaluated for potential use in the International Monitoring System (IMS) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).
Characterizing the electromagnetic environment created by the recently upgraded HERMES III pulser is the primary objective addressed by this report. The pulser upgrade design was intended not only to provide higher electric field and magnetic field illumination amplitudes but also to provide a more collimated beam, focused along the center-line of the courtyard. For high-voltage pulsers to be useful as qualification systems, they must have the requisite peak values and uniform, predictable peak field spatial patterns. To assess the peak electric field values and uniformity of the spatial pattern of the electric fields for the upgraded HERMES system, a 1 6 full-power shot illumination of 9 electric and 9 magnetic field sensors in the courtyard of the HERMES III facility was conducted. The data acquired from this test showed an increase an increase in electric field amplitude, but still an asymmetry in the spatial distributions.
While regular algorithms, characterized by operations on dense matrices and arrays, have long been the mainstay of scientific, high-performance computing, irregular algorithms, which feature unpredictable accesses to pointer-based data structures, are becoming increasingly common in high performance computing, arising in graph analysis, data mining and visualization, among other domains. Unfortunately, the defining characteristics of irregular applications, their dynamic, unpredictable, data-dependent access patterns and data layouts, make achieving high performance on large scale systems difficult. Scaling applications to peta- and exa-scale requires carefully controlling communication and data movement and placement, an inherently difficult task when access patterns and data layouts are unpredictable! Most irregular applications that attain high performance must be painstakingly hand-written and hand-tuned, with few common principles or paradigms uniting various implementations and easing future development. Despite the increasing importance of irregular applications, there is little programmer knowledge, and even less compiler ability, devoted to optimizing them. This project aims to solve these problems. By allowing programmers to write irregular applications in high level forms, with at most a few annotations highlighting key structural properties, programmers can focus on developing their algorithms and methods. The compiler and run-time system can take on the tedious task of optimizing the application for execution at large scales, and can automatically provide efficient implementations. This will provide portability and ease maintenance for existing irregular applications, but, more importantly, open up whole new domains of computational science to large-scale, high-performance simulation codes.
As battery costs have declined and battery performance has improved, the applicability of vehicle electrification has expanded beyond passenger cars to the commercial vehicle sector. However, due to the larger batteries that would be needed for the medium- and heavy-duty (MDHD) sector, the electric charging capabilities to serve these larger commercial vehicles will need to be substantially more powerful than light-duty chargers. More specifically, such 'extreme fast charging' (XFC) will likely need to reach the megawatt scale to provide a full charge in less than 30 minutes in some applications. In addition, the combined cost of electrified vehicles and charging must be competitive with the costs of petroleum-based technologies and other alternatives to encourage widespread adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) among MDHD fleets. Most of these fleets have a commercial mission and demand low total cost of ownership (TCO) (which motivates minimal refueling times) and high performance from their vehicles.
This report documents the progress in research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office for the conversion of biomass to infrastructure-compatible liquid hydrocarbon fuels via CFP; the focus is on research learnings since a 2018 SOT publication.
The Chemical Waste Landfill (CWL) at Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (SNL/NM) is a remediated hazardous waste landfill that underwent closure in accordance with Title 20, Chapter 4, Part 1 of the New Mexico Administrative Code (20.4.1.600 NMAC), incorporating Title 40, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 265, (40 CFR § 265) Subpart G, and the CWL Final Closure Plan (SNL/NM December 1992 and subsequent revisions). The CWL Post- Closure Care Permit (PCCP) (NMED October 2009), which became effective June 2, 2011 (Kieling June 2011) and as modified, defines all post-closure requirements. This ninth CWL Annual Post-Closure Care Report documents all activities and results as required by the PCCP Attachment 1, Section 1.12.
The Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) model is a capacity expansion and dispatch model that is primarily used for the contiguous U.S. electric power sector. The model relies on system-wide least cost optimization to estimate the type and location of future generation and transmission capacity. This document describes details of how the model is formulated, how it functions, and many of the key inputs.
The Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program Annual Report for Savannah River National Laboratory for FY2019 focuses on the following project areas: legacy waste cleanup, nuclear materials threat reduction; nuclear deterrent, and secure energy & manufacturing.
Reports are included for Brookhaven's Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program (LDRD) projects that were funded in FY19.
Two concentric-sphere apparatuses were used to measure the energies deposited by electric sparks through air to calibrated loads. Both sets of spheres had clean, uninsulated metal surfaces. The 127-mm diameter pair of spheres had a gap of 10 mm and a capacitance of 52 pF. The maximum energy stored on these spheres was 12 mJ and the maximum energy delivered to the 50-mΩ load was 11 µJ, with or without inductance. This load energy amounted to 0.09% of the available input energy; the remainder of the input energy was expended in forming the spark. The second set of spheres was 330 mm in diameter with a gap of 14 mm and a capacitance of 240 pF. The maximum energy stored on these spheres was 71 mJ and the maximum energy delivered to the 50-mΩ load was 150 µJ without added inductance. This load energy was 0.27% of the input energy; again, the remainder of the input energy was expended in forming the spark. The inclusion of 250 nH and 500 nH inductances in the discharge path of the smaller spheres caused the current discharges to resonate, but had little effect on the maximum energies deposited in the loads. At the time of writing, inductances had not yet been added to the larger spheres. The magnitudes of the observed spark discharges were stochastic, so more than 1200 tests were required to develop the statistical bounds of the spark behavior, i.e., to estimate the worst case (highest likely) energy depositions in the loads. The action integrals of the current discharges $∫ i^2dt$ were found to be approximately independent of the load resistances for loads of less than ~1 Ω. Hence the energy deposition scaled with resistance as 207 µJ/Ω and 2.93 mJ/Ω for the two apparatuses.
The Materials Technology Program supports the Vehicle Technologies Office’s mission to help consumers and businesses reduce their transportation energy costs while meeting or exceeding vehicle performance expectations. The propulsion materials research portfolio seeks to develop higher performance materials that can withstand increasingly extreme environments and address the future properties needed for a variety of high-efficiency powertrain types, sizes, fueling concepts, and combustion modes. The lightweight materials research portfolio enables improvements in fuel economy by providing properties that are equal to or better than traditional materials at a lower weight. Because it takes less energy to accelerate a lighter object, replacing cast-iron and traditional steel components with lightweight materials such as advanced high-strength steels, magnesium alloys, aluminum alloys, and fiber-reinforced polymer composites can directly reduce a vehicle’s fuel consumption. By 2025, Materials Technology research activities seek to enable a 25% weight reduction of the glider for light-duty vehicles including body, chassis, and interior as compared to a 2015 baseline at no more than a $5/lb-saved increase in cost.
BTO’s Lighting R&D Opportunities is updated annually and covers foundational R&D needs for lighting technology and lighting application understanding that will result in maximum energy savings while also optimizing for building occupant well-being and productivity.
The viability of electrocoat to fabricate battery electrodes at commercially relevant formulations has been demonstrated using both bench-scale equipment and a small pilot-scale roll-to-roll system (mini-coater). Through this, we show that an electrodeposited lithium-ion battery electrode coating system and manufacturing process is capable of reducing cell costs. Specifically, >60% decrease in capital costs is expected when transitioning from slot-die to electrocoat-based coating systems due to the removal of a solvent recovery system. In addition, a 50% reduction in operating costs in also expected as we enable 2-coat/2-cure processing of cathode electrodes.
Abstract not provided.