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Experimental Investigation and Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation of a Novel Flash Ironmaking Process Based on Partial Combustion of Natural Gas in a Reactor
Not provided.
Image Registration of Cone-Beam Computer Tomography and Preprocedural Computer Tomography Aids in Localization of Adrenal Veins and Decreasing Radiation Dose in Adrenal Vein Sampling
PurposeWe assessed whether image registration of cone-beam computed tomography (CT) (CBCT) and contrast-enhanced CT (CE-CT) images indicating the locations of the adrenal veins can aid in increasing the success rate of first-attempts adrenal vein sampling (AVS) and therefore decreasing patient radiation dose.Materials and Methods CBCT scans were acquired in the interventional suite (Philips Allura Xper FD20) and rigidly registered to the vertebra in previously acquired CE-CT. Adrenal vein locations were marked on the CT image and superimposed with live fluoroscopy and digital-subtraction angiography (DSA) to guide the AVS. Seventeen first attempts at AVS were performed with image registration and retrospectively compared with 15 first attempts without image registration performed earlier by the same 2 interventional radiologists. First-attempt AVS was considered successful when both adrenal vein samples showed representative cortisol levels. Sampling time, dose-area product (DAP), number of DSA runs, fluoroscopy time, and skin dose were recorded.ResultsWithout image registration, the first attempt at sampling was successful in 8 of 15 procedures indicating a success rate of 53.3 %. This increased to 76.5 % (13 of 17) by adding CBCT and CE-CT image registration to AVS procedures (p = 0.266). DAP values (p = 0.001) and DSA runs (p = 0.026) decreased significantly by adding image registration guidance. Sampling and fluoroscopy times and skin dose showed no significant changes.ConclusionGuidance based on registration of CBCT and previously acquired diagnostic CE-CT can aid in enhancing localization of the adrenal veins thereby increasing the success rate of first-attempt AVS with a significant decrease in the number of used DSA runs and, consequently, radiation dose required.
Computational study of the effect of core–skin structure on the mechanical properties of carbon nanofibers
The effect of the core–skin structure on the mechanical properties of carbon nanofibers is investigated in large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of tensile deformation of carbon nanofibers with the core–skin and homogeneous structures. Contrary to an established notion of the deleterious effect of the skin layer on the strength of carbon fibers, the presence of a high-quality skin layer is found to increase both the Young’s modulus and tensile strength of the nanofiber. A detailed analysis of the fracture process indicates that the nanofiber strengthening is related to the ability of skin layer to suppress crack nucleation at the core–skin interface. Furthermore, the computational predictions suggest that the design of new approaches to carbon fiber manufacturing and processing leading to the generation of a high-quality skin layer while avoiding the introduction of structural defects at the core–skin interface may yield a significant enhancement of the mechanical properties of carbon fibers.
Computational Design of High-Entropy Rare Earth Disilicates as Next-Generation Thermal/Environmental Barrier Coatings
For presentation at Materials Science Technology 2023, Columbus, OH, October 1-4, 2023.
astroABC : An Approximate Bayesian Computation Sequential Monte Carlo sampler for cosmological parameter estimation
Given the complexity of modern cosmological parameter inference where we arefaced with non-Gaussian data and noise, correlated systematics and multi-probecorrelated data sets, the Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) method is apromising alternative to traditional Markov Chain Monte Carlo approaches in thecase where the Likelihood is intractable or unknown. The ABC method is called"Likelihood free" as it avoids explicit evaluation of the Likelihood by using aforward model simulation of the data which can include systematics. Weintroduce astroABC, an open source ABC Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) sampler forparameter estimation. A key challenge in astrophysics is the efficient use oflarge multi-probe datasets to constrain high dimensional, possibly correlatedparameter spaces. With this in mind astroABC allows for massive parallelizationusing MPI, a framework that handles spawning of jobs across multiple nodes. Akey new feature of astroABC is the ability to create MPI groups with differentcommunicators, one for the sampler and several others for the forward modelsimulation, which speeds up sampling time considerably. For smaller jobs thePython multiprocessing option is also available. Other key features include: aSequential Monte Carlo sampler, a method for iteratively adapting tolerancelevels, local covariance estimate using scikit-learn's KDTree, modules forspecifying optimal covariance matrix for a component-wise or multivariatenormal perturbation kernel, output and restart files are backed up everyiteration, user defined metric and simulation methods, a module for specifyingheterogeneous parameter priors including non-standard prior PDFs, a module forspecifying a constant, linear, log or exponential tolerance level,well-documented examples and sample scripts. This code is hosted online athttps://github.com/EliseJ/astroABC
In situ characterization of foam morphology during melting of simulated waste glass using x-ray computed tomography
Not Available
Computationally-efficient stochastic cluster dynamics method for modeling damage accumulation in irradiated materials
An improved version of a recently developed stochastic cluster dynamics (SCD) method (Marian and Bulatov, 2012) [6] is introduced as an alternative to rate theory (RT) methods for solving coupled ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems for irradiation damage simulations. SCD circumvents by design the curse of dimensionality of the variable space that renders traditional ODE-based RT approaches inefficient when handling complex defect population comprised of multiple (more than two) defect species. Several improvements introduced here enable efficient and accurate simulations of irradiated materials up to realistic (high) damage doses characteristic of next-generation nuclear systems. The first improvement is a procedure for efficiently updating the defect reaction-network and event selection in the context of a dynamically expanding reaction-network. Next is a novel implementation of the τ-leaping method that speeds up SCD simulations by advancing the state of the reaction network in large time increments when appropriate. Lastly, a volume rescaling procedure is introduced to control the computational complexity of the expanding reaction-network through occasional reductions of the defect population while maintaining accurate statistics. The enhanced SCD method is then applied to model defect cluster accumulation in iron thin films subjected to triple ion-beam (Fe{sup 3+}, He{sup +} and H{sup +}) irradiations, for which standard RT or spatially-resolved kinetic Monte Carlo simulations are prohibitively expensive.
Dosimetric comparison of lung stereotactic body radiotherapy treatment plans using averaged computed tomography and end-exhalation computed tomography images: Evaluation of the effect of different dose-calculation algorithms and prescription methods
The purpose of this article is to quantitatively evaluate differences in dose distributions calculated using various computed tomography (CT) datasets, dose-calculation algorithms, and prescription methods in stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for patients with early-stage lung cancer. Data on 29 patients with early-stage lung cancer treated with SBRT were retrospectively analyzed. Averaged CT (Ave-CT) and expiratory CT (Ex-CT) images were reconstructed for each patient using 4-dimensional CT data. Dose distributions were initially calculated using the Ave-CT images and recalculated (in the same monitor units [MUs]) by employing Ex-CT images with the same beam arrangements. The dose-volume parameters, including D{sub 95}, D{sub 90}, D{sub 50}, and D{sub 2} of the planning target volume (PTV), were compared between the 2 image sets. To explore the influence of dose-calculation algorithms and prescription methods on the differences in dose distributions evident between Ave-CT and Ex-CT images, we calculated dose distributions using the following 3 different algorithms: x-ray Voxel Monte Carlo (XVMC), Acuros XB (AXB), and the anisotropic analytical algorithm (AAA). We also used 2 different dose-prescription methods; the isocenter prescription and the PTV periphery prescription methods. All differences in PTV dose-volume parameters calculated using Ave-CT and Ex-CT data were within 3 percentage points (%pts) employing the isocenter prescription method, and within 1.5%pts using the PTV periphery prescription method, irrespective of which of the 3 algorithms (XVMC, AXB, and AAA) was employed. The frequencies of dose-volume parameters differing by >1%pt when the XVMC and AXB were used were greater than those associated with the use of the AAA, regardless of the dose-prescription method employed. All differences in PTV dose-volume parameters calculated using Ave-CT and Ex-CT data on patients who underwent lung SBRT were within 3%pts, regardless of the dose-calculation algorithm or the dose-prescription method employed.
New method for analysis of X-ray computed tomography scans of TRISO fuel forms
X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is a powerful characterization tool that has been used for examination of both tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) coated particles and fuel forms. Rapid, nondestructive imaging of complete specimens by XCT provides significant characterization advantages in both speed and comprehensiveness over traditional materialographic methods. This paper discusses a method that has been developed to analyze XCT images of pebble fuel forms containing ~18,000 TRISO particles each. The XCT images are three-dimensional with contrast based on relative x-ray transparency. In the case of TRISO fuel forms, XCT image intensity distinguishes between the high-density kernel, the medium-density SiC, and the low-density matrix and carbon layers. Image analysis software has been developed to process XCT data sets to extract spatial distribution information, including particle nearest-neighbor distances, local packing fraction, and fuel-free zone thickness in TRISO fuel forms. Finally, although this type of high-resolution XCT analysis is likely not feasible as a quality control measurement for commercial TRISO fuel, it is highly useful in generating feedback for the development of fuel form fabrication processes.
I/O-aware bandwidth allocation for petascale computing systems
In the Big Data era, the gap between the storage performance and an appli- cation's I/O requirement is increasing. I/O congestion caused by concurrent storage accesses from multiple applications is inevitable and severely harms the performance. Conventional approaches either focus on optimizing an ap- plication's access pattern individually or handle I/O requests on a low-level storage layer without any knowledge from the upper-level applications. In this paper, we present a novel I/O-aware bandwidth allocation framework to coordinate ongoing I/O requests on petascale computing systems. The motivation behind this innovation is that the resource management system has a holistic view of both the system state and jobs' activities and can dy- namically control the jobs' status or allocate resource on the y during their execution. We treat a job's I/O requests as periodical subjobs within its lifecycle and transform the I/O congestion issue into a classical scheduling problem. Based on this model, we propose a bandwidth management mech- anism as an extension to the existing scheduling system. We design several bandwidth allocation policies with different optimization objectives either on user-oriented metrics or system performance. We conduct extensive trace- based simulations using real job traces and I/O traces from a production IBM Blue Gene/Q system at Argonne National Laboratory. Experimental results demonstrate that our new design can improve job performance by more than 30%, as well as increasing system performance.
Combined Experimental and Computational Investigation of the Elementary Reaction of Ground State Atomic Carbon (C; 3 P j ) with Pyridine (C 5 H 5 N; X 1 A 1 ) via Ring Expansion and Ring Degradation Pathways
In t his work, we explored the elementary reaction of atomic carbon (C; 3 P j ) with pyridine (C 5 H 5 N; X 1 A 1 ) at a collision energy of 34 ± 4 kJ mol-1 utilizing the crossed molecular beams technique. Forwardconvolution fitting of the data was combined with high-level electronic structure calculations and statistical (RRKM) calculations on the triplet C 6 H 5 N potential energy surface (PES). These investigations reveal that the reaction dynamics are indirect and dominated by large range reactive impact parameters leading via barrier-less addition to the nitrogen atom and to two chemically non-equivalent ‘aromatic’ carbon-carbon bonds forming three distinct collision complexes. At least two reaction pathways through atomic hydrogen loss were identified on the triplet surface. These channels involve multiple isomerization steps of the initial collision complexes via ring-opening and ring expansion forming an acyclic 1-ethynyl-3-isocyanoallyl radical (P1; 2 A”) and a hitherto unreported seven-membered 1-aza-2-dehydrocyclohepta-2,4,6-trien-4-yl radical isomer (P3; 2 A), respectively. For RRKM calculations at zero collision energy, representing conditions in cold molecular clouds, the ring expansion product P3 is formed nearly exclusively for the atomic hydrogen loss channel. Based on the computations, the molecular fragmentation channel eliminating acetylene (C 2 H 2 ) plus 3-cyano-2-propen-1-ylidene (P6; 3 A”) plays also an important role the reaction of atomic carbon with pyridine proposing a probable destruction pathway of interstellar pyridine. Lastly, these results are also discussed in light of the isoelectronic carbon – benzene (C 6 H 6 ; X 1 A 1 ) system with important implications to the rapid degradation of nitrogen-bearing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs) in the interstellar medium compared to mass growth processes of PAH counterparts through ring expansion.
Strategies for Computer-Aided Discovery of Novel Open-Shell Polymers
Organic π-conjugated polymers with a triplet ground state have been the focus of recent research for their interesting and unique electronic properties, arising from the presence of the two unpaired electrons. These compounds are usually built from alternating electron-donating and electron-accepting monomer pairs which lower the HOMO–LUMO gap and yield a triplet state instead of the typical singlet ground state. In this paper, we use density functional theory calculations to explore the design rules that govern the creation of a ground-state triplet conjugated polymer and find that a small HOMO–LUMO gap in the singlet state is the best predictor for the existence of a triplet ground state, compared to previous use of a pro-quinoidal bonding character. Furthermore, this work can accelerate the discovery of new stable triplet materials by reducing the computational resources needed for electronic-state calculations and the number of potential candidates for synthesis.
A combined crossed molecular beams and computational study on the formation of distinct resonantly stabilized C 5 H 3 radicals via chemically activated C 5 H 4 and C 6 H 6 intermediates
The crossed molecular beams technique was utilized to investigate the formation of three isomers of resonantly stabilized (C 5 H 3 ) radicals along with their d 2 -substituted counterparts via the bimolecular reactions of singlet/triplet dicarbon [C 2 (X 1 Σ + g /a 3 Π u )] with methylacetylene [CH 3 CCH(X 1 A 1 )], d 3 -methylacetylene [CD 3 CCH(X 1 A 1 )], and 1-butyne [C 2 H 5 CCH(X 1 A')] at collision energies up to 26 kJ mol -1 via chemically activated singlet/triplet C 5 H 4 /C 5 D 3 H and C 6 H 6 intermediates. These studies exploit a newly developed supersonic dicarbon [C 2 (X 1 Σ + g /a 3 Π u )] beam generated via photolysis of tetrachloroethylene [C 2 Cl 4 (X 1 A g )] by excluding interference from carbon atoms, which represent the dominating (interfering) species in ablation-based dicarbon sources. We assessed the performance of the dicarbon [C 2 (X 1 Σ + g /a 3 Π u )] beam in reactions with methylacetylene [CH 3 CCH(X 1 A 1 )] and d 3 -methylacetylene [CD 3 CCH(X 1 A 1 )]; the investigations demonstrate that the reaction dynamics match previous studies in our laboratory utilizing ablation-based dicarbon sources involving the synthesis of 1,4-pentadiynyl-3 [HCCCHCCH(X 2 B 1 )] and 2,4-pentadiynyl-1 [H 2 CCCCCH(X 2 B 1 )] radicals via hydrogen (deuterium) atom elimination. Considering the C 2 (X 1 Σ + g /a 3 Π u )–1-butyne [C 2 H 5 CCH(X 1 A')] reaction, the hitherto elusive methyl-loss pathway was detected. This channel forms the previously unknown resonantly stabilized penta-1-yn-3,4-dienyl-1 [H 2 CCCHCC(X 2 A)] radical along with the methyl radical [CH 3 (X 2 A 2 ")] and is open exclusively on the triplet surface with an overall reaction energy of -86 ± 10 kJ mol -1 . The preferred reaction pathways proceed first by barrierless addition of triplet dicarbon to the π-electronic system of 1-butyne, either to both acetylenic carbon atoms or to the sterically more accessible carbon atom, to form the methyl-bearing triplet C 6 H 6 intermediates [ i4 1b ] and [ i8 1b ], respectively, with the latter decomposing via a tight exit transition state to penta-1-yn-3,4-dienyl-1 [(H 2 CCCHCC(X 2 A)] plus the methyl radical [CH 3 (X 2 A 2 ")]. The successful unraveling of this methyl-loss channel – through collaborative experimental and computational efforts – underscores the viability of the photolytically generated dicarbon beam as an unprecedented tool to access reaction dynamics underlying the formation of resonantly stabilized free radicals (RSFR) that are vital to molecular mass growth processes that ultimately lead to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
Photoelectron spectroscopic and computational study of [EDTA•M(III)]- complexes (M = H3, Al, Sc, V-Co)
Metal-EDTA complexes are commonly existed as biological redox reagents. We havegenerated a series of such complexes, [EDTA•M(III)]- (M = Al, Sc, V-Co), via electrospray ionization and characterized them by cryogenic mass-selected negative ion photoelectron spectroscopy (NIPES) and theoretical calculations. Experiments clearly revealed one more spectral band at low electron binding energy for transition metal complexes with d electrons (M = V-Co) than those without d electrons (M = Al and Sc). Quantum chemical calculations suggested that all of the metal-complexes possess hexacoordinated metal-ligand binding motifs, from which the calculated adiabatic/vertical detachment energy (ADE/VDE) and band gaps are in good agreement with experimental values. Direct spectrum and electronic structure analyses indicted that [EDTA•V(III)]- can be easily oxidized to [EDTA•V(IV)] with the smallest ADE/VDE of 3.95/4.40 eV among these metal-complexes, but further oxidation is hindered by the existence of a 2.30 eV band gap, a fact that accords with the special redox behavior of vanadium-containing species in biology cells. Spin density and molecular orbital analyses reveal that [EDTA•V(III)]- was overwhelmingly detached from vanadium atom, in a stark contrast to [EDTA•Sc(III)/Al(III)]- where the detachment occurred from the EDTA ligand. For all other metal complex anions, from M = Cr to Co, the detachment process is derived from contributions from both the metal and ligand. The intrinsic electronic and geometric structures of these complexes, obtained in this work, provide a molecular foundation to better understand their redox chemistries and specific metal bindings in condensed phases and biology cells.