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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 487 records · Page 27
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Physics-informed Bayesian machine learning case study: Integral blade rotors

This paper provides a physics-informed Bayesian machine learning (PIBML) description and case study. The PIBML approach applies three physics-based models to establish the initial beliefs before testing to determine the probability of milling stability (or prior). These include: receptance coupling substructure analysis (RCSA) prediction for the tool tip frequency response functions; finite element software prediction of the mechanistic force model coefficients; and a spindle speed-dependent power law model for process damping. Testing was then performed to identify optimal stable machining conditions using an expected improvement in material removal rate criterion. The prior probability of stability was updated using the test results to determine the posterior probability of stability. The test results were compared to the parameter recommendations provided by the endmill manufacturer. A demonstration integral blade rotor was machined at the optimal stable machining conditions for 304 stainless steel and 6061-T6 aluminum. Finally, the disagreement between manufacturer recommendations and milling performance in both materials tested emphasizes the need for broad implementation of PIBML approaches to increase machining productivity and efficiency.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

External Release of Organic Scintillator DRiFT Software - Technology Evaluation and Demonstration Project Accomplishments [Slides]

Overview and Objectives: DRiFT post processes radiation transport output from MCNP, and generates realistic nuclear instrumentation response; Organic scintillator response has been developed, tested, and validated with measurements, these instruments are widely used in nuclear safeguards. At the beginning of this project, DRiFT was only available to LANL employees with access to yellow High Performance Computing clusters. Additionally, there are many complicated external software dependencies. Our TED project request proposed using funds to: Comment and clean up code, friendly testing, generating test suites and examples; Expansion of scintillator types natively supported by DRiFT; External release of DRiFT accompanied by documentation. We accomplished all objectives (and many others), they are highlighted in these slides.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Verification and Validation of the PLTEMP/ANL Code for Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of Experimental and Test Reactors, Volume 1

This is Volume 1 of a two-volume document that collects the verification and validation (V&V) works done for the PLTEMP/ANL code during the years of its development and improvement. Volume 1 describes the V&V of sixteen capabilities of the PLTEMP/ANL code that were identified by research reactor analysts as frequently used in their thermal-hydraulic analysis. Volume 2 describes the V&V of developments and improvements since the release of PLTEMP/ANL Version 4.3. Each chapter of the document focuses on verifying or validating a specific part of the software that calculates a specific phenomenon, e.g., channel flow calculation, coolant property calculation, heat transfer calculation, and flow instability calculation. Software verification is performed by comparing the code with hand calculation, Microsoft spreadsheet calculation, Mathematica calculation, or MATLAB calculation. The software validation is done by comparing the code with experimental data or a widely tested code like the RELAP5 code. In addition, some PLTEMP/ANL V&V works that are available in the open literature are simply cited in Volume 1 of the document. PLTEMP/ANL has been used in the safety analysis reports of several US and foreign research reactors licensed and converted from highly enriched uranium fuel to low-enriched uranium fuel. A list of such reactors is given in Volume 1 of the document.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Verification and Validation of the PLTEMP/ANL Code for Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of Experimental and Test Reactors, Volume 2

This is Volume 2 of a two-volume document that collects the verification and validation (V&V) works done for the PLTEMP/ANL code during the years of its development and improvement. Volume 1 describes the V&V of sixteen capabilities of the PLTEMP/ANL code that were identified by research reactor analysts as frequently used in their thermal-hydraulic analysis. Volume 2 describes the V&V of developments and improvements since the release of PLTEMP/ANL Version 4.3. Each chapter of the document focuses on verifying or validating a specific part of the software that calculates a particular phenomenon, e.g., channel flow calculation, coolant property calculation, heat transfer calculation, and flow instability calculation. Software verification is performed by comparing the code with a hand calculation, Microsoft spreadsheet calculation, Mathematica calculation, or MATLAB calculation. The software validation is achieved by comparing the code with experimental data or a widely tested code like the RELAP5 code. In addition, some PLTEMP/ANL V&V works that are available in the open literature are simply referenced in Volume 1 of the document. PLTEMP/ANL has been used in safety analysis reports of several US and foreign research reactors licensed and converted from highly enriched uranium fuel to low-enriched uranium fuel. A list of such reactors is given in Volume 1 of the document.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

High-Brightness Ultraviolet Lasers for Leap-Ahead National Security Applications

In this project we endeavored to improve the state-of-the-art in UV lasers diodes. We made important advancements in several fronts from modeling, to epitaxial growth, to fabrication, and testing. Throughout the project it became clear that polarization doping would be able to help advance the state of laser diode design in terms of electrical performance, but the optical design would need to be investigated to ensure that a 2D guided mode would be supported. New capability in optical modeling using commercial software demonstrated that the new polarization doped structures would be viable. New capability in pulsed testing was established to reach the current and voltage required. Our fabricated devices had some parasitic electrical paths which hindered performance that we were ultimately unable to overcome in the project timeframe. We do believe that future projects will be able to leverage the advancements made under this project.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

FAST-1.0 Software Release Document

The purpose of this document is to detail the release of FAST-1.0 and the documents that accompany the development and testing of FAST-1.0. Design requirements were for FAST-1.0 developed in the NRC Statement of Work (SOW) for NRC Agreement Number NRC-HQ-25-14-D-001 and are transcribed to this document as part of the Software Quality Assurance Plan for the FAST Code System, PNNL-28767. FAST 1.0 represents the merger of the FRAPCON and FRAPTRAN codes and as such FAST-1.0 performs steady state and transient fuel performance calculations described below. FAST-1.0 calculates the steady state response of light-water reactor fuel rods during long-term burnup. The code calculates temperature, pressure, and deformation of a fuel rod as functions of time-dependent fuel rod power and coolant boundary conditions. The phenomena modeled by the code include: 1) heat conduction through fuel and cladding to the coolant; 2) cladding elastic and plastic deformation; 3) fuel-cladding mechanical interaction; 4) fission gas release from the fuel and rod internal pressure; and 5) cladding oxidation. FAST is used to perform independent calculations for regulatory evaluations of fuel performance under normal operation and anticipated operational occurrences (AOOs).

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Sandia Optical Fringe Analysis Slope Tool (SOFAST) Improvement Effort (Final Report)

The Sandia Optical Fringe Analysis Slope Tool (SOFAST) is a tool that has been developed at Sandia to measure the surface slope of concentrating solar power optics. This tool has largely remained of research quality over the past few years. Since SOFAST is important to ongoing tests happening at Sandia as well as an interest to others outside Sandia, there is a desire to bring SOFAST up to professional software standards. The goal of this effort was to make progress in several broad areas including: code quality, sample data collection, and validation and testing. During the course of this effort, much progress was made in these areas. SOFAST is now a much more professional grade tool. There are, however, some areas of improvement that could not be addressed in the timeframe of this work and will be addressed in the continuation of this effort.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Performance Evaluation of an Advanced Distributed Energy Resource Management Algorithm

This paper presents performance evaluation of a new distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) algorithm via an advanced hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform. The HIL platform provides realistic testing in a laboratory environment, including the accurate modeling of sub-transmission and distribution networks, the DERMS software controller, and 84 power hardware solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters, standard communication protocols, and a capacitor bank controller. The DERMS algorithm is also called, Grid-Optimization of Solar (GO-Solar) platform which includes predictive state estimation (PSE) and online multiple objective optimization (OMOO) to dispatch the legacy devices and distributed energy resources (e.g., PV). The voltage regulation performance is evaluated under three scenarios, volt-var smart inverter (baseline), and DERMS control for 100% and 30% of PV. The results show that controlling 30% of PV systems with the GO-Solar platform may provide the best balance of control performance and implementation cost.

distributed energy resource management system (DER↗
DOE OSTI2025

5G-TSN Architecture Capable of Providing Real-time Situational Awareness to Fossil-Energy (FE) Generation Systems (Final Technical Report)

This final report highlights the comprehensive achievements of the project focused on developing and validating a 5G-Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) architecture tailored for real-time operational awareness in fossil energy systems. The initiative successfully advanced through a series of technical milestones, including the integration of EMI-aware network models, deployment of advanced simulation frameworks, and real-world performance characterization at key sites such as UTEP and Fabens. Through the strategic use of NetSim® software, the team created and validated network configurations for wired and wireless environments, tested under varying congestion conditions, and verified network slicing implementations for URLLC-specific applications. Major accomplishments include the migration of simulation tools to the latest NetSim® version to support accurate modeling of TSN and network slicing, extensive EMI measurement campaigns, and the development of a robust simulation model for end-to-end SCADA system integration. Simulations compared both TDD and FDD duplexing modes, revealing insights into their performance under congested conditions. The wireless network was benchmarked for throughput, jitter, and delay metrics, aligning with 3GPP Release 15/16 and IEEE 802.1-TSN standards. A peer-reviewed conference paper was accepted and published, contributing to the broader academic and industrial discourse on 5G-TSN integration in energy systems, in addition to a journal article. Despite minor delays due to software limitations, the project achieved its objectives and delivered validated architecture ready for deployment in advanced energy network environments.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2023

Machine learning methods for fission product identification from Bragg curves

A fission time projection chamber (fission-TPC) was developed to provide precise neutron-induced fission measurements for several major actinides. As fission fragments lose energy in one of the gas volumes of the fission-TPC, energy loss information is captured and may be used to determine fission product yields as the stopping power of an ion is dependent on the atomic number. The work presented here demonstrates the ability to apply machine learning techniques for Bragg curve classification. A set of one million energy loss curves for 24 different fission-fragment elements was generated using common stopping power software. A ResNet architecture optimized for 1D data was used to train, test, and validate a model for light and heavy fission fragments using the simulated data. The resultant classification accuracy for the light and heavy fragments indicates that this could be a viable method for elemental classification of data from the fission-TPC.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Application of Coordination to Magnetic Measurement Automation: An SSW System Example

Magnetic measurements are an integral part of the development cycle of accelerator magnets, a part which provides necessary feedback to drive design and manufacturing improvements and corrections. Automation of these measurements allows for reduction of human errors and reproducibility of measurements. Realization of automation via coordination that is separated at the architectural level from the functional code provides flexibility in defining measurement procedures and substantial extensibility. The described Single Stretched Wire (SSW) system herein is an implementation of such a solution with the use of a component-based framework designed to build a family of measurement systems.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Shifting Layer Heights for Closed-Loop Contours in Additive Manufacturing

Traditional slicing for 3D printing involves a planar cross-sectioning process to create layers. These layers are stacked one on top of the next representing a butt-joint, which is typically the weakest direction for loading a 3D printed part. Because the layers are printed sequentially, no material or reinforcement connects from one layer to the next. This clean layer line between layers is easy to break or separate. To fix this, the authors have implemented a new approach to shift the height of every other closed-loop contour toolpath such that a clean layer line no longer exists. This bead shifting approach involves moving every other contour by half a layer height, after the cross-sectioning step, so that a straight line cannot be drawn between layers. To maintain the original object geometry, a half height layer is printed for the first and last layer to create a flat top and bottom surface. This functionality has been implemented and tested as part of ORNL Slicer 2, an open-source toolpathing software package.

Roschli, Alex↗
DOE OSTI2022

MPC4CLR (Model-Predictive-Control-for-Critical-Load-Restoration-in-Power-Distribution-Systems) [SWR-22-24]

Model predictive control (MPC) is a system or process control technique for making decisions under uncertainty via rolling look-ahead optimizations at each control step where only the current step decisions are applied, and the rest are discarded. In this work, we developed an MPC for a critical load restoration (CLR) in power distribution systems to recover system service (electricity delivery) following an extreme event-triggered substation outage. The method considers the problem of controlling distributed energy resources (DERs) of the distribution system with the objective of achieving maximum load pick up while satisfying distribution network flow and voltage constraints. A linearized optimal power flow (OPF) model is employed to represent the physics of the network. The problem formulation is augmented with a ramping (up) reserve product for the DERs to ensure improved and upward monotonic load restoration as time evolves. Simulation analysis and performance tests are performed using a modified IEEE 13-bus test feeder integrated with wind, solar, microturbine, and energy storage battery. The software is developed using various software packages in Julia and Python. The MPC model is implemented using the JuMP optimization language in Julia while the data analytics including renewable generation and load demand forecasts, running the MPC simulation and visualizations is performed in Python.

Eseye, Abinet Tesfaye↗
DOE OSTI2022

Simulation of Transport Phenomena in Bubble Column Reactors

The production of carbon and hydrogen from methane is a viable pathway for monetizing the vast reserves of US natural gas. Liquid (metals and/or salts) bubble column reactors operating at temperatures greater than 1000° C allow the conversion of methane into hydrogen without CO 2 emission. The low-density carbon floats on top of the liquid surface, allowing an easier removal, compared to other reactor concepts for methane pyrolysis. In this current report, we present results from simulations of transport phenomena in a liquid bubble column reactor. The goal is to investigate and understand parameters that are crucial for bubble column reactor design and scale up. The report presents the formulation and numerical methods used in the multiphase direct numerical simulation software, Quilt. This software was validated for the bubbly flow using numerical and physics based test problems. Quilt was then used to perform simulations of the bubble column reactor as a parametric study, varying the bubble injection parameters. The simulations were visualized for qualitative analysis and followed up with a quantitative analysis. The effect of injection parameters on various quantitative measures of the bubble residence time, interfacial area and motion through the column are presented.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Enabling a Physical Twin for Control Methods Evaluation

Advanced nuclear reactors play an important role in the energy future of the United States and the rest of the world. They are designed and operated based on a different model than that of the current operating fleet, thus enabling deployment in remote locations and allowing for safe semi-autonomous or autonomous operations. Such characteristics require the development of a new reactor control paradigm. A significant factor in the development of control technologies and methods is integration of the various technologies and methods with each other and with hardware (both reactor system hardware and control hardware). A recent workshop on control of advanced reactors identified the lack of a flexible, expandable software/hardware infrastructure to enable such integration as a key gap. A previous phase of the current effort involved developing and demonstrating the Control and Optimization Modular Modeling Application for Nuclear Deployment (COMMAND) platform, which is capable of integrating autonomous-control-enabling technologies and methods, without the constraints imposed by existing software solutions. This platform will enable advanced reactor developers to deploy and test any developed technologies and methods by employing a common framework, and to couple them with their own models and hardware. The present phase of this effort entails using the Microreactor Automated Control System (MACS) platform, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Microreactor Program, to serve as a control method testbed. MACS can be used by advanced reactor developers to integrate their control related research activities with any reactor system. For the present effort, MACS was customized to mirror Idaho National Laboratory (INL)’s Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) microreactor, and COMMAND was leveraged to enable MACS to emulate the physics of MARVEL, thus positioning MACS as a physical twin of MARVEL.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Impact of K-factor on Short Circuit Program Convergence for Inverter-Based Resources during Faults

Classical short-circuit programs that linearize the power network are no longer applicable for inverter based resources (IBRs), necessitating an iterative approach. Phasor domain programs can model the IBRs using an iterative approach considering nonlinear fault responses. In phasor domain models, the IBR can be modeled as a voltage controlled current source (VCCS) in tabular form with positive, negative, and zero sequence information for balanced and unbalance short-circuit faults. In the VCCS modeling of the IBR, positive and negative incremental reactive current, also known as the k-factor, plays an important role in short circuit program convergence. In this work, a few approaches: conventional VCCS modeling with a k-factor of 2, conventional VCCS modeling with a k-factor of 2 with modified pre-fault voltages, VCCS characteristics based on the power flow solution with a k-factor of 2, and VCCS characteristics based on the power flow solution with a k-factor of 1 are investigated for short circuit program convergence under higher IBR penetration. The IEEE 39 bus New England Test System is taken as the test system, and simulations are carried out in PSS®CAPE 15.0.26 simulation software. Simulation results demonstrate that IBR penetration is higher for the VCCS model, which corresponds to the power flow solution with k-factor 1, compared to other approaches.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Grid-Interactive Building Solutions: Synapse from Kinetic Buildings

This fact sheet describes a grid-interactive efficient building technology that is undergoing field validation tests through DOE's National Labs. It summarizes the technology application (Synapse software from Kinetic Buildings) and the characteristics of the field validation site.

grid-interactive efficient buildings, GEB, technol↗