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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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At least 433 records · Page 24
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Magnetic resonance imaging techniques are being developed to measure the in-situ reactions of polysiloxanes

Polysiloxane foams utilized for stockpile applications experience changes over time induced by exposure to thermal, radiative, and mechanical stresses. The interplay of these stresses can lead to chemical and/or physical changes in the polymer, such as alterations of compression set. Understanding these mechanisms require us to understand the in-situ stress states that these polymeric foams are exposed to in the service environment.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2019

Pool Fire and Fireball Experiments in Support of the US DOE/DOT/TC Crude Oil Characterization Research Study

This report describes an experimental study of physical, chemical, and combustion characteristics of selected North American crude oils, and how these associate with thermal hazard distances resulting from pool fires and fireballs. The emergence of large volumes of tight oils within the North American Transportation system over the last decade coupled with several high-profile train accidents involving crude oils, has raised questions about the role of oil properties in general, and tight oils in particular, in affecting the severity of hazard outcomes in related crude oil fires. The objective of the pool fire experiments is to measure parameters necessary for hazard evaluation, namely, burn rate, surface emissive power, flame height, and heat flux to an engulfed object. To carry out this objective, a series of 2-m diameter indoor and 5-m diameter outdoor experiments were performed. The objective of the fireball experiments is to measure parameters required for hazard evaluation which include fireball maximum diameter, height at maximum diameter, duration, and surface emissive power using 400-gallons of crude oil per test. The crude oil samples used for the experiments were obtained from several U.S. locations, including including “tight” oils from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Permian region of Texas, and a conventionally produced oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpile. These samples spanned a measurable range of vapor pressure (VPCR x (T)) and light ends content representative of U.S. domestic conventional and tight crudes. The results indicate that all the oils tested here have comparable thermal hazard distances and the measured properties are consistent with other alkane-based hydrocarbon liquids. The similarity of pool fire and fireball burn characteristics pertinent to thermal hazard outcomes of the three oils studied indicate that vapor pressure is not a statistically significant factor in affecting these outcomes. Thus, the results from this work do not support creating a distinction for crude oils based on vapor pressure with regards to these combustion events.

02 PETROLEUM↗
DOE OSTI2019

PATO IHE DDT Test Series

This report describes one aspect of our efforts for qualifying PATO as an IHE. Specifically, we tested PATO against the DDT requirements as defined by LA-UR-15-29238 IHE Material Qualification Test Series, Section 1.1. That section states: “The purpose of the DDT test is to demonstrate that an IHE material will not undergo deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) under stockpile-relevant conditions of scale, confinement, and material condition. Inherent in this test design is the assumption that ignition does occur, with the onset of deflagration. The test design will incorporate large margins and replicates to account for the stochastic nature of DDT events.” Along with the primary goal of qualifying PATO, this is the first time this test standard has been executed, as such, we are ‘testing the test’ by providing details of execution, pragmatic details that could be improved, and feedback regarding scientific issues.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

2016 High Performance Computing Annual Report

Sandia National Laboratories’ California site is celebrating its 60th anniversary (1956 to 2016), and high performance computing has been a key enabler for its scientists and engineers throughout much of its history. Since its founding, Sandia California has helped pioneer the use of HPC platforms including hosting Sandia’s first Cray-1 supercomputer in the 1970s and supporting development of scalable cluster computing platforms to create a new paradigm for cost-effective supercomputing in the 1990s. Recent decades of investment in creation of scalable application frameworks for scientific computing have also enabled new generations of modeling and simulation codes. These resources have facilitated computational analysis of complex phenomena in diverse applications spanning national defense, energy, and homeland security. Today, Sandia California researchers work with partners in academia, industry, and national labs to evolve the state-of-the-art in HPC, modeling, and data analysis (including foundational capabilities for exascale computing platforms) and apply them in transformational ways. Research efforts include mitigating the effects of silent hardware failures that can jeopardize the results of large-scale computations, developing exascale-capable asynchronous task-parallel programming models and runtime systems, formulating new techniques to better explore and analyze extreme-scale data sets, and increasing our understanding of materials and chemical sciences which has applications spanning nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship to more efficient automobile engines. The following section highlights some of these research and applications projects and further illustrates the breadth of our HPC capabilities.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2016

Pulsed Power Science & Technology: A Strategic Outlook for the National Nuclear Security Administration (Summary)

Major advances in pulsed power technology and applications over the last twenty years have expanded the mission areas for pulsed power and created compelling new opportunities for the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP). This summary document is a forward look at the development of pulsed power science and technology (PPS&T) capabilities in support of the next 20 years of the SSP. This outlook was developed during a three month long tri-lab study on the future of PPS&T research and capabilities in support of applications to: (1) Dynamic Materials, (2) Thermonuclear Burn Physics and Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF), and (3) Radiation Effects and Nuclear Survivability. It also considers necessary associated developments in next-generation codes and pulsed power technology as well as opportunities for academic, industry, and international engagement. The document identifies both imperatives and opportunities to address future SSP mission needs.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2019

Coupled Experiment and Theory to Explore the Limits of Material Strength at High Strain Rates

Critical components such as detonators in Sandia's stockpile are heterogeneous materials that rely on accurate constitutive models for each material used in the component. However, experiments to study materials at high pressure are challenging and time consumptive, therefore we turn to modeling tools to refine and predict outcomes beforehand. Efficient models balance absolute physical accuracy against approximate but computationally lightweight constitutive inputs. By using a relatively small number of high fidelity simulations and experiments we have be able to broaden the predictive power of the shock response in metals and polymers. We have tailored the analysis of these simulations to determine a size dependent material strength, which can be used as constitutive model inputs for continuum hydrodynamics codes. For the shocked Cu, MD simulations show a yield strength from RMI jet growth of approximately 450MPa that depends on the details of the free surface geometry. This value is close to the yield strength of 500MPa parameterized for an elastic-perfectly-plastic strength model from experiments at the Dynamic Compression Sector at Argonne National Lab. The same analysis applied to MD simulations of PMMA jetting resulted in no clear determination of yield strength, implying a more complex RMI process in polymeric materials. Atomistic simulations of both materials are shown to be valuable training metrics and show the need for explicit strain rate dependent strength for future improvements in strength models used in continuum codes.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Shortening the Design and Certification Cycle for Additively Manufactured Materials by Improved Mesoscale Simulations and Validation Experiments: Fiscal Year 2019 Status Report.

This report outlines the fiscal year (FY) 2019 status of an ongoing multi-year effort to develop a general, microstructurally-aware, continuum-level model for representing the dynamic response of material with complex microstructures. This work has focused on accurately representing the response of both conventionally wrought processed and additively manufactured (AM) 304L stainless steel (SS) as a test case. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is an emerging technology capable of enabling shortened design and certification cycles for stockpile components through rapid prototyping. However, there is not an understanding of how the complex and unique microstructures of AM materials affect their mechanical response at high strain rates. To achieve our project goal, an upscaling technique was developed to bridge the gap between the microstructural and continuum scales to represent AM microstructures on a Finite Element (FE) mesh. This process involves the simulations of the additive process using the Sandia developed kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) code SPPARKS. These SPPARKS microstructures are characterized using clustering algorithms from machine learning and used to populate the quadrature points of a FE mesh. Additionally, a spall kinetic model (SKM) was developed to more accurately represent the dynamic failure of AM materials. Validation experiments were performed using both pulsed power machines and projectile launchers. These experiments have provided equation of state (EOS) and flow strength measurements of both wrought and AM 304L SS to above Mbar pressures. In some experiments, multi-point interferometry was used to quantify the variation is observed material response of the AM 304L SS. Analysis of these experiments is ongoing, but preliminary comparisons of our upscaling technique and SKM to experimental data were performed as a validation exercise. Moving forward, this project will advance and further validate our computational framework, using advanced theory and additional high-fidelity experiments.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Development of eXternal Nuclear Reaction Analysis (XNRA) Detection Technique for Quantifying Light Isotope Concentrations

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Tritium Sustainment Program is responsible for the design, development, demonstration, testing, analysis, and characterization of tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) and their components used to produce tritium for the nation’s strategic stockpile. The FY19 call for proposals included the specific basic science research topic, “Demonstration and evaluation of advanced characterization methods, particularly for quantifying the concentration of light isotopes ( 1 H, 3 H, 3 He, and 4 He, 6 Li and 7 Li) in metal or ceramic matrices”. Last year the same language appeared in the call for proposals, and a project IWO-389859 was awarded to the Ion Beam Lab (IBL) at Sandia-NM which was successful using Elastic Recoil Detection, but in the future could have resulted in tritium contamination that jeopardized other equally important NNSA projects. An alternative approach using deuterium nuclear reaction analysis was proposed and funded in FY2019 which was also successful and eliminated any possibility of contaminating the Ion Beam Laboratory with tritium, and will be described in this report.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Physical Sciences Vistas Summer 2019

In support of the Laboratory’s mission to maintain the nation’s nuclear stockpile, Los Alamos researchers investigate every aspect of plutonium in every possible environment. This includes plutonium hydriding. In metals, hydriding occurs when hydrogen accumulates in the spaces between the metal atoms. This process changes the physical properties of plutonium metal, leading to embrittlement and a less functional material. The understanding of this process is of importance to many aspects of the Laboratory’s plutonium mission.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Co-op at Sandia National Laboratories (July - December 2019, Final Report)

This co-op was performed at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) within the Weapon Surety Engineering 11 Department (9435), which is a customer-focused organization that provides engineering and system analysis expertise to ensure a safe deterrent throughout the entire weapon lifecycle. Engineers in 9435 develop a deep knowledge in both component and system function to support rigorous evaluation and mitigation of potential failure modes. They operate across multiple engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical, computer, materials and systems engineering) with opportunities to develop crossdisciplinary capability. The team supports a variety of stockpile systems and is part of the product teams during development, design and production, as well as advanced concept and exploratory efforts. 9435 engineers use their extensive component and system knowledge, as well as experimental data and modeling, to ensure products function as intended with assured safety. Members of the department learn the function of multiple components, how those components integrate within the system and apply surety principles and processes to ensure a safe, secure, reliable, and effective U.S. nuclear deterrent.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Moly 99 Reactor Case Study

Molybdenum-99 (Moly 99) is a critical raw material for Technetium (Tc) 99m, a radioactive isotope most widely used in nuclear medicine procedures. Moly 99 has a short half-life of about six hours, which means it cannot be stockpiled. When Moly 99 decays, it turns into Tc 99m, which has a half-life of 214,000 years. The photon energy emitted from the decay of Moly 99 is used in a variety of nuclear imaging technologies such as gamma cameras. Furthermore, radiopharmaceutical manufacturers use the photon energy emitted from the decay of Moly 99 to produce generators for hospitals, clinics, and radiopharmacies. Once Moly 99 decays to Tc 99m, it is used to make individual patient doses for a variety of diagnostic imaging procedures. The Moly 99 Reactor Design is a conceptual blueprint for Moly 99 production that does not use weapon-grade uranium; instead, the reactor has a target core of low-enriched uranium. The reactor design is small, reaching a foot-and-a-half in height and diameter and consumes less than two megawatts of power. The reactor's only purpose is for medical isotope production and with every fission, Moly 99 is produced.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

2019 accomplishments: degradation of mechanical properties in structural metals and welds for FTS reservoirs

This report documents work in 2019 at SRNL in support of the Aging and Lifetimes program. Specimens for fracture toughness testing were prepared in prior years by thermally pre-charging samples, provided by Sandia National Laboratories, of welded types 304L and 21-6-9 stainless steels. These samples were pre-charged in 2017. The fracture toughness of the first aged specimens was measured and compared to historical data. The measurements of the 304L and 21-6-9 weld and particularly HAZ represent some of the first fracture data relevant to modern GTS reservoirs. This work represents an on-going collaboration between SRNL and SNL to understand tritium embrittlement of structural metals in Gas Transfer System reservoirs which informs lifetime assessments. Continued testing was conducted on ongoing historical studies, including the effects of very long-term aging, and the relative performance of differently forged stockpile relevant 304L and 316L samples. New samples were pre-charged with tritium and placed in a freezer for an aging study to allow helium to build into the material. The precharged samples consist of smooth and notched tensile samples of 304L stainless steel, as well as tube tensile samples of different thermal treatments supplied by Sandia National Laboratories. Their charging marks the beginning of a new sequence of studies to explore fundamental deformation mechanisms underpinning tritium embrittlement. At predesignated times, samples will be removed from aging and tested to provide data which will help develop an understanding of material degradation with increasing aging time. Also documented is progress in employing various advanced characterization techniques including high resolution electron microscopy, thermally programed desorption, and small angle x-ray scattering, as well as facilities renovations and equipment procurements in support of sustained tritium impacts on materials program at SRNL.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Tritium Pressure Enhancement on the TPBAR Cladding by Physical Processes at the Getter

Tritium for the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile is produced in tritium producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) inserted into Tennessee Valley Authoritys (TVA) light-water nuclear reactors. The rods are stainless steel tubes with a permeation barrier coating and internal components that generate and contain the tritium. The TPBAR incorporates a Ni-plated Zircoloy getter tube to capture tritium and prevent it from reaching the rod cladding and permeating into the environment. Under the conventional view of getter behavior, the tritium pressure outside the getter tube is expected to be limited to the equilibrium vapor pressure of Zr hydride at the temperature of the rod as long as the total hydrogen concentration remains below the capacity of the hydride. Since the tritium pressure is higher within the rod core, this behavior relies on the thin getters ability to hold off a differential tritium pressure. The effective tritium pressure on the cladding can also be enhanced by isotope exchange. Hydrogen ingress through the cladding from the reactor coolant creates a hydrogen pressure on the outer surface of the getter that can exchange with tritium, allowing the tritium partial pressure to increase toward this hydrogen gettering pressure. The goal of this work was to use laboratory-scale experiments to examine these mechanisms and create a model of getter behavior that describes tritium transport within the TPBAR. A third mechanism wherein the concentration at the outer surface of the getter is increased by the temperature gradient within the getter tube wall (the Soret effect) is not experimentally tested but is captured in the model. While not conclusively demonstrated by the experiments due to low pressure, high temperature, and small gap volume conditions, the model shows that when combined, the three mechanisms can explain both the magnitude and time dependence of the tritium release observed for reactor fuel assemblies with TPBARs. The model also shows how various modifications of the TPBAR design can reduce this tritium release into the environment.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Future of LANSCE [Slides]

LANSCE is a NNSA Center for Materials and Nuclear Research. An aging stockpile presents unique challenges in materials and nuclear science. The grand challenge of a predictive materials capability includes design to manufacture and born certified. This requires capability to study manufacture to structure relationships and capability to study structure to performance relationships. LANSCE has the capabilities needed for this mission. We leverage our capability to provide broader benefit to the Nation including production of medical isotopes, industrial irradiation facility for electronics certification, and fundamental materials and physics research. The LANSCE linear accelerator is nearly 50 years old. The severity of maintenance issues is increasing. We must reinvest in LANSCE to ensure mission delivery into the future. We must develop new capability to be responsive to changing mission needs. Ultimately this will require a Dynamic Mesoscale Materials Science Capability. Now we must develop a pathway to MaRIE that ensures continued operation of LANSCE.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Improved Fireset Acceptance Using Established Evaluation Measurements

As new insight is gained into the relationship between firesets and detonators, tighter control of the circuit parameters is desired to maintain consistent and optimum system performance. An analysis of the established acceptance method reveals that it has insufficient precision to guarantee a uniform population of units. While the production has been historically very uniform, the uniformity has been primarily due to the quality and consistency of the manufacturing process rather than to the stringency of the acceptance criteria. The established method of evaluating and accepting firesets for the stockpile has been to discharge the units into a representative load and to record the output current waveform. Three characteristics of the output waveform (Peak Current, Rise Time, and Pulse Width) are then analyzed and an acceptance window is applied directly to these measurements. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new approach that incorporates these same established measurements. However, instead of applying acceptance criteria to the three measurements directly, rather these measurements are used to evaluate the circuit values of capacitance, inductance and resistance to provide a more stringent and uniform acceptance criteria.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Contact Stress Sensor _ Proposal to the FY2020 Technology Tech Mat Grants Program

The technology to be advanced is a very small and thin Contact Stress Sensor (CSS) that measures the contact stress between two contacting surfaces. It will be used to monitor the internal condition of a weapon in the stockpile over periods of decades. Monitoring the load path of a complex weapon assembly offers an important verification of the weapon’s mechanical state in both quasi-static or dynamic environments. Concurrently, the sensor can be used to measure temperature. This is useful for sensor calibration while installed in a system, as well as thermal monitoring in regions of the system that are difficult to access. Thus, the CSS is one way to monitor the internal “health” of a weapon. A sensor is shown below with each sensor being less then 2mm in width and 125 microns in thickness.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗