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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 559 records · Page 31

Experimental achievement and signatures of ignition at the National Ignition Facility

An inertial fusion implosion on the National Ignition Facility, conducted on August 8, 2021 (N210808), recently produced more than a megajoule of fusion yield and passed Lawson's criterion for ignition [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 075001 (2022)]. Here we describe the experimental improvements that enabled N210808 and present the first experimental measurements from an igniting plasma in the laboratory. Ignition metrics like the product of hot-spot energy and pressure squared, in the absence of self-heating, increased by ~ 35%, leading to record values and an enhancement from previous experiments in the hot-spot energy (~ 3×), pressure (~ 2×), and mass (~ 2×). These results are consistent with self-heating dominating other power balance terms. The burn rate increases by an order of magnitude after peak compression, and the hot-spot conditions show clear evidence for burn propagation into the dense fuel surrounding the hot spot. These novel dynamics and thermodynamic properties have never been observed on prior inertial fusion experiments.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Achieving Runtime State Verification Assurance in Critical Cyber-Physical Infrastructures

Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) are an essential backbone of national critical infrastructures. They help monitor and control crucial cyber-enabled services such as energy generation. Commonly ICPS monitors the physical process through Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. The SCADA ecosystem takes critical real-time and future system operational decisions based on the runtime state behavior of field sensors. Traditional SCADA systems use legacy and insecure communication protocols such as the Modbus protocol that lack adequate security mechanisms to provide robust runtime state behavior assurance of constrained field sensors. Therefore, constrained field sensors are commonly vulnerable to standard semantic attacks that gradually change the behavior state of infected devices. This paper discusses process integrity assurance techniques necessary to enhance the security of behavior-based protocols such as the Modbus protocol. The Runtime State Verification (RSV) protocol proposed in this paper aims to address semantic attacks in the SCADA ecosystem by integrating behavior-based Mandatory Results Automata (MRA) and a Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) network. The RSV protocol provides high process integrity assurance through enhanced behavior-based MRA suitable for the constrained field devices. A proof of concept of the RSV protocol has been evaluated in an emulated water-tube boiler. Preliminary evaluations of the RSV protocol aimed to measure the efficiency of the proposed protocol by monitoring an Combustion Efficiency (CE) process necessary to preserve optimal combustion, thus minimizing costs and future maintenance of water-tube boilers. We analyze the overall network overhead and latency of the proposed RSV protocol by evaluating the HLF network performance and comparing the proposed RSV protocol with the state-ofart BloSPAI protocol. Through the preliminary evaluations of the proposed RSV protocol, this paper demonstrates that the proposed RSV protocol overcomes the shortcomings and network overhead of the BloSPAI protocol by integrating behavior-based authentication through novel MRAs and HLF networks.

Rivera, Abel Gomez↗

Side-by-side evaluation of the outgassing rate and ultimate pressure achieved inside tubes made of low-carbon and stainless steel

The hydrogen outgassing rate of a vacuum chamber made of AISI 1020 low-carbon steel was found to be notably smaller than a similar chamber made of AISI 316L stainless steel following heat treatment at 150 °C. When the chambers were baked at 400 °C, the outgassing rate of the 1020 low-carbon steel chamber was approximately 2000 times smaller than that of the 316L stainless-steel chamber. After quantifying hydrogen outgassing rates, vacuum chambers made of 1020 low-carbon steel and 316L stainless steel were heated for a prescribed duration and then pumped with an ion pump and nonevaporable getter pump to reach “ultimate pressure.” The 1020 low-carbon steel chamber reached lower pressures than the 316L stainless-steel chamber. Monte Carlo simulation predictions using the measured hydrogen outgassing rates are in good agreement with the ultimate pressure measurements. Finally, our measurements indicate that low-carbon steel can provide pressures within the extreme high vacuum range (<7.5 × 10 -13 Torr) if care is taken to minimize the surface area contribution from stainless steel.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Can we achieve atmospheric chemical environments in the laboratory? An integrated model-measurement approach to chamber SOA studies

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA), atmospheric particulate matter formed from low-volatility products of volatile organic compound (VOC) oxidation, affects both air quality and climate. Current 3D models, however, cannot reproduce the observed variability in atmospheric organic aerosol. Because many SOA model descriptions are derived from environmental chamber experiments, our ability to represent atmospheric conditions in chambers directly affects our ability to assess the air quality and climate impacts of SOA. Here, we develop an approach that leverages global modeling and detailed mechanisms to design chamber experiments that mimic the atmospheric chemistry of organic peroxy radicals (RO 2 ), a key intermediate in VOC oxidation. Drawing on decades of laboratory experiments, we develop a framework for quantitatively describing RO 2 chemistry and show that no previous experimental approaches to studying SOA formation have accessed the relevant atmospheric RO 2 fate distribution. We show proof-of-concept experiments that demonstrate how SOA experiments can access a range of atmospheric chemical environments and propose several directions for future studies.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗

Electron ptychography achieves atomic-resolution limits set by lattice vibrations

Transmission electron microscopes use electrons with wavelengths of a few picometers, potentially capable of imaging individual atoms in solids at a resolution ultimately set by the intrinsic size of an atom. However, owing to lens aberrations and multiple scattering of electrons in the sample, the image resolution is reduced by a factor of 3 to 10. By inversely solving the multiple scattering problem and overcoming the electron-probe aberrations using electron ptychography, we demonstrate an instrumental blurring of less than 20 picometers and a linear phase response in thick samples. The measured widths of atomic columns are limited by thermal fluctuations of the atoms. As a result, our method is also capable of locating embedded atomic dopant atoms in all three dimensions with subnanometer precision from only a single projection measurement.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Achieving sub-0.5-angstrom–resolution ptychography in an uncorrected electron microscope

Subangstrom resolution has long been limited to aberration-corrected electron microscopy, where it is a powerful tool for understanding the atomic structure and properties of matter. Here, we demonstrate electron ptychography in an uncorrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) with deep subangstrom spatial resolution down to 0.44 angstroms, exceeding the conventional resolution of aberration-corrected tools and rivaling their highest ptychographic resolutions​. Our approach, which we demonstrate on twisted two-dimensional materials in a widely available commercial microscope, far surpasses prior ptychographic resolutions (1 to 5 angstroms) of uncorrected STEMs. We further show how geometric aberrations can create optimized, structured beams for dose-efficient electron ptychography. Our results demonstrate that expensive aberration correctors are no longer required for deep subangstrom resolution.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

CORE-BFS: Communication-Optimized REctangular-partitioned BFS Achieving 160.845 TeraTEPS on Frontier Supercomputer

Distributed Breadth-First Search (BFS) is fundamental to many large-scale graph applications, but its performance on parallel systems is often limited by high communication overhead. This paper presents CORE-BFS, an extremely scalable GPU-based BFS implementation that introduces a unique rectangular 2D partitioning-based design for Frontier supercomputer. To further improve performance, we propose four key optimizations: (1) Rectangular 2D-partition specific data formats that use two compressed row and one compressed column status array bitmaps combined with a Double Compressed Sparse Row (DCSR) format per partition, reducing memory footprint and inter-rank traffic; (2) Adaptive frontier & communication strategy that unifies top-down and bottom-up traversal on the rectangular layout, uses lazy synchronization in top-down levels, and switches variants based on frontier size to minimize communication overhead; (3) Frontier-split degree-aware update that maps frontier vertices to thread-centric, wavefront-centric, and block-centric kernels based on their degree to improve GPU utilization and memory coalescing; (4) Row-reduction pipeline that overlaps bottom-up adjacency list processing with row-wise bitmap reduction to hide inter-rank latency. Together, these techniques increase parallelism while reducing memory and communication overhead. On the Graph500 benchmark, CORE - BFS scales up to 9,248 Frontier nodes with scale-42 graphs and reaches 160.845 TTEPS, delivering a 5.42 × speedup over our previous Frontier implementation.

Yang, Haoshen [Rutgers University]↗

Achieving 5,000-h and 8,000-h Low-PGM Electrode Durability on Automotive Drive Cycles

Whereas total Pt loading in anode and cathode catalysts below 0.125 mg cm −2 is required to meet the stringent cost target for automotive fuel cell systems (FCS) for light duty vehicles, low-loaded cathode catalysts are susceptible to unacceptable aging-related performance losses at high current densities. A framework model, validated by accelerated stress test data, has identified cell voltage, relative humidity (RH) and temperature as the key operating variables that affect degradation of a high-activity d-PtCo/C cathode catalyst with 0.1 mg cm −2 Pt loading. Drive cycle simulations indicate that these can be controlled by properly selecting the minimum FCS power, compressor-expander module (CEM) turndown, and stack coolant temperature. The optimum system parameters are 4-kW e minimum power for an 80-kW e FCS, CEM turndown of 12.5, and 66 °C average coolant exit temperature that combine to limit the maximum cell voltage to 850 mV and outlet RH to 90%–100%. Depending on Pt loading, the mismatch between actual and allowable degradation for 10% power loss over 5,000-h lifetime requires the stack to be oversized by 2.4%–5%, resulting in 8.4%–41% lower Pt utilization and 7.1%–20.5% penalty in stack cost. The corresponding results for 8,000-h lifetime are 10.3%-14% stack oversizing, 23%–51.8% lower Pt utilization, and 24.1%–35.4% stack cost penalty.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Perspective—Is Sustainable Electrowinning of Neodymium Metal Achievable?

Rare–earth metals such as neodymium are central to numerous technologically important applications such as electrified transportation, renewable energy harvesting, and magnetic data storage. Presently, neodymium metal is produced via electrolysis of Nd 2 O 3 –containing NdF 3 –LiF molten salts at high temperatures. However, this conventional electrolytic route has several drawbacks including emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO 2 and perfluorocarbons, which are harmful to the environment. In this perspective, an alternate concept based on electrolysis of NdCl 3 –containing chloride–based molten salts is explored and its potential advantages are discussed. Notably, NdCl 3 can be obtained via direct non–carbothermic chlorination of Nd 2 O 3 , supported by thermodynamic calculations and experimental evidence from literature. The chloride–based molten salt electrolysis route also offers the possibility of incorporating a non–consumable or dimensionally stable anode leading to reduced electrical energy consumption, stable cell operation and ease of process scalability.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

EXPLAINABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY DIAGNOSTICS ACHIEVABLE THROUGH PROCESS-BASED AUTOMATED REASONING

An approach has been developed that incorporates domain knowledge to obtain a more explainable and trustworthy equipment health monitoring diagnosis than might otherwise be obtained from a purely data-driven method. Physics-based models serve to constrain the realizable solution space and render a more trusted diagnosis. An automated reasoning algorithm performs backward chaining to infer a diagnosis that is consistent with logic statements that have been evaluated as true. This diagnosis is made explainable to an operator by providing the forward chaining path that elucidates for inspection and validity testing those truths implied by the diagnosis.

automated reasoning↗