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At least 469 records · Page 26

Searches for Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts Using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are considered as promising sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) due to their large power output. Observing a neutrino flux from GRBs would offer evidence that GRBs are hadronic accelerators of UHECRs. Previous IceCube analyses, which primarily focused on neutrinos arriving in temporal coincidence with the prompt gamma-rays, found no significant neutrino excess. The four analyses presented in this paper extend the region of interest to 14 days before and after the prompt phase, including generic extended time windows and targeted precursor searches. GRBs were selected between 2011 May and 2018 October to align with the data set of candidate muon-neutrino events observed by IceCube. No evidence of correlation between neutrino events and GRBs was found in these analyses. Limits are set to constrain the contribution of the cosmic GRB population to the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux observed by IceCube. Prompt neutrino emission from GRBs is limited to ≲1% of the observed diffuse neutrino flux, and emission on timescales up to 10 4 s is constrained to 24% of the total diffuse flux.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Angularly resolved photoionization dynamics in atoms and molecules combining temporally and spectrally resolved experiments at ATTOLab and Synchrotron SOLEIL

We report results for XUV-IR two-photon ionization of Ar, Ne, NO, and O2, where an XUV attosecond pulse train is superimposed with a synchronized IR pulse, obtained at the ATTOLab laser facility using electron–ion coincidence 3D momentum spectroscopy. Temporally resolved photoelectron angular distributions providing angle-resolved time-delays for np ionization of Ar and Ne, achieved by reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions through a unified formalism (Joseph et al. in J Phys B At Mol Opt Phys 53:184007, 2020), are summarized. For inner valence XUV-IR dissociative photoionization of NO and O2 molecules, we report electron–ion kinetic energy correlation diagrams and disentangle the dissociative photoionization processes relying on parallel XUV experiments at Synchrotron SOLEIL. For ionization into the NO+(c3Π) ionic state, extending the formalism developed for single-photon ionization, we focus on photoelectron angular distributions averaged on the delay between the XUV and the IR field in the field frame, molecular frame, and electron frame of reference.

Joseph, J↗

JIRIAF: JLAB Integrated Research Infrastructure Acros Facilities

The JIRIAF project aims to combine geographically diverse computing facilities into an integrated science infrastructure. This project starts by dynamically evaluating temporarily unallocated or idled compute resources from multiple providers. These resources are integrated to handle additional workloads without affecting local running jobs. This paper describes our approach to launch best-effort batch tasks which exploit these underutilized resources. Our system measures the real-time behavior of jobs running on a machine and learns to distinguish typical performance from outliers. Unsupervised ML techniques are used to analyze hardware-level performance measures, followed by a real-time cross-correlation analysis to determine which applications cause performance degradation. We then ameliorate bad behavior by throttling these processes. We demonstrate that problematic performance interference can be detected and acted on, which makes it possible to continue to share resources between applications and simultaneously maintain high utilization levels in a computing cluster. We relocate the CLAS12 data processing workflow to a remote data center for a case study, preventing file migration and temporal data persistency.

Lawrence, David↗

Test Vector Development for Verification and Validation of Heavy-Duty Autonomous Vehicle Operations

The current focus in the ongoing development of autonomous driving systems (ADS) for heavy duty vehicles is that of vehicle operational safety. To this end, developers and researchers alike are working towards a complete understanding of the operating environments and conditions that autonomous vehicles are subject to during their mission. This understanding is critical to the testing and validation phases of the development of autonomous vehicles and allows for the identification of both the nominal and edge case scenarios encountered by these systems. Previous work by the authors saw the development of a comprehensive scenario generation framework to identify an operating domain specification (ODS), or external and internal conditions an autonomous driving system can expect to encounter on its mission to form critical scenario groups for autonomous vehicle testing and validating using statistical patterns, clustering, and correlation. Continuing this prior work, this paper focuses on the generation of test cases based on the critical scenarios identified that can be used to prioritize either the most common nominal driving scenarios or the least common severe driving scenarios. These test cases can then be used validate, through simulation or real-world testing, the operating design domain (ODD) for a generalized driving mission and built upon to identify spatial and temporal impacts on the driving mission of an autonomous vehicle.

Siekmann, Adam↗

Quantifying transport and electrocatalytic reaction processes in a gastight rotating cylinder electrode reactor via integration of Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling and experiments

Understanding the complexity of the multiple processes of mass, momentum, charge, and heat transport, and how these affect reaction kinetics at the electrode/electrolyte interface is one of the major challenges in the field of energy and catalysis. The rapid and rational scale-up of electrocatalytic systems to industrial scales require a detailed understanding of nonlinear transport-reaction processes, accessible only through the building of multi-physics models that capture with high fidelity the complexity of real-world devices. The gastight rotating cylinder electrode (RCE) reactor is a promising lab-scale tool that can decouple transport from intrinsic kinetics to generate data for first-principle models useful in the design of industrial, electrochemical reactors. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies have previously been used to investigate the bulk flow in RCE reactors for simple corrosion and electroplating processes. However, the quantification of changes in local concentration within the viscous layer where catalysis takes place requires capturing the correct flow conditions inside the hydrodynamic boundary layer near the surface of the electrode. Further, this requires simulations with spatial resolution in the nm and μm scale and temporal resolutions between ms and s scales that are similar to the timescales for reactions on the electrode surface. In this study, experimental electrocatalysis is combined with CFD modeling to elucidate and parameterize the hydrodynamics in a gastight RCE reactor. CFD simulations of the electrochemical ferricyanide reduction reaction under mass transport limited conditions are used to evaluate the validity of the CFD model parameters by comparing calculated dimensionless mass transport descriptors to dimensionless correlations obtained experimentally. Justifications for assumptions and details of the simulation methods used in this study are presented to provide a detailed understanding of the effect that each model parameter has on the ability to accurately simulate electrocatalysis in RCE systems. The simulation methodology reported here is a first step towards the development of multi-scale models for the study of transport dependent electrocatalytic processes, such as the electrochemical transformation of CO 2 to fuels and chemicals.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Community structure and function during periods of high performance and system upset in a full-scale mixed microalgal wastewater resource recovery facility

Microalgae have the potential to exceed current nutrient recovery limits from wastewater, enabling water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) to achieve increasingly stringent effluent permits. The use of photobioreactors (PBRs) and the separation of hydraulic retention and solids residence time (HRT/SRT) further enables increased biomass in a reduced physical footprint while allowing operational parameters (e.g., SRT) to select for desired functional communities. However, as algal technology transitions to full-scale, there is a need to understand the effect of operational and environmental parameters on complex microbial dynamics among mixotrophic microalgae, bacterial groups, and pests (i.e., grazers and pathogens) and to implement robust process controls for stable long-term performance. Here, we examine a full-scale, intensive WRRF utilizing mixed microalgae for tertiary treatment in the US (EcoRecover, Clearas Water Recovery Inc.) during a nine-month monitoring campaign. We investigated the temporal variations in microbial community structure (18S and 16S rRNA genes), which revealed that stable system performance of the EcoRecover system was marked by a low-diversity microalgal community (D INVSIMPSON = 2.01) dominated by Scenedesmus sp. (MRA = 55 %-80 %) that achieved strict nutrient removal (effluent TP < 0.04 mg·L -1 ) and steady biomass concentration (TSS monthly avg . = 400–700 mg·L −1 ). Operational variables including pH, alkalinity, and influent ammonium (NH 4 + ), correlated positively (p < 0.05, method = Spearman) with algal community during stable performance. Further, the use of these parameters as operational controls along with N/P loading and SRT allowed for system recovery following upset events. Importantly, the presence or absence of bacterial nitrification did not directly impact algal system performance and overall nutrient recovery, but partial nitrification (potentially resulting from NO 2 − accumulation) inhibited algal growth and should be considered during long-term operation. The microalgal communities were also adversely affected by zooplankton grazers (ciliates, rotifers) and fungal parasites (Aphelidium), particularly during periods of upset when algal cultures were experiencing culture turnover or stress conditions (e.g., nitrogen limitation, elevated temperature). Altogether, the active management of system operation in order to maintain healthy algal cultures and high biomass productivity can result in significant periods (>4 months) of stable system performance that achieve robust nutrient recovery, even in winter months in northern latitudes (WI, USA).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Novel 2D velocity estimation method for large transient events in plasmas

Dynamics of fast transient events are challenging to be analyzed with high time resolution. Such events can occur in fusion plasmas such as the filaments during edge-localized modes (ELMs). Here, we present a robust method—the spatial displacement estimation—for estimating the displacements of structures with fast dynamics from high spatial and time resolution imaging diagnostics [e.g., gas-puff imaging (GPI)] with sampling time temporal resolution. First, a background suppression method is shown, which suppresses the slowly time-evolving and spatially non-uniform background in the signal. In the second step, a two-dimensional polynomial trend subtraction method is presented to tackle the remaining polynomial order trend in the signal. After performing these pre-processing steps, the spatial displacement of the propagating structure is estimated from the two-dimensional spatial cross-correlation coefficient function calculated between consecutive frames. The method is tested for its robustness and accuracy by simulated Gaussian events and spatially displaced random noise. An example application of the method is presented on propagating ELM filaments measured by the GPI system on the National Spherical Torus Experiment spherical tokamak.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Revealing the Structure and Dynamics of Self-Generated Electric and Magnetic Fields Near Plasma Stagnation in Laser-Driven Hohlraums

By coupling newly developed triparticle charged particle radiography with radiography reconstruction algorithms and novel reconstruction postprocessing techniques, the spatial structure and time evolution of self-generated electric and magnetic fields in laser-driven vacuum hohlraums have been quantitatively revealed. Through high-fidelity data from a series of experiments, it is shown that late in the hohlraum evolution (after the end of laser drive) these fields are strongly correlated in both space and time, providing evidence that their evolution is primarily dominated by advection with the plasma flow. At these late times, plasma flow velocities inferred from both gross radiography analysis and field reconstructions (and corroborated with Thomson scattering measurements) indicate that the plasma is approaching stagnation near the hohlraum axis. Finally, these experiments provide not only new physical insight into spontaneously generated hohlraum fields, but also provide important spatially and temporally resolved information for future benchmarking of numerical codes.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Improving the Quasi‐Biennial Oscillation via a Surrogate‐Accelerated Multi‐Objective Optimization

Accurate simulation of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) is challenging due to uncertainties in representing convectively generated gravity waves. We develop an end-to-end uncertainty quantification workflow that calibrates these gravity wave processes in E3SM for a realistic QBO. Central to our approach is a domain knowledge-informed, compressed representation of high-dimensional spatio-temporal wind fields. By employing a parsimonious statistical model that learns the fundamental frequency from complex observations, we extract interpretable and physically meaningful quantities capturing key attributes. Building on this, we train a probabilistic surrogate model that approximates the fundamental characteristics of the QBO as functions of critical physics parameters governing gravity wave generation. Leveraging the Karhunen–Loève decomposition, our surrogate efficiently represents these characteristics as a set of orthogonal features, capturing cross-correlations among multiple physics quantities evaluated at different pressure levels and enabling rapid surrogate-based inference at a fraction of the computational cost of full-scale simulations. Finally, we analyze the inverse problem using a multi-objective approach. Our study reveals a tension between amplitude and period that constrains the QBO representation, precluding a single optimal solution. To navigate this, we quantify the bi-criteria trade-off and generate a set of Pareto optimal parameter values that balance the conflicting objectives. This integrated workflow improves the fidelity of QBO simulations and offers a versatile template for uncertainty quantification in complex geophysical models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

TROPOMI observations allow for robust exploration of the relationship between solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and terrestrial gross primary production

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) observed by satellites has advanced the monitoring of terrestrial photosynthesis regionally and globally. The relationship between SIF and gross primary production (GPP) at leaf, canopy, and ecosystem scales has received tremendous attention in recent years. It remains controversial whether the SIF-GPP relationship at the ecosystem scale is universal or dependent upon vegetation type. New SIF observations from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) with unprecedented high spatial and temporal resolution provide a new opportunity to elucidate the SIF-GPP relationship. Here, we examine the SIF-GPP relationship for seven major vegetation types across the U.S. with TROPOMI SIF and in-situ GPP data for 83 eddy covariance flux sites. We find that TROPOMI SIF shows a strong and consistent relationship with tower-based GPP at both satellite footprint and grid-cell levels. The slope of the SIF-GPP relationship is similar among all the vegetation types except croplands, demonstrating a nearly universal (converging to ~13.5 g C m -2 d -1 /W m -2 μm -1 sr -1) rather than vegetation type-specific SIF-GPP relationship. This confirms that TROPOMI SIF can be used as a proxy for GPP across a wide variety of vegetation types and can also be used to quantify GPP by avoiding uncertainty associated with land cover maps. The C 4 crops have a much higher slope than the C 3 crops, and therefore croplands tend to have a higher slope than C 3 -dominated vegetation types (e.g., forests, shrublands, savannas). We also find that the TROPOMI SIF is well correlated with GPP under normal or wetter conditions, while their relationship becomes weaker under water stress. In conclusion, our TROPOMI-based study could improve our understanding of the SIF-GPP relationship at the ecosystem scale and advance the mapping of GPP globally with SIF observations from space.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Closures and Simulation for Thermal Radiation Transport in Stochastic Media with Nonlinear Temperature Dependence

Because of the practical challenge of rendering very complex realistic spatial structures for numerical work, it is common practice to resort to characterizing such media as stochastic mixtures of materials, ideally parametrized with low order statistics such as the mean, variance, and correlation functions of the now random material properties. This enables realizations of the medium to be repeatedly generated and radiation transport computations to, in principle, be performed for a large ensemble of these realizations to obtain a statistically well-characterized radiation field. Statistical post-processing yields desired quantities such as conditional and unconditional mean radiation flux and probability distributions of transmitted radiation. However, such computations prove expensive for all but the simplest stochastic geometries and are most suited for benchmarking approximate models. The most common approximations lead to homogenized media so that transport computations are required only on a single medium realization but by construct provide only limited statistical information on the radiation field. Almost all approximate approaches to this problem attempt to develop equations for low order moments of the radiation intensity (mean, second moment, correlation function) but inevitably encounter a closure problem: the equation for any statistical moment will contain terms depending on unknown higher-order moments. Thus, the challenge shifts to one of developing closure relations that relate the unknown moments to the lower order moments. Under very special conditions, an exact closure can be derived but in general closures are heuristically stated constitutive relations. Also, closure approaches depend on whether the mixing statistics are spatially and/or temporally continuous as in fluctuating turbulent fields, or discontinuous as in randomly mixed solid chunks of material. Thus, unconditional averaging is generally applied in the former case but conditional averaging is more appropriate when the mixing is discontinuous. In this work, the emphasis is on binary statistical mixtures of immiscible fluids as as such the quantities of interest are averages (flux, temperature) conditioned on the material type.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Monte Carlo Simulation and Reconstruction: Assessment of Myocardial Perfusion Imaging of Tracer Dynamics With Cardiac Motion Due to Deformation and Respiration Using Gamma Camera With Continuous Acquisition

Purpose: Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is routinely used for stress testing in nuclear medicine. Recently, our group extended its potential going from 3D visual qualitative image analysis to 4D spatiotemporal reconstruction of dynamically acquired data to capture the time variation of the radiotracer concentration and the estimated myocardial blood flow (MBF) and coronary flow reserve (CFR). However, the quality of reconstructed image is compromised due to cardiac deformation and respiration. The work presented here develops an algorithm that reconstructs the dynamic sequence of separate respiratory and cardiac phases and evaluates the algorithm with data simulated with a Monte Carlo simulation for the continuous image acquisition and processing with a slowly rotating SPECT camera. Methods: A clinically realistic Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is developed using the 4D Extended Cardiac Torso (XCAT) digital phantom with respiratory and cardiac motion to model continuous data acquisition of dynamic cardiac SPECT with slowly rotating gamma cameras by incorporating deformation and displacement of the myocardium due to cardiac and respiratory motion. We extended our previously developed 4D maximum-likelihood expectation-maximization (MLEM) reconstruction algorithm for a data set binned from a continuous list mode (LM) simulation with cardiac and respiratory information. Our spatiotemporal image reconstruction uses splines to explicitly model the temporal change of the tracer for each cardiac and respiratory gate that delineates the myocardial spatial position as the tracer washes in and out. Unlike in a fully list-mode data acquisition and reconstruction the accumulated photons are binned over a specific but very short time interval corresponding to each cardiac and respiratory gate. Reconstruction results are presented showing the dynamics of the tracer in the myocardium as it continuously deforms. These results are then compared with the conventional 4D spatiotemporal reconstruction method that models only the temporal changes of the tracer activity. Mean Stabilized Activity (MSA), signal to noise ratio (SNR) and Bias for the myocardium activities for three different target-to-background ratios (TBRs) are evaluated. Dynamic quantitative indices such as wash-in (K1) and wash-out (k2) rates at each gate were also estimated. Results: The MSA and SNR are higher with higher TBRs while biases were improved with higher TBRs to less than 10%. The correlation between exhalation-inhalation sequence with the ground truth during respiratory cycle was excellent. Our reconstruction method showed better resolved myocardial walls during diastole to systole as compared to the ungated 4D image. Estimated values of K1 and k2 were also consistent with the ground truth. Conclusion: The continuous image acquisition for dynamic scan using conventional two-head gamma cameras can provide valuable information for MPI. Our study demonstrated the viability of using a continuous image acquisition method on a widely used clinical two-head SPECT system. Our reconstruction method showed better resolved myocardial walls during diastole to systole as compared to the ungated 4D image. Precise implementation of reconstruction algorithms, better segmentation techniques by generating images of different tissue types and background activity would improve the feasibility of the method in real clinical environment.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Quantum Imaging with X-rays

Quantum imaging encompasses a broad range of methods that exploit the quantum properties of light to capture information about an object. One such approach involves using a two-photon quantum state, where only one photon interacts with the object being imaged while its entangled partner carries spatial or temporal information. To implement this technique, it is necessary to generate specific quantum states of light and detect photons at the single-photon level. While this method has been successfully demonstrated in the visible electromagnetic spectrum, extending it to X-rays has faced significant challenges due to the difficulties in producing a sufficient rate of X-ray photon pairs and detecting them with adequate resolution. Here, we demonstrate record high rates of correlated X-ray photon pairs produced via a spontaneous parametric down-conversion process and we employ these photons to perform quantum correlation imaging of several objects, including a biological sample (E. cardamomum seedpod). Notably, we report an unprecedented detection rate of about 6,300 pairs per hour and the observation of energy anti-correlation for the X-ray photon pairs. We also present a detailed analysis of the properties of the down-converted X-ray photons, as well as a comprehensive study of the correlation imaging formation, including a study of distortions and corrections. These results mark a substantial advancement in X-ray quantum imaging, expanding the possibilities of X-ray quantum optical technologies, and illustrating the pathway towards enhancing biological imaging with reduced radiation doses.

Gofron, Kaz [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000314415736)↗

Double-pulse speckle contrast correlations with near Fourier transform limited free-electron laser light using hard X-ray split-and-delay

Abstract The ability to deliver two coherent X-ray pulses with precise time-delays ranging from a few femtoseconds to nanoseconds enables critical capabilities of probing ultra-fast phenomena in condensed matter systems at X-ray free electron laser (FEL) sources. Recent progress made in the hard X-ray split-and-delay optics developments now brings a very promising prospect for resolving atomic-scale motions that were not accessible by previous time-resolved techniques. Here, we report on characterizing the spatial and temporal coherence properties of the hard X-ray FEL beam after propagating through split-and-delay optics. Speckle contrast analysis of small-angle scattering measurements from nanoparticles reveals well-preserved transverse coherence of the beam. Measuring intensity fluctuations from successive X-ray pulses also reveals that only single or double temporal modes remain in the transmitted beam, corresponding to nearly Fourier transform limited pulses.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Daily grass reference evapotranspiration with Meteosat Second Generation shortwave radiation and reference ET products

Here we assess the accuracy of estimating daily grass reference evapotranspiration (PM-ET o ) using daily shortwave radiation (R s ) and reference evapotranspiration (ET REF ) products provided by the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) geostationary satellite delivered by the Satellite Applications Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF) framework. The accuracy of using reanalysis ERA5 shortwave radiation data (R s ERA5 ) provided by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is also evaluated. The assessments were performed using observed weather variables at 37 weather stations distributed across continental Portugal, where climate conditions range from semi-arid to humid, and 12 weather stations located in Azores islands, characterized by humid, windy and often cloudy conditions. This study&#x27;s use of data from a variety of climate conditions contributed to a unique and innovative assessment of the usability of LSA-SAF and ERA5 products for ET o estimation. The first assessment focused on comparing LSA-SAF estimates of R s (R s LSA-SAF ) against ground stations (R s ground ). The results showed a good matching between the two R s data sets for continental Portugal but a tendency for R s LSA-SAF to under-estimate R s ground in the cloudy islands of Azores. ET o values computed using R s LSA-SAF data and observed temperature, humidity and wind speed (ET o LSA-SAF ) were then compared with PM-ET o estimates with ground-based data, which were used as benchmark; input data of temperature and humidity needed for PM-ET o were quality checked for surface aridity effects. It was observed that ET o LSA-SAF is strongly correlated with PM-ET o (R 2 > 0.97) for most locations in continental Portugal, with regression coefficient of a linear regression forced to the origin ranging between 0.95 and 1.05, mean root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.13 mm d –1 , and Nash and Sutcliff efficiency of modeling (EF) above 0.95. For most Azores locations, ET o LSA-SAF over-estimated PM-ET o . This is likely a consequence of the high spatio-temporal heterogeneity of weather conditions that occur in these oceanic islands together with the different footprints of satellite (averaged over the pixel) and station observations. Reanalysis ERA5 shortwave radiation data presented similar behavior to the LSA-SAF products, however with slightly lower accuracy. The daily LSA-SAF ET REF product (ET REF LSA-SAF ) was assessed and results have shown a good accuracy of this product, with acceptable RMSE and high EF values, for continental Portugal but a low accuracy for the Azores islands. A simplified bias correction approach was shown to improve both ET o derived from the LSA-SAF products, namely for Azores stations, which seem to be representative of smaller areas. The use of the FAO-PM temperature approach (PMT) was also assessed using the R s LSA-SAF and R s ERA5 data, which showed a superiority of the LSA-SAF product for ET o estimations (ET o PMT LSA-SAF ). No significant differences (p < 0.05) were observed in terms of the median value of the RMSE when adopting ET o PMT and ET REF LSA-SAF . Differently, results showed that using the R s LSA-SAF in the PMT approach (ET o PMT LSA-SAF ) produces significantly better RMSE results than ET o PMT and ET REF LSA-SAF . Overall, the performed assessment allows concluding that the use of R s LSA-SAF, and to a lesser extent the use of the R s ERA5 , highly improves the accuracy of computation of ET o when R s observations are not available, including when only temperature data are accessible. The use of the ET REF LSA-SAF product is a good alternative when observed weather data are not available.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Temporal evolution of scalar modes in Richtmyer–Meshkov instability of inclined interface using high-speed PIV and PLIF measurements at 60 kHz

Abstract The current work presents simultaneous, high-speed measurements at 60,000 fields per second of velocity and mole fraction using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and planar laser induced acetone-fluorescence in a Richtmyer–Meshkov instability of an inclined interface (Atwood number, At = 0.22). Specifically, around 2 ms of temporal evolution of the vortex structures and their associated scalar modes immediately following the interface-reshock interaction is presented. Two initial interface conditions are discussed—(a) a sharp, inclined ‘single mode’ interface and (b) a ‘multi-mode’ interface where small perturbations are imposed on the single mode case. A 2D wavelet decomposition of the scalar flow field shows a highly intermittent distribution of small-scale variance throughout the interface even at late times. These are correlated strongly with the vortex structures and local turbulence intensity, where each small-scale scalar mode is sandwiched between two co-rotating vortex structures. This indicates that the interstitial regions between the vortices are significant hotspots of entrainment, which is then dispersed by the induced, counter-flow velocity fields. The multimode case demonstrates similar organization at large scales, while the scalar field is much more homogeneous at smaller scales. These observations highlight the importance of capturing the early time vortex evolution to accurately estimate any late time intermittency, especially where deposition of intense vorticity on sharp interfaces is present.

Engineering↗

In-situ digital image correlation and thermal monitoring in directed energy deposition

A method and a system for digital image correlation and thermal monitoring during directed energy deposition are provided. The method and the system include global off-axis 3D mapping of surfaces features at high frame rates using the natural surface roughness of the additive build. Infrared thermography is projected onto these surface features to record the thermo-mechanical history of the finished component. As set forth herein, the method and the system provide a low-cost solution to monitoring and optimizing the unique temporal artifacts induced by complex scan strategies.

Haley, James↗

Assessment of Updraft Modeling Bias Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) habitats may overlap with wind energy development in some regions of the US. Eagles, and similar soaring bird species, are therefore at risk of collision with wind turbines when flying through wind farms. Recently developed behavioral modeling approaches can predict the presence of eagles near turbines within the rotor-swept layer but require reliable prediction of atmospheric flowfield conditions. In particular, the vertical component of the wind speed dictates a soaring bird's ability to maintain or gain altitude, since they rely on updrafts to subsidize their flight. In this work, we investigate the atmospheric conditions around a wind farm in complex terrain and compare methods for atmospheric characterization. We use computational fluid dynamics (specifically, large-eddy simulations, or LES) to simulate the atmospheric boundary layer over a region encompassing multiple wind farms with high temporal and spatial resolution (seconds and 10's of meters, respectively). We compare traditional non-simulation-based methods of determining the orographic updraft potential based on wind direction, terrain slope and aspect, with the flowfields from LES that include both orographic updrafts alone and combined thermal and orographic updrafts. Preliminary analysis suggests that although the model captures the horizontal pattern of vertical updrafts, their magnitude can be improved with information about the surface heat flux, which is usually correlated with time of the day. Within our study region, we found that the low-fidelity model may over- or underestimate updraft potential by up to 400% at 80 m AGL, depending on local orographic features. This can result in an inaccurate representation of eagle presence and, consequently, risk. Another important finding is that flowfield time-averaging can hide important details about the flight environment, including how thermally generated flow structures within the atmospheric boundary layer (e.g., convective rolls and/or cells) may be important drivers of eagle flight.

atmospheric turbulence↗