Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Multiple interaction events”

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 415 records · Page 23

Deep Analysis Net with Causal Embedding for Coal-fired Power Plant Fault Detection and Diagnosis (DANCE4CFDD)

Fault detection and diagnosis is critical to power plant operation to ensure attaining high reliability while reducing operation cost. As more renewable power is introduced to the power grid, traditional fossil power plants take on the extra burden of excessive load cycling to compensate the generation variability from renewable power. Such load cycling will pose more reliability challenges to power plant operation. There are a number of challenges faced by today’s asset health management system in coal- fired (or gas) power plants: 1) high-dimensional nonlinear interaction among multiple time series measurements; 2) high measurement variance induced by operational conditions/modes; 3) variation among asset types and plant configurations; and 4) a small number of faulty events to learn from. To cope with these challenges, today’s fielded asset health management systems rely heavily on manual efforts from domain experts and hand-crafted features or rules based on domain knowledge. Despite its role in plant reliability, such a practice is costly and hinders its scalability and sustainability, particularly when a plant undergoes modifications. The objective of this project is to develop a novel end-to-end AI learning system that is trainable (i.e., the AI representation of a complex system behavior can be directly learned from properly labeled data) for accurate fault detection and root cause analysis. The ability to create a fault detection model directly from time series could alleviate the efforts associated with today’s asset management solution development. In the course of this project, we have achieved the following: Created an AI model development environment incorporating state-of-the-art neural network architectures for rapid model development and evaluation; Developed novel learning strategies for training of fault detection model; Developed special-purpose neural network architecture embedded with variable association graph aiming for better interpretability; Developed a learning strategy to leverage a small number of faulty events for enhanced fault detection capability; Conducted detailed experimental study based on public benchmark datasets and demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed solution; and Validated the developed system with data from both a coal-fired plant boiler dynamic simulation model and real-world coal-fired power plant covering multiple asset and fault types. Overall, the project attained a technology readiness level of TRL 5 from TRL 2 at the beginning of the project.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

Cross Section Results from the MicroBooNE Experiment

The MicroBooNE detector is currently the largest operating liquid argon neutrino experiment in the world. Located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), MicroBooNE has been collecting both electron neutrino (\(\nu _{e}\)) and muon neutrino (\(\nu _{\mu }\)) interactions from both the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) and the Neutrino Main Injector (NuMI) since late 2015. During this time, MicroBooNE has measured a wide-variety of interaction topologies including \(\nu _{\mu }\) charged current, \(\nu _{e}\) charged current, resonant \(\pi ^{0}\), and various high multiplicity interactions. To date, many of MicroBooNE’s measurements are either the first of their kind using liquid argon as a target material, or have the largest number of events collected using a liquid argon detector. All of these measurements combine to form a rich cross section programme, aiming to enhance understanding of GeV-range neutrino interaction on liquid argon for upcoming detectors such as SBND, ICARUS, and DUNE.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

High Latitude Ionospheric Structure

The Earth's ionosphere is an important element in solar-terrestrial energy transfer processes. As a major terrestrial sink for many solar and magnetospheric events, the ionosphere has characteristic features that are traced to such seemingly remote phenomena as solar flares, radiation belt wave-particle interactions and magnetospheric substorms. In considering the multiple of solar-terrestrial plasma interactions, it is important to recognize that the high-latitude ionosphere is not altogether a simple receptor of various energy deposition processes. The high-altitude ionosphere plays an active feedback role by controlling the conductivity at the base of far-reaching magnetic field lines and by providing a plasma source for the magnetosphere. Indeed, the role of the ionosphere during magnetospheric substorms is emerging as a topic for meaningful study in the overall picture of magnetospheric-ionospheric coupling.

Source record↗

Search for an Anomalous Production of Charged-Current 𝜈 𝑒 Interactions without Visible Pions across Multiple Kinematic Observables in MicroBooNE

This Letter presents an investigation of low-energy electron-neutrino interactions in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam by the MicroBooNE experiment, motivated by the excess of electron-neutrino-like events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment. This is the first measurement to use data from all five years of operation of the MicroBooNE experiment, corresponding to an exposure of 1.11 × 10 21 protons on target, a 70% increase on past results. Two samples of electron neutrino interactions without visible pions are used, one with visible protons and one without any visible protons. The MicroBooNE data show reasonable agreement with the nominal prediction, with 𝑝 values ≥26.7% when the two 𝜈 𝑒 samples are combined, though the prediction exceeds the data in limited regions of phase space. The data are further compared to two empirical models that modify the predicted rate of electron-neutrino interactions in different variables in the simulation to match the unfolded MiniBooNE low energy excess. In the first model, this unfolding is performed as a function of electron neutrino energy, while the second model aims to match the observed shower energy and angle distributions of the MiniBooNE excess. This measurement excludes an electronlike interpretation of the MiniBooNE excess based on these models at >99% CLs in all kinematic variables.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Pandora-based muon neutrino disappearance search in the SBN program with 1muonNp quasi-elastic like channel

The Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program at Fermilab aims to perform a definitive search for light sterile neutrinos using multiple liquid argon time projection chamber detectors. We present the status of an analysis of muon neutrino charged-current interactions in two SBN detectors (SBND and ICARUS), selecting fully contained events with one muon and at least one proton in the final state, inspired by the recent ICARUS standalone results. This topology-driven selection reduces dependence on neutrino interaction cross-section modeling while preserving high statistics and good neutrino energy resolution, enabled by robust reconstruction and particle identification. Fully contained events enable precise kinematic reconstruction and support relative measurements between detectors, directly addressing the core goals of the SBN program. A detailed evaluation of systematic uncertainties is currently underway, with the objective of reducing the dominant systematics to the percent level. The current status of this analysis, with a particular focus on the event selection performance, will be presented in this poster.

Artero Pons, Maria [Padua U.; INFN, Padua]↗

Implications of Sea Breeze Circulations on boundary layer aerosols in the southern coastal Texas region

The Sea Breeze Circulation (SBC) influences atmospheric processes at multiple scales in coastal regions. Understanding how SBCs impact the aerosol number budget and aerosol–cloud interaction processes is essential. This study investigates sea breeze–aerosol interactions (SAIs) during 46 summertime SBC events using data from the TRacking Aerosol Convection Interactions Experiment (TRACER) field campaign across urban (main) and rural (supplemental) coastal sites in southern Texas. Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) simulations complement observations to explore spatio-temporal meteorological controls on boundary layer aerosols. During the summertime, Sea Breeze Fronts (SBF) penetrating inland transported cool, moist air over the land, introducing air masses with distinct properties compared to the preexisting continental air. These SAIs cause variability in number concentrations of up to a factor of two, with events typically lasting ∼ 5 h before returning to background conditions. SAI impact on aerosols varies with site proximity to water and the preceding sea breeze (SB) history, primarily affecting the marine-influenced accumulation mode. The main site, influenced by both Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, reflects a stronger marine influence. In contrast, a supplemental site, at a similar shoreline distance but exposed only to the Gulf of Mexico and typically upstream of the urban core, samples SB air that has traversed land and partially regained continental characteristics. Simulations show that the regional SAIs extend ∼ 50 km inland and reach up to the boundary layer height. SAIs further decrease cloud condensation nuclei relevant aerosol number concentrations in ∼ 20 % of events during SBF passage.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Calibration of a soft secondary vertex tagger using proton-proton collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Several processes studied by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider produce low-momentum b-flavored hadrons in the final state. This paper describes the calibration of a dedicated tagging algorithm that identifies b-flavored hadrons outside of hadronic jets by reconstructing the soft secondary vertices originating from their decays. The calibration is based on a proton-proton collision dataset at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb -1 . Scale factors used to correct the algorithm’s performance in simulated events are extracted for the b-tagging efficiency and the mistag rate of the algorithm using a data sample enriched in $t\overline{t}$ events. Several orthogonal measurement regions are defined, binned as a function of the multiplicities of soft secondary vertices and jets containing a b-flavored hadron in the event. The mistag rate scale factors are estimated separately for events with low and high average numbers of interactions per bunch crossing. The results, which are derived from events with low missing transverse momentum, are successfully validated in a phase space characterized by high missing transverse momentum and therefore are applicable to new physics searches carried out in either phase space regime.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for 𝑏-hadron decays to long-lived particles in the CMS endcap muon detectors

A search for long-lived particles originating from the decay of 𝑏 hadrons produced in proton-proton collisions with a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the LHC is presented. The analysis is performed on a dataset recorded in 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41.6 fb −1 . Interactions of the long-lived particles in the CMS endcap muon system would create hadronic or electromagnetic showers, producing clusters of detector hits. Selected events contain at least one such high-multiplicity cluster in the muon endcaps and require the presence of a displaced muon. The most stringent upper limits to date on the branching fraction ℬ⁡(𝐵 →𝐾⁢Φ), where the long-lived particle Φ decays to a pair of hadrons, are obtained for Φ masses of 0.3–3.0 GeV and Φ mean proper decay lengths in the range of 1–500 cm.

Hayrapetyan, A. [Yerevan Physics Institute]↗

Charged-particle multiplicity fluctuations in Pb–Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV

Measurements of event-by-event fluctuations of charged-particle multiplicities in Pb–Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are presented in the pseudorapidity range |η| < 0.8 and transverse momentum 0.2 < p T < 2.0 GeV/c. The amplitude of the fluctuations is expressed in terms of the variance normalized by the mean of the multiplicity distribution. The η and p T dependences of the fluctuations and their evolution with respect to collision centrality are investigated. The multiplicity fluctuations tend to decrease from peripheral to central collisions. The results are compared to those obtained from HIJING and AMPT Monte Carlo event generators as well as to experimental data at lower collision energies. Additionally, the measured multiplicity fluctuations are discussed in the context of the isothermal compressibility of the high-density strongly-interacting system formed in central Pb–Pb collisions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Dependence of the multiplicities of secondary particles on the impact parameter in collisions of high-energy neon and iron nuclei with photoemulsion nuclei

A method is proposed for finding the dependence of mean multiplicities of secondaries on the nucleus-collision impact parameter from the data on the total interaction ensemble. The impact parameter has been shown to completely define the mean characteristics of an individual interaction event. A difference has been found between experimental results and the data calculated in terms of the cascade-evaporation model at impact-parameter values below 3 fm.

Dudkin, V. E.↗

Dependence of the multiplicities of secondary particles on the impact parameter in collisions of high-energy neon and iron nuclei with photoemulsion nuclei

A method is proposed for finding the dependence of mean multiplicities of secondaries on the nucleus-collision impact parameter from the data on the total interaction ensemble. The impact parameter has been shown to completely define the mean characteristics of an individual interaction event. A difference has been found between experimental results and the data calculated in terms of the cascade-evaporation model at impact-parameter values below 3 fm.

Non-NASA Center↗

Applying Spatial Audio to Human Interfaces: 25 Years of NASA Experience

From the perspective of human factors engineering, the inclusion of spatial audio within a human-machine interface is advantageous from several perspectives. Demonstrated benefits include the ability to monitor multiple streams of speech and non-speech warning tones using a cocktail party advantage, and for aurally-guided visual search. Other potential benefits include the spatial coordination and interaction of multimodal events, and evaluation of new communication technologies and alerting systems using virtual simulation. Many of these technologies were developed at NASA Ames Research Center, beginning in 1985. This paper reviews examples and describes the advantages of spatial sound in NASA-related technologies, including space operations, aeronautics, and search and rescue. The work has involved hardware and software development as well as basic and applied research.

Begault, Durand R.↗

Graph neural network for neutrino physics event reconstruction

Liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detector technology offers a wealth of high-resolution information on particle interactions, and leveraging that information to its full potential requires sophisticated automated reconstruction techniques. Here, this article describes NUGRAPH 2, a graph neural network for low-level reconstruction of simulated neutrino interactions in a LArTPC detector. Simulated neutrino interactions in the MicroBooNE detector geometry are described as heterogeneous graphs, with energy depositions on each detector plane forming nodes on planar subgraphs. The network utilizes a multihead attention message-passing mechanism to perform background filtering and semantic labeling on these graph nodes, identifying those associated with the primary physics interaction with 98.0% efficiency and labeling them according to particle type with 94.9% efficiency. The network operates directly on detector observables across multiple two-dimensional representations but utilizes a three-dimensional-context-aware mechanism to encourage consistency between these representations. Model inference takes 0.12 s / event on a CPU and 0.005 s / event batched on a GPU. This architecture is designed to be a general-purpose solution for particle reconstruction in neutrino physics, with the potential for deployment across a broad range of detector technologies, and offers a core convolution engine that can be leveraged for a variety of tasks beyond the two described in this paper.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Event generator for jet tomography in electron-ion collisions

We develop the first event generator, the electron-heavy-ion-jet-interaction-generator (eHIJING), for the jet tomography study of electron-ion collisions. In this generator, energetic jet partons produced from the initial hard scattering undergo multiple collisions with the nuclear target. The collision rate is proportional to the transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) gluon density in the nucleus, which is given by a simple model inspired by the physics of gluon saturation. Medium-modified QCD splitting functions within the higher-twist (HT) and generalized higher-twist (GHT) frameworks are utilized to simulate parton showering in the nuclear medium that takes into account the non-Abelian Landau-Pomeranchuck-Midgal interference effect. Employing eHIJING, we revisit hadron production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) as measured by EMC, HERMES, and recent CLAS experiments. eHIJING with both GT and GHT frameworks gives reasonably good descriptions of these experimental data. Predictions for experiments at the future electron-ion colliders are also provided. It is demonstrated that future measurements of the transverse momentum broadening of single hadron spectra can be used to map out the two-dimensional kinematic (Q 2 , x B ) dependence of the jet transport coefficient $\hat{q}$ in cold nuclear matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Elements of a stochastic-dynamical theory of the long-term variability of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation

The rudiments of a stochastic-dynamical model for climatic systems with multiple equilibrium states are presented as a means for analyzing the long-term variability of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. It is shown that a combination of the unstable air-sea interaction, the seasonal cycle, and stochastic intraseasonal forcings must be considered in any model for ENSO. In particular, the instability in the air-sea interaction may be triggered by stochastic forcing. The possibility that stochastic events initiate the conditions leading to ENSO exacerbates the already difficult task of predicting ENSO patterns.

Lau, K.-M.↗

Effect of volcanic emissions on clouds during the 2008 and 2018 Kilauea degassing events

Volcanic eruptions in otherwise clean environments are “natural experiments” wherein the effects of aerosol emissions on clouds and climate can be partitioned from meteorological variability and anthropogenic activities. In this work, we combined satellite retrievals, reanalysis products, and atmospheric modeling to analyze the mechanisms of aerosol–cloud interactions during two degassing events at the Kilauea volcano in 2008 and 2018. The eruptive nature of the 2008 and 2018 degassing events was distinct from long-term volcanic activity for Kilauea. Although previous studies assessed the modulation of cloud properties from the 2008 event, this is the first time such an analysis has been reported for the 2018 event and that multiple degassing events have been analyzed and compared at this location. Both events resulted in significant changes in cloud effective radius and cloud droplet number concentration that were decoupled from local meteorology and in line with an enhanced cloud albedo. However, it is likely that the effects of volcanic emissions on liquid water path and cloud fraction were largely offset by meteorological variability. Comparison of cloud anomalies between the two events suggested a threshold response of aerosol–cloud interactions to overcome meteorological effects, largely controlled by aerosol loading. In both events, the ingestion of aerosols within convective parcels enhanced the detrainment of condensate in the upper troposphere, resulting in deeper clouds than observed under pristine conditions. Accounting for ice nucleation on ash particles led to enhanced ice crystal concentrations at cirrus levels and a slight decrease in ice water content, improving the correlation of the model results with the satellite retrievals. Overall, aerosol loading, plume characteristics, and meteorology contributed to changes in cloud properties during the Kilauea degassing events.

Katherine H. Breen↗

SuperCDMS Event Reconstruction Using Convolutional Neural Networks [Thesis]

The SuperCDMS experiment uses cryogenic silicon and germanium detectors to search for dark matter candidates such as WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) streaming through the Earth. Collisions in the silicon and germanium crystals are expected to produce phonons whose thermal signatures can be measured. This thesis first describes the integration of a new Signal Distribution Unit (SDU) to the SuperCDMS data acquisition system, which allows for synchronization of multiple detectors and electronic/mechanical noise characterization via accelerometer, antenna, and AC phase measurements. From SuperCDMS detector data it is necessary to reconstruct the energies of the particle events. This thesis explores the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to perform this reconstruction and finds that, although they perform well, changing the noise model breaks the model and requires the neural network to be retrained. In order to mitigate this issue, a new CNN model is proposed which includes the noise Power Spectral Density (PSD) of the data as an additional input to the CNN. While it proves to be effective as a denoising algorithm, it still fails for data with a different noise model. However, including data from multiple PSDs in the neural network training sample allows it to handle data with different types of noise while still maintaining the quality of the reconstruction. Nevertheless, neural networks trained even on multiple PSDs do not robustly handle data taken with PSDs dissimilar to those in the training sample, suggesting that CNNs may need to be retrained whenever the noise environment changes in a significant way.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Evaluation of Joint Cyber/Safety Risk in Nuclear Power Systems

This report presents an analysis of the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) for a generic Boiling Water Reactor (BWR)-4 NPP. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) developed Hazards and Consequences Analysis for Digital Systems (HAZCADS) process is applied to the ECCS and its subsystems to identify unsafe control actions (UCAs) which act as possible cyber events of concern. The analysis is performed for two design basis events: Small-break Loss of Coolant Accident (SLOCA) and general transients (TRANS), such as unintended reactor trip. In previous work, HAZCADS UCAs were combined with other cyber-attack analysis to develop a risk-informed approach; however, this was for a single system. This report explores advanced systems engineering modeling approaches to model the interactions between digital assets across multiple systems which may be targeted by cyber adversaries. The complex and interdependent design of digital systems has the potential to introduce emergent cyber properties that are generally not covered by hazard analyses nor formal nuclear Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). The R&D and supporting analysis presented here explores approaches to predict and manage how interdependent system properties effect risk. To show the potential impact of a successful cyber-attack to formal PRA event tree probabilities, HAZCADS analysis was also used. HAZCADS was also used to model the automatic depressurization system (ADS) automatic actuation. This analysis extended to an integrated system analysis for common-cause failure (CCF). In this aspect, the HAZCADS analysis continued by analyzing plant design details for system connectivity in support of critical plant functions. A dependency matrix was developed to depict the integrated functionality of the interconnected systems. Areas of potential CCF are indicated. Future work could include adversary attack development to show how CCF could be caused, resulting in PRA events. Across the multiple systems that comprise the ECCS, the analysis shows that the change in such probabilities was very different between systems. This indicates that some systems have a larger potential risk impact from successful cyber-attack or digital failure, which indicates a need for these systems to have a higher priority for design and defensive measures. Furthermore, we were able to establish that a risk analysis using any arbitrary threat model establishes an ordering of components with regard to cyber-risk. This ordering can be used to influence the overall system design with an eye to lowering risk, or as a way to understand real-time risk to operational systems based on a current threat landscape. Expert knowledge of both the analysis process and the system being analyzed is required to perform a HAZCADS analysis. The need for a tiered risk analysis is demonstrated by the results of this report.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗