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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

Reverse and forward shock X-ray emission in an evolutionary model of supernova remnants undergoing efficient diffusive shock acceleration

We present new models for the forward and reverse shock thermal X-ray emission from core-collapse and Type Ia supernova remnants (SNRs) that include the efficient production of cosmic rays (CR) via nonlinear diffusive shock acceleration (DSA). Our CR-hydro-NEI code takes into account non-equilibrium ionization, hydrodynamic effects of efficient CR production on the SNR evolution, and collisional temperature equilibration among heavy ions and electrons in both the shocked supernova (SN) ejecta and the shocked circumstellar material. While X-ray emission is emphasized here, our code self-consistently determines both thermal and non-thermal broadband emission from radio to TeV energies. We include Doppler broadening of the spectral lines by thermal motions of the ions and by the remnant expansion. We study, in general terms, the roles that the ambient environment, progenitor models, temperature equilibration, and processes related to DSA have on the thermal and non-thermal spectra. The study of X-ray line emission from young SNRs is a powerful tool for determining specific SN elemental contributions and for providing critical information that helps to understand the type and energetics of the explosion, the composition of the ambient medium in which the SN exploded, and the ionization and dynamics of the hot plasma in the shocked SN ejecta and interstellar medium. With the approaching launch of the next-generation X-ray satellite Astro-H, observations of spectral lines with unprecedented high resolution will become a reality. Our self-consistent calculations of the X-ray spectra from various progenitors will help interpret future observations of SNRs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Advanced Integration of Power Take-Off in VIVACE

Vortex Hydro Energy is commercializing a University of Michigan patented MHK device, the VIVACE converter (Vortex Induced Vibration Aquatic Clean Energy). Unlike water turbines, it does not use propeller blades. Rather, river or ocean currents flow around cylinders causing them to move up and down in Flow Induced Motions (FIM). This kinetic energy of the cylinder is then converted to electricity. Importantly, the VIVACE converter is simpler in design and more cost effective than water turbines. This project accelerated the development of the VIVACE technology. Funding from the DOE enabled VHE to accelerate the development in three ways. One was to increase the efficiency of the hydrodynamics of the system. This aided in maximizing the power output for a wide range of water speeds. The second was to design, build, and test an efficient power take-off (PTO) that converted the most power from the VIVACE cylinders into electricity. This effort was necessary because of the nature of power generated using this technology. Although the PTO uses off-the-shelf components, it is specifically tuned to the specific water flow characteristics. The third way the development was accelerated was by testing the improved Beta 1B prototype over a longer period of time in a river. The greatest benefit from the longer open-water testing-period is a better understand of the power generation characteristics of the system as well as the maintenance lifespan of the device.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Adaptive inverse ray-tracing for accurate and efficient modeling of cross beam energy transfer in hydrodynamics simulations

Integrated hydrodynamics simulations of inertial confinement fusion rely on reduced physics models. To reproduce experimental trends, these models often feature tuning parameters, but this comes with a risk: the over-tuning of one model can hide physics inadequacies in another. The ray-based models of cross-beam-energy transfer (CBET) represent this risk. In this paper, we present an accurate and efficient model of CBET suitable for inline implementation in 3D hydrodynamics simulations. Inverse Ray Tracing (IRT) is used to compute the ray field in a 3D permittivity profile described on an unstructured tetrahedral mesh using the Inline Field Reconstruction and Interaction using Inverse Tracing framework. CBET is accounted for through perturbations to the permittivity associated with ion acoustic waves driven by the overlapped fields. Large gradients in the permittivity are resolved by coupling the IRT to a recursive Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) algorithm. The use of AMR also allows for the resolution of caustics, with accurate field reconstruction performed using the Etalon integral method. Comparisons of the model with wave-based solutions from the Laser Plasma Simulation Environment demonstrate its ability to control energy conservation and gain convergence through the AMR depth only, without the use of ad hoc physical models or artificial tuning parameters.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

GPUPEGAS: A NEW GPU-ACCELERATED HYDRODYNAMIC CODE FOR NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF INTERACTING GALAXIES

In this paper, a new scalable hydrodynamic code, GPUPEGAS (GPU-accelerated Performance Gas Astrophysical Simulation), for the simulation of interacting galaxies is proposed. The details of a parallel numerical method co-design are described. A speed-up of 55 times was obtained within a single GPU accelerator. The use of 60 GPU accelerators resulted in 96% parallel efficiency. A collisionless hydrodynamic approach has been used for modeling of stars and dark matter. The scalability of the GPUPEGAS code is shown.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Investigations of protostellar outflow launching and gas entrainment: Hydrodynamic simulations and molecular emission

We investigate protostellar outflow evolution, gas entrainment, and star formation efficiency using radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of isolated, turbulent low-mass cores. We adopt an X-wind launching model, in which the outflow rate is coupled to the instantaneous protostellar accretion rate and evolution. We vary the outflow collimation angle from θ = 0.01-0.1 and find that even well-collimated outflows effectively sweep up and entrain significant core mass. The Stage 0 lifetime ranges from 0.14-0.19 Myr, which is similar to the observed Class 0 lifetime. The star formation efficiency of the cores spans 0.41-0.51. In all cases, the outflows drive strong turbulence in the surrounding material. Although the initial core turbulence is purely solenoidal by construction, the simulations converge to approximate equipartition between solenoidal and compressive motions due to a combination of outflow driving and collapse. When compared to simulation of a cluster of protostars, which is not gravitationally centrally condensed, we find that the outflows drive motions that are mainly solenoidal. The final turbulent velocity dispersion is about twice the initial value of the cores, indicating that an individual outflow is easily able to replenish turbulent motions on sub-parsec scales. We post-process the simulations to produce synthetic molecular line emission maps of {sup 12}CO, {sup 13}CO, and C{sup 18}O and evaluate how well these tracers reproduce the underlying mass and velocity structure.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

A HPC Theory-Guided Machine Learning Cyberinfrastructure for Communicating Hydrometeorological Data Across Scales

High-resolution predictions of hydrometeorological variables are critical for supporting hydropower generation decisions and flood control at hydroelectric power plants. Traditional climate and hydrologic models rely on the numerical simulation of detailed physical processes. Therefore, running these simulations is time-, labor-, and computation-intensive. Improving the spatial and temporal resolution in these modeling outputs could lead to cubic increases in both the simulation time and computational demands, rendering high-resolution hydrometeorological predictions expensive and impractical. Many past studies apply the super resolution (SR) technique to downscale climate models using deep learners. However, deep learners are deemed “black-boxes,” as their derivation processes from low-resolution outputs to high-resolution outputs are often hidden. Their results are difficult for domain scientists to interpret and validate. Thus, there is a need for an exploratory machine learning approach that can partially integrate domain-specific theory and knowledge into the data-driven mapping process between simulation outputs of different spatial scales. The domain-specific theory and knowledge can be incorporated into the data model through an inductive approach in which process-related environmental variables are used and analyzed as key drivers (i.e., environmental surrogates) to reflect the complex physical processes. Many of these variables, such as land use land cover, soil types, topography, digital elevation, air temperature, and various watershed characteristics, can be directly measured through sensors or remote sensing techniques. Additionally, SR applications that can downscale hydrological and hydrodynamics models to efficiently produce high-resolution (1 m) flood depth grids are still rare. Since the flood depth grid can be used to support critical decisions for flood control operation at hydroelectric power plants, it is crucial to enable an SR-based capability for interpolating high-resolution flood inundation maps.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Optimized fluid dynamics for heavy ion collisions

The (viscous) anisotropic hydrodynamic approach, especially after perturbative inclusion of all residual viscous terms, has been shown to dramatically outperform viscous hydrodynamics in several simplified situations for which exact solutions exist but which share with realistic expansion scenarios the problem of large dissipative currents. Here we will report on the present status of applying viscous anisotropic hydrodynamics in a highly efficient simulation of the full three-dimensional quark-gluon plasma. Results from accelerated 3+1-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic simulations using graphics processing units will be compared to the anisotropic frameworks.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

A harmonic polynomial cell (HPC) method for 3D Laplace equation with application in marine hydrodynamics

We propose a new efficient and accurate numerical method based on harmonic polynomials to solve boundary value problems governed by 3D Laplace equation. The computational domain is discretized by overlapping cells. Within each cell, the velocity potential is represented by the linear superposition of a complete set of harmonic polynomials, which are the elementary solutions of Laplace equation. By its definition, the method is named as Harmonic Polynomial Cell (HPC) method. The characteristics of the accuracy and efficiency of the HPC method are demonstrated by studying analytical cases. Comparisons will be made with some other existing boundary element based methods, e.g. Quadratic Boundary Element Method (QBEM) and the Fast Multipole Accelerated QBEM (FMA-QBEM) and a fourth order Finite Difference Method (FDM). To demonstrate the applications of the method, it is applied to some studies relevant for marine hydrodynamics. Sloshing in 3D rectangular tanks, a fully-nonlinear numerical wave tank, fully-nonlinear wave focusing on a semi-circular shoal, and the nonlinear wave diffraction of a bottom-mounted cylinder in regular waves are studied. The comparisons with the experimental results and other numerical results are all in satisfactory agreement, indicating that the present HPC method is a promising method in solving potential-flow problems. The underlying procedure of the HPC method could also be useful in other fields than marine hydrodynamics involved with solving Laplace equation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2018

Device-scale CFD modeling of gas-liquid multiphase flow and amine absorption for CO2 capture

In this paper we aim to develop a validated device-scale CFD model that can predict quantitatively both hydrodynamics and CO2 capture efficiency for an amine-based solvent absorber column with random Pall ring packing. A Eulerian porous-media approach and a two-fluid model were employed, in which the momentum and mass transfer equations were closed by literature-based empirical closure models. We proposed a hierarchical approach for calibrating the parameters in the closure models to make them accurate for the packed column. Specifically, a parameter for momentum transfer in the closure was first calibrated based on data from a single experiment. With this calibrated parameter, a parameter in the closure for mass transfer was next calibrated under a single operating condition. Last, the closure of the wetting area was calibrated for each gas velocity at three different liquid flow rates. For each calibration, cross validations were pursued using the experimental data under operating conditions different from those used for calibrations. This hierarchical approach can be generally applied to develop validated device-scale CFD models for different absorption columns.

Pan, Wenxiao↗
NASA NTRS1988

The 1988 overview of free-piston Stirling technology for space power at the NASA Lewis Research Center

The completion of the Space Power Demonstrator Engine (SPDE) testing is discussed, terminating with the generation of 25 kW of engine power from a dynamically-balanced opposed-piston Stirling engine at a temperature ratio of 2.0. Engine efficiency was greater than 22 percent. The SPDE recently was divided into 2 separate single cylinder engines, Space Power Research Engine (SPRE), that serves as test beds for the evaluation of key technology disciplines, which include hydrodynamic gas bearings, high efficiency linear alternators, space qualified heat pipe heat exchangers, oscillating flow code validation, and engine loss understanding. The success of the SPDE at 650 K has resulted in a more ambitious Stirling endeavor, the design, fabrication, test, and evaluation of a designed-for-space 25 kW per cylinder Stirling Space Engine (SSE) to operate at a hot metal temperature of 1050 K using superalloy materials. This design is a low temperature confirmation of the 1300 K design. It is the 1300 K free-piston Stirling power conversion system that is the ultimate goal. The first two phases of this program, the 650 K SPDE and the 1050 K SSE are emphasized.

Slaby, Jack G.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Fluid mechanics of continuous flow electrophoresis

The following aspects of continuous flow electrophoresis were studied: (1) flow and temperature fields; (2) hydrodynamic stability; (3) separation efficiency, and (4) characteristics of wide gap chambers (the SPAR apparatus). Simplified mathematical models were developed so as to furnish a basis for understanding the phenomena and comparison of different chambers and operating conditions. Studies of the hydrodynamic stability disclosed that a wide gap chamber may be particularly sensitive to axial temperature variations which could be due to uneven heating or cooling. The mathematical model of the separation process includes effects due to the axial velocity, electro-osmotic cross flow and electrophoretic migration, all including the effects of temperature dependent properties.

Saville, D. A.↗
DOE OSTI2017

Minidisks in Binary Black Hole Accretion

Newtonian simulations have demonstrated that accretion onto binary black holes produces accretion disks around each black hole (“minidisks”), fed by gas streams flowing through the circumbinary cavity from the surrounding circumbinary disk. We study the dynamics and radiation of an individual black hole minidisk using 2D hydrodynamical simulations performed with a new general relativistic version of the moving-mesh code Disco. We introduce a comoving energy variable that enables highly accurate integration of these high Mach number flows. Tidally induced spiral shock waves are excited in the disk and propagate through the innermost stable circular orbit, providing a Reynolds stress that causes efficient accretion by purely hydrodynamic means and producing a radiative signature brighter in hard X-rays than the Novikov–Thorne model. Disk cooling is provided by a local blackbody prescription that allows the disk to evolve self-consistently to a temperature profile where hydrodynamic heating is balanced by radiative cooling. We find that the spiral shock structure is in agreement with the relativistic dispersion relation for tightly wound linear waves. We measure the shock-induced dissipation and find outward angular momentum transport corresponding to an effective alpha parameter of order 0.01. We perform ray-tracing image calculations from the simulations to produce theoretical minidisk spectra and viewing-angle-dependent images for comparison with observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Metallic Winds in Dwarf Galaxies

We present results from models of galactic winds driven by energy injected from nuclear (at the galactic center) and non-nuclear starbursts. The total energy of the starburst is provided by very massive young stellar clusters, which can push the galactic interstellar medium and produce an important outflow. Such outflow can be a well or partially mixed wind, or a highly metallic wind. We have performed adiabatic 3D N -Body/Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics simulations of galactic winds using the gadget-2 code. The numerical models cover a wide range of parameters, varying the galaxy concentration index, gas fraction of the galactic disk, and radial distance of the starburst. We show that an off-center starburst in dwarf galaxies is the most effective mechanism to produce a significant loss of metals (material from the starburst itself). At the same time, a non-nuclear starburst produces a high efficiency of metal loss, in spite of having a moderate to low mass loss rate.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Insights from Synthetic Star-forming Regions. I. Reliable Mock Observations from SPH Simulations

Through synthetic observations of a hydrodynamical simulation of an evolving star-forming region, we assess how the choice of observational techniques affects the measurements of properties that trace star formation. Testing and calibrating observational measurements requires synthetic observations that are as realistic as possible. In this part of the series (Paper I), we explore different techniques for mapping the distributions of densities and temperatures from the particle-based simulations onto a Voronoi mesh suitable for radiative transfer and consequently explore their accuracy. We further test different ways to set up the radiative transfer in order to produce realistic synthetic observations. We give a detailed description of all methods and ultimately recommend techniques. We have found that the flux around 20 μ m is strongly overestimated when blindly coupling the dust radiative transfer temperature with the hydrodynamical gas temperature. We find that when instead assuming a constant background dust temperature in addition to the radiative transfer heating, the recovered flux is consistent with actual observations. We present around 5800 realistic synthetic observations for Spitzer and Herschel bands, at different evolutionary time-steps, distances, and orientations. In the upcoming papers of this series (Papers II, III, and IV), we will test and calibrate measurements of the star formation rate, gas mass, and the star formation efficiency using our realistic synthetic observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

THE FORMATION OF SECONDARY STELLAR GENERATIONS IN MASSIVE YOUNG STAR CLUSTERS FROM RAPIDLY COOLING SHOCKED STELLAR WINDS

We study a model of rapidly cooling shocked stellar winds in young massive clusters and estimate the circumstances under which secondary star formation, out of the reinserted winds from a first stellar generation (1G), is possible. We have used two implementations of the model: a highly idealized, computationally inexpensive, spherically symmetric semi-analytic model, and a complex, three-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic, simulation; they are in a good mutual agreement. The results confirm our previous findings that, in a cluster with 1G mass 10{sup 7} M {sub ⊙} and half-mass–radius 2.38 pc, the shocked stellar winds become thermally unstable, collapse into dense gaseous structures that partially accumulate inside the cluster, self-shield against ionizing stellar radiation, and form the second generation (2G) of stars. We have used the semi-analytic model to explore a subset of the parameter space covering a wide range of the observationally poorly constrained parameters: the heating efficiency, η {sub he}, and the mass loading, η {sub ml}. The results show that the fraction of the 1G stellar winds accumulating inside the cluster can be larger than 50% if η {sub he} ≲ 10%, which is suggested by the observations. Furthermore, for low η {sub he}, the model provides a self-consistent mechanism predicting 2G stars forming only in the central zones of the cluster. Finally, we have calculated the accumulated warm gas emission in the H30 α recombination line, analyzed its velocity profile, and estimated its intensity for super star clusters in interacting galaxies NGC4038/9 (Antennae) showing that the warm gas should be detectable with ALMA.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Nonequilibrium effects and transverse spherocity in ultrarelativistic proton-nucleus collisions

We investigate the effects of nonequilibrium dynamics in small colliding systems by comparing a nonequilibrium transport approach, Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD), with a (2+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic model, VISHNew. Focusing on p + Pb collisions at energies available at the Large Hadron Collider, we extract the initial conditions for the hydrodynamic model from PHSD, in order to reduce the impact of the early out-of-equilibrium dynamics and focus on the traces of nonequilibrium in the ensuing medium evolution. We find that in the transport approach quantities like energy density and bulk viscous pressure are highly inhomogeneous on the transverse plane during the whole evolution, whereas the hydrodynamic simulations dissolve more efficiently the initial spatial irregularities, still keeping a high degree of inhomogeneity due to the smaller size and lifetime of the medium produced in p + Pb collisions with respect to heavy-ion reactions. As a first step that will help to identify the impact of these nonequilibrium effects on final observables in proton-nucleus collisions, we perform an analysis of the transverse spherocity, an event-shape observable able to distinguish between jetty and isotropic configurations of transverse momenta. We found that the spherocity distribution in PHSD is slightly shifted towards the isotropic limit with respect to the hydrodynamic result. Even though this dissimilarity is partially due to the difference in the final charged particle production, it mainly comes from the different description within the two frameworks of the medium produced in small colliding systems. This finding supports the idea that multidifferential measurements, such as those based on event categorization according to multiplicity and spherocity, are useful to study final-state observables in ultrarelativistic proton-nucleus collisions.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Efficiency of Metal Mixing in Dwarf Galaxies

Metal mixing plays a critical role in the enrichment of metals in galaxies. The abundance of elements such as Mg, Fe, and Ba in metal-poor stars helps us understand the metal mixing in galaxies. However, the efficiency of metal mixing in galaxies is not yet understood. Here we report a series of N -body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of dwarf galaxies with different efficiencies of metal mixing using a turbulence-induced mixing model. We show that metal mixing apparently occurs in dwarf galaxies from Mg and Ba abundances. We find that a scaling factor for metal diffusion larger than 0.01 is necessary to reproduce the measured abundances of Ba in dwarf galaxies. This value is consistent with the value expected from turbulence theory and experiments. We also find that the timescale of metal mixing is less than 40 Myr. This timescale is shorter than the typical dynamical times of dwarf galaxies. We demonstrate that the determination of a degree of scatters of Ba abundance by the observation will help us to better constrain the efficiency of metal mixing.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Multi-material hydrodynamics with algebraic sharp interface capturing

A finite volume method for Eulerian multi-material hydrodynamics with sharp interface capturing is presented here. The pressure-temperature non-equilibrium multi-material system with finite-rate pressure relaxation in mixed-cells is considered here. This pressure closure facilitates material-property-dependent pressure relaxation, rather than instantaneous pressure equilibration, which in turn allows the use of unsplit high-order time-integrators. A modified tangent of hyperbola for interface capturing (THINC) method is used to reconstruct multi-material (> 2) interfaces, on three-dimensional unstructured meshes. A simple modification which extends the THINC reconstruction to interfaces between more than two materials is proposed. It is demonstrated that the modified THINC can capture multi-material interfaces within 2–4 tetrahedral cells. Since no geometric reconstructions are required by the THINC method, the presented multi-material method is algorithmically simple, and computationally efficient. Consistent reconstructions of conserved quantities at material interfaces ensure that conservation and closure laws are satisfied at the discrete level. Through a suite of test problems solved on unstructured meshes, it is demonstrated that the presented method is a promising candidate for accurate and efficient multi-material hydrodynamics computations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗