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At least 703 records · Page 39

ACTIVE

The Automated Control Testbed for Integration, Verification, and Emulation (ACTIVE) framework is a software platform designed to support the optimized operation and management of a wide range of building types. It enables the development, testing, and validation of diverse control strategies, including AI-based, rule-based, and model-based approaches. The platform facilitates a seamless transition from simulation-based evaluation of control strategies to real-world field validation and deployment. ACTIVE supports the full building management lifecycle, encompassing data acquisition and management, system monitoring, optimized control, adaptive learning services, device dispatch and coordination, as well as advanced analytics and visualization. Together, these capabilities provide an integrated environment for improving building performance, operational efficiency, reducing energy cost, and reliability.

Smith, Robert [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL↗

Mobile Computing for Aerospace Applications

The use of commercial computer technology in specific aerospace mission applications can reduce the cost and project cycle time required for the development of special-purpose computer systems. Additionally, the pace of technological innovation in the commercial market has made new computer capabilities available for demonstrations and flight tests. Three areas of research and development being explored by the Portable Computer Technology Project at NASA Ames Research Center are the application of commercial client/server network computing solutions to crew support and payload operations, the analysis of requirements for portable computing devices, and testing of wireless data communication links as extensions to the wired network. This paper will present computer architectural solutions to portable workstation design including the use of standard interfaces, advanced flat-panel displays and network configurations incorporating both wired and wireless transmission media. It will describe the design tradeoffs used in selecting high-performance processors and memories, interfaces for communication and peripheral control, and high resolution displays. The packaging issues for safe and reliable operation aboard spacecraft and aircraft are presented. The current status of wireless data links for portable computers is discussed from a system design perspective. An end-to-end data flow model for payload science operations from the experiment flight rack to the principal investigator is analyzed using capabilities provided by the new generation of computer products. A future flight experiment on-board the Russian MIR space station will be described in detail including system configuration and function, the characteristics of the spacecraft operating environment, the flight qualification measures needed for safety review, and the specifications of the computing devices to be used in the experiment. The software architecture chosen shall be presented. An analysis of the performance characteristics of wireless data links in the spacecraft environment will be discussed. Network performance and operation will be modeled and preliminary test results presented. A crew support application will be demonstrated in conjunction with the network metrics experiment.

Alena, Richard↗

Simulation of Watts Bar Unit 1 Initial Startup Tests with Continuous Energy Monte Carlo Methods

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors* is developing a collection of methods and software products known as VERA, the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications. One component of the testing and validation plan for VERA is comparison of neutronics results to a set of continuous energy Monte Carlo solutions for a range of pressurized water reactor geometries using the SCALE component KENO-VI developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Recent improvements in data, methods, and parallelism have enabled KENO, previously utilized predominately as a criticality safety code, to demonstrate excellent capability and performance for reactor physics applications. The highly detailed and rigorous KENO solutions provide a reliable nu-meric reference for VERAneutronics and also demonstrate the most accurate predictions achievable by modeling and simulations tools for comparison to operating plant data. This paper demonstrates the performance of KENO-VI for the Watts Bar Unit 1 Cycle 1 zero power physics tests, including reactor criticality, control rod worths, and isothermal temperature coefficients.

CASL↗

Device Feasibility Analysis of Multi-level FeFETs for Neuromorphic Computing

As an emerging non-volatile memory device technology, Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistors (FeFETs) can enable low-power, adaptive intelligent system design. However, device dimension and operating voltage dependent reliability issues of scaled FeFETs can ultimately lead to degraded performance in solving machine learning tasks. In this article, detailed experimental characterization of FeFET devices of different dimensions have been carried out to explicitly evaluate the non-ideal behavior in device conductance programming properties like number of programming states, cycle-to-cycle (C2C) variations, device-to-device (D2D) variations, and state retention. A hardware-aware software simulation approach has been adopted to capture the adversarial effects of the non-idealities on recognition accuracy through algorithm-level performance assessment by including them in NeuroSim, a popular neural network hardware simulator, to execute a neural network model considering all other hardware constraints. With the added non-idealities, significant accuracy degradation has been observed compared to the ideal scenarios where D2D variations play the most critical role. Thereafter, feasibility of a variation-aware training method has been evaluated to tackle the accuracy drop.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Towards Certification of a Space System Application of Fault Detection and Isolation

Advanced fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) software is being investigated at NASA as a means to the improve reliability and availability of its space systems. Certification is a critical step in the acceptance of such software. Its attainment hinges on performing the necessary verification and validation to show that the software will fulfill its requirements in the intended setting. Presented herein is our ongoing work to plan for the certification of a pilot application of advanced FDIR software in a NASA setting. We describe the application, and the key challenges and opportunities it offers for certification.

Software verification↗

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling to Simulate a Combined Reforming Process for Syngas and Hydrogen Production

An Oxygen Transport Membrane (OTM) combined reforming technology for producing syngas and hydrogen integrates the advantages of multiple processes—steam methane reforming (SMR), autothermal reforming (ATR), an air separation unit (ASU)—into a single integrated technology. The OTM consists of a primary reforming tube, in which desulfurized natural gas is partially reformed by steam at high pressure in the presence of a metal catalyst. This process is followed in series by a ceramic OTM with a secondary reformer, in which residual methane reforms and O 2 - ions react with a portion of the CO and H 2 fuel to provide the heat to support both primary and secondary reforming. Although the OTM combined reformer technology for syngas and H 2 production has been substantially developed in the last decade, several challenges that affect the overall production efficiency and reliability are yet to be fully understood, addressed, and resolved. Therefore, developing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models that incorporate fluid dynamics, mass transport, kinetics, heat transport, and structural mechanics is critical to understanding and minimizing the probability of tube failures during the startup and operation. In this report, an exhaustive literature review was performed to survey the current state of technology for producing syngas and H 2 using either conventional or renewable energy sources. The feedstocks reviewed include natural gas and coal for the conventional technologies, whereas biomass, solar, wind, and nuclear energy for the renewable technologies. The existing industry-grade COMSOL multiphysics models of OTM were upgraded for the latest software release. In addition, they were improved to help achieve grid and solver independence and were successfully ported on the ORNL high-performance computing clusters to speed up their run times. A 42% reduction in the simulation run time was achieved. A new higher-fidelity CFD model of an OTM tube was developed in the StarCCM+ simulation platform. This new model was designed to simulate various physics using first principles, e.g., turbulent flow, heat transfer, and chemical reactions while avoiding unnecessary simplifications. The resulting predictions were qualitatively assessed and provided useful insights into the multiphysics complexity of an OTM tube.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Low-Cost, Easy-To-Integrate and Reliable Grid Energy Storage System with 2 nd Life Lithium Batteries

Batteries retired from electric vehicles have the potential to extend their service as low-cost stationary energy storage systems. However, disperse battery state of health (SOH) and nonuniform battery characters often lead to compromised battery performance and reliability, which greatly hinder their adoption. A Heterogenous Unifying Battery (HUB) system is proposed to stage 2 nd life battery bricks for a period, and enable them to attain improved SOH uniformity, performance, and reliability before being sold for 2 nd life applications, while simultaneously providing grid services. It may offer a technically and economically advantageous solution for the broad utilization of 2 nd use batteries. The goal of this project was to develop the hardware and software that enables the key functions of the HUB system. The first achievement of the project was the development of a 1kW scale proof-of-concept (POC) system, which comprises (i) a modular plug-n-play DC-DC power converter matrix with isolated series output connections to achieve fully independent control of energy flow to each of the connected battery units at low voltage; (ii) enhanced model based control that drives each batteries’ SOH towards uniformity while collectively providing grid energy storage services; and (iii) comprehensive procedures to perform battery diagnostics and prognostics. The second achievement was the development of a 100kW scale HUB system and demonstrated its performance of re-establishing battery SOH uniformity through a period of battery cycling operation. The final HUB system incorporates six DC-DC power converter matrices paired with six battery bricks. Hot swapping of a single battery brick while maintaining consistent system power was demonstrated and system operation was validated to be capable of implementing the approved grid duty cycle and of balancing and conditioning the battery bricks. Through the course of the project, the team optimized the building-block design, form-factors, and adjusted life balancing control. An up-sized 250kW Scale was developed and deployed in October 2022 with pack-level battery form factors, see photo in Figure 1 The third achievement of the project was to perform a techno-economic analysis in order to better understand the cost and revenue potentials in this new “recondition-then-resell" value proposition. The final TEA quantified the economics of new Li-ion batteries as well as second-life batteries processed via reconditioning and traditional binning. Results showed the reconditioned second-life batteries in this project to be economically favorable and viable in grid energy storage markets. The TEA results were published in the Applied Energy journal. The fourth achievement of the project was to deliver a tech-to-market plan for the HUB system that includes funding, IP, and manufacturing strategies. The final T2M plan outlines a business strategy in which the HUB provides a B2B service to EV companies as an alternative to battery recycling that can prepare batteries for 2nd life applications. A company named Smartville Inc. was founded to carry on the commercialization, funding, and technical IP licensing activities of the OPEN project.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Hybrid Analytics Solution for Power Plant Operations

Expert Microsystems, Inc., MapEx Software Inc. and XMPLR Energy LLC have teamed to submit a proposal to the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy to improve the efficiency, reliability and flexibility of existing coal-based power plants. The project, titled Hybrid Analytics Solution to Improve Coal Power Plant Operations (the “Hybrid Analytics” project), will develop, demonstrate and commercialize a novel approach that integrates two proven real-time monitoring techniques. The Hybrid Analytics approach integrates into a single, integrated solution: a) an established, advanced data-driven analytics solution that includes artificial intelligence, advanced pattern recognition and machine-learning techniques and b) a well-proven, first principle thermal heat balance model solution. The future role of coal plants will depend on the ability to cycle and follow loads to meet marginal power demands, accommodate renewables and support the grid. Essential to success in this new role is a plant’s ability to maintain high reliability, efficiency and flexibility. However, these changing operational demands put significant stresses on power plant components that directly impact the ability to deliver these requirements. In the past, plants have independently monitored performance using physics-based solutions (heat rate, boiler losses, etc.) and reliability using data-driven analytics (advanced pattern recognition). The Hybrid Analytics solution integrates both approaches to enhance fault detection, provide automated diagnostics and estimates of remaining time to act, and provide critical, enhanced and accurate real-time information to coal plant operators. As a result, coal plants can improve efficiency, reliability, and flexibility and can cost-effectively maintain their key role in the power delivery system.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

In-Depth Modeling and Simulation Analysis of Artemis Missions Using the Impact Probabilistic Risk Assessment Tool

BACKGROUND The Artemis campaign is a Moon exploration program with a series of six planned missions, five of which will be crewed. These five crewed missions will contain a single mission segment (space flight), or multiple mission segments involving space flight (Orion), lunar landing (LTV) and/or space habitat (Gateway). Each crewed segment faces the risk of unique medical conditions, necessitating medical sets/kits tailored to those specificities. To support and enable a data-driven and evidence-based decision-making process through out a mission’s life cycle, a software tool called IMPACT was developed. Using probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) methodologies, IMPACT (Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces) is a novel tool built for analyzing the possibility of encountering complex medical risks during space flight, and for identifying the medical resources and capabilities needed to treat those potential at-risk medical conditions. IMPACT achieves this by performing hundreds of thousands of Monte Carlo simulations of missions to build aggregate pictures of medical risk. During an extended simulation modeling phase, IMPACT generated analytical results for medical risks, and the medical resources and capabilities to address those risks, for every segment of every crewed Artemis mission. This presentation will highlight the reliability, consistency and validity of IMPACT’s computational modeling techniques and will showcase the library of analytical outcomes generated for the Artemis missions. OVERVIEW During the early stages of IMPACT’s design, architecture and technical requirements collection, “scenarios” (use cases) - achievement goals required for acceptance testing, were identified by stakeholders. IMPACT successfully completed the scenario testing requirements and undertook an extensive operational run phase utilizing a wide range of input combinations with a goal of delivering a cohesive, trustworthy, reliable, vast, and diverse body of evidence. The intent of these modeling runs was to validate consistency in output, ensure solidity of executable operations and to streamline processes by identifying areas requiring efficiency improvements. Using the many missions of Artemis, IMPACT ran variations of operational runs to assess the output for acceptable, as well as unusual characteristics. This rigorous long-term “shakedown” analysis was implemented to help build a collective body of evidence to aid in securing a high level of confidence, reliability, and validity in the output, whether from the applicational components of IMPACT, or the entirety of the operational process. ANTICIPATED ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION This presentation will discuss the various categories of input criteria; the comparisons in the application of these input criteria to various Artemis missions; the preparation and collection of the body of evidence, and reliability of the computational modeling techniques. This paper serves as an initial analytical overview of IMPACT’s probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) medical risk outputs covering Artemis missions and is not intended to be deemed the official medical response for the Artemis campaign.

Crew Composition↗

CFD modeling and simulation for corrosive wear of refractory in molten slag

The development of high-wear resistant refractories having minimal production costs is facilitated by characterizing the wear mechanisms associated with their corrosive wear. Static cup testing is a commonly used method for comparing the corrosion resistance performance of two or more refractory materials. Although the static cup test conditions are not as severe as dynamic tests, this study shows that the thermal gradient present within the system during heating and cooling stages serves to generate movement of the slag leading to mechanical wear. The thermal gradient within the refractory, and between the slag and the refractory, occurs during the ramp stage of the test and lasts until the soaking stage is reached bringing the system to a thermal equilibrium. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) capabilities embedded within ANSYS software, this study modelled and quantified the convection currents within the slag and associated shear stresses generated on the refractory walls due to the thermal gradient. A traditional ladle furnace was employed as a case study to verify the results of the studied CFD model. The corrosion rate of the refractory lining was found to depend on the mass transfer coefficient of the refractory dissolution into the slag, and a velocity term which governs the extent of corrosion at any given location. This velocity term is a function of slag viscosity, as well as the concentration gradient and/or temperature gradient at the triple points. In this study, wall shear stress was used as a reliable proxy for identifying high-velocity regions prone to excessive corrosive wear. Elevated wall shear stress near the slag/air and slag/molten steel interfaces align with observed corrosion grooves, which reflects the intensified corrosive wear at these locations.

Ramteke, Rajat Rajat Durgesh Ramteke [University o↗

Scalable subsurface inverse modeling of huge data sets with an application to tracer concentration breakthrough data from magnetic resonance imaging

When characterizing subsurface properties is crucial for reliable and cost-effective groundwater supply management and contaminant remediation. With recent advances in sensor technology, large volumes of hydro-geophysical and geochemical data can be obtained to achieve high-resolution images of subsurface properties. However, characterization with such a large amount of information requires prohibitive computational costs associated with “big data” processing and numerous large-scale numerical simulations. To tackle such difficulties, the Principal Component Geostatistical Approach (PCGA) has been proposed as a “Jacobian-free” inversion method that requires much smaller forward simulation runs for each iteration than the number of unknown parameters and measurements needed in the traditional inversion methods. PCGA can be conveniently linked to any multi-physics simulation software with independent parallel executions. In our paper, we extend PCGA to handle a large number of measurements (e.g. 106 or more) by constructing a fast preconditioner whose computational cost scales linearly with the data size. For illustration, we characterize the heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity (K) distribution in a laboratory-scale 3-D sand box using about 6 million transient tracer concentration measurements obtained using magnetic resonance imaging. Since each individual observation has little information on the K distribution, the data was compressed by the zero-th temporal moment of breakthrough curves, which is equivalent to the mean travel time under the experimental setting. Moreover, only about 2,000 forward simulations in total were required to obtain the best estimate with corresponding estimation uncertainty, and the estimated K field captured key patterns of the original packing design, showing the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Development of software to improve AC power quality on large spacecraft

To insure the reliability of a 20 kHz, AC power system on spacecraft, it is essential to analyze its behavior under many adverse operating conditions. Some of these conditions include overloads, short circuits, switching surges, and harmonic distortions. Harmonic distortions can cause malfunctions in equipment that the power system is supplying, and during extreme distortions such as voltage resonance, it can cause equipment and insulation failures due to the extreme peak voltages. HARMFLO, a power flow computer program, which was capable of analyzing harmonic conditions on three phase, balanced, 60 Hz, AC power systems, was modified to analyze single phase, 20 kHz, AC power systems. Since almost all of the equipment used on spacecraft power systems is electrically different from equipment used on terrestrial power systems, it was also necessary to develop mathematical models for the equipment to be used on the spacecraft. The results are that (1) the harmonic power now has a model of a single phase, voltage controlled, full wave rectifier; and (2) HARMFLO was ported to the SUN workstation platform.

Kraft, L. Alan↗

Resilience Design Patterns - A Structured Approach to Resilience at Extreme Scale (version 1.0)

Reliability is a serious concern for future extreme-scale high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Projections based on the current generation of HPC systems and technology roadmaps suggest that very high fault rates in future systems. The errors resulting from these faults will propagate and generate various kinds of failures, which may result in outcomes ranging from result corruptions to catastrophic application crashes. Practical limits on power consumption in HPC systems will require future systems to embrace innovative architectures, increasing the levels of hardware and software complexities. The resilience challenge for extreme-scale HPC systems requires management of various hardware and software technologies that are capable of handling a broad set of fault models at accelerated fault rates. These techniques must seek to improve resilience at reasonable overheads to power consumption and performance. While the HPC community has developed various solutions, application-level as well as system-based solutions, the solution space of HPC resilience techniques remains fragmented. There are no formal methods and metrics to investigate and evaluate resilience holistically in HPC systems that consider impact scope, handling coverage, and performance & power eciency across the system stack. Additionally, few of the current approaches are portable to newer architectures and software ecosystems, which are expected to be deployed on future systems. In this document, we develop a structured approach to the management of HPC resilience based on the concept of resilience-based design patterns. A design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem. We identify the commonly occurring problems and solutions used to deal with faults, errors and failures in HPC systems. The catalog of resilience design patterns provides designers with reusable design elements. We define a design framework that enhances our understanding of the important constraints and opportunities for solutions deployed at various layers of the system stack. The framework may be used to establish mechanisms and interfaces to coordinate flexible fault management across hardware and software components. The framework also enables optimization of the cost-benefit trade-os among performance, resilience, and power consumption. The overall goal of this work is to enable a systematic methodology for the design and evaluation of resilience technologies in extreme-scale HPC systems that keep scientific applications running to a correct solution in a timely and cost-ecient manner in spite of frequent faults, errors, and failures of various types.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An Integrated Framework for Risk Assessment of Safety-related Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems in Nuclear Power Plants: Methodology Advancement and Application

This report documents activities performed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) during fiscal year (FY) 2024 for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, Risk Informed Systems Analysis (RISA) Pathway, Digital Instrumentation and Control (DI&C) Risk Assessment project. The goal of the RISA Pathway is to optimize safety margins and minimize uncertainties to achieve economic efficiencies while maintaining high levels of safety. This is accomplished by providing scientific basis to better represent safety margins and factors that contribute to cost and safety, and by developing new technologies that reduce operating costs. The research efforts for FY 2024 encompass methodology refinement and exploration. The efforts include: (1) The implementation of a natural language processing tool to expedite key aspects of the reliability analysis methods developed by INL; (2) advances to support intersystem CCF analysis by providing guidance for and identification of coupling mechanisms that may contribute to CCF; (3) the investigation of how generative artificial intelligence tools can aid in hazard analysis and diversity and defense in depth (i.e., D3) assessments; (4) Industry collaboration, allowing the demonstration of and INL's risk assessment tools to support risk assessment of DI&C systems at early and late stages of development; (4) a roadmap for the development of a software for each of INL's risk assessment tools; (5) The development of a theory and methodology manual for a risk quantification methodology; (6) the development of a reliability analysis for machine learning (ML)-integrated control systems.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

The Anatomy of Software Changes and Bugs in Autonomous Operating System

Cyberphysical systems with autonomous functions are complex pieces of software, consisting of many components, some of which implement autonomous functionality and some may use AI or machine learning algorithms. Software bugs in an autonomous system are of particular concern, as they can have catastrophic consequences. However, detailed studies based on empirical data are rare and therefore these bugs are not well understood. This paper aims to contribute towards filling that gap by investigating the software changes and bugs in Autonomy Operating System (AOS) for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), which consist of 26 components containing about 103,000 lines of code and having a total of 772 bugfixes. Based on the data extracted from the code repository and semi-structured interviews with the developers of AOS, we explore the differences among autonomous software components, components developed using Model-based Software Engineering, and reuse with respect to change proneness, fault proneness, distribution of bugfixes among AOS components and files of these components, and characteristics of bugs of different AOS components. Our results show that the autonomous components were significantly more change prone (measured in number of commits and code churn) and fault prone (measured in bugfixes per KLoC) than non-autonomous components. The distribution of the locations of bugfixes was skewed, both at component and file level (i.e., a small number of components / files contained the majority of bugs). These evidence-based findings provide important insights to researchers and practitioners alike and can be used to efficiently improve the quality and reliability of autonomous systems.

Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova↗

NASA Tech Briefs, March 2010

Topics covered include: Software Tool Integrating Data Flow Diagrams and Petri Nets; Adaptive Nulling for Interferometric Detection of Planets; Reducing the Volume of NASA Earth-Science Data; Reception of Multiple Telemetry Signals via One Dish Antenna; Space-Qualified Traveling-Wave Tube; Smart Power Supply for Battery-Powered Systems; Parallel Processing of Broad-Band PPM Signals; Inexpensive Implementation of Many Strain Gauges; Constant-Differential-Pressure Two-Fluid Accumulator; Inflatable Tubular Structures Rigidized with Foams; Power Generator with Thermo-Differential Modules; Mechanical Extraction of Power From Ocean Currents and Tides; Nitrous Oxide/Paraffin Hybrid Rocket Engines; Optimized Li-Ion Electrolytes Containing Fluorinated Ester Co-Solvents; Probabilistic Multi-Factor Interaction Model for Complex Material Behavior; Foldable Instrumented Bits for Ultrasonic/Sonic Penetrators; Compact Rare Earth Emitter Hollow Cathode; High-Precision Shape Control of In-Space Deployable Large Membrane/Thin-Shell Reflectors; Rapid Active Sampling Package; Miniature Lightweight Ion Pump; Cryogenic Transport of High-Pressure-System Recharge Gas; Water-Vapor Raman Lidar System Reaches Higher Altitude; Compact Ku-Band T/R Module for High-Resolution Radar Imaging of Cold Land Processes; Wide-Field-of-View, High-Resolution, Stereoscopic Imager; Electrical Capacitance Volume Tomography with High-Contrast Dielectrics; Wavefront Control and Image Restoration with Less Computing; Polarization Imaging Apparatus; Stereoscopic Machine-Vision System Using Projected Circles; Metal Vapor Arcing Risk Assessment Tool; Performance Bounds on Two Concatenated, Interleaved Codes; Parameterizing Coefficients of a POD-Based Dynamical System; Confidence-Based Feature Acquisition; Algorithm for Lossless Compression of Calibrated Hyperspectral Imagery; Universal Decoder for PPM of any Order; Algorithm for Stabilizing a POD-Based Dynamical System; Mission Reliability Estimation for Repairable Robot Teams; Processing AIRS Scientific Data Through Level 3; Web-Based Requesting and Scheduling Use of Facilities; AutoGen Version 5.0; Time-Tag Generation Script; PPM Receiver Implemented in Software; Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer Product File Readers; Reporting Differences Between Spacecraft Sequence Files; Coordinating "Execute" Data for ISS and Space Shuttle; Database for Safety-Oriented Tracking of Chemicals; Apparatus for Cold, Pressurized Biogeochemical Experiments; Growing B Lymphocytes in a Three-Dimensional Culture System; Tissue-like 3D Assemblies of Human Broncho-Epithelial Cells; Isolation of Resistance-Bearing Microorganisms; Oscillating Cell Culture Bioreactor; and Liquid Cooling/Warming Garment.

Source record↗

Utilizing the SACADA system to collect simulator training data to inform human reliability analyses - 169

Lack of appropriate human performance data for the development of human reliability analysis (HRA) methods has been identified as a key issue contributing to the method-to-method variability among the HRA methods. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) worked with domain experts to develop the Scenario Authoring, Characterization, and Debriefing Application (SACADA) system to collect nuclear power plants' licensed operator simulator training and examination data to inform HRA. In the past two decades, significant improvements in understanding and modelling human performance in HRA have affected the perspectives of the types of data to be collected for HRA. A significant change is that human performance is strongly dependent on the context of the tasks to be performed. To incorporate this understanding, the SACADA data taxonomy collects the context and actual performance information of the training objective elements (TOEs) in nuclear plant operator simulator training. This provides a framework consistent with HRA to use context to estimate human error probabilities. It is recognized that measuring crew performance is equally important as improving operator training. SACADA is designed to support the nuclear trainers in capturing this important information that is used to identify training weaknesses and drive continuous improvement. This paper discusses the SACADA taxonomy, the SACADA system's functions, and the supporting software design to enable the SACADA system to be practically implemented in the nuclear power plants' operator simulator training program to collect data for tracking operator performance and HRA analysis. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

srlife : a software tool for estimating the life of high temperature concentrating solar receivers. Part I – metallic receivers

Here, this paper introduces srlife, a tool for estimating the structural service life of concentrating solar power (CSP) receivers operating at high temperatures. Supporting both metallic and ceramic receiver designs, srlife is available as open-source software at https://github.com/applied-material-modeling/srlife and can be installed via the PyPi package manager (https://pypi.org). Given basic receiver geometry and incident heat flux, the tool performs thermohydraulic and structural analysis and estimates the life of a receiver. Designed for easy integration into a software stack, including solar field and levelized cost analysis, the tool can be utilized for optimizing receiver designs to meet service life and economic targets. This paper is Part I in a two-part series. Part I discusses the analysis process used to estimate the life of metallic receivers, along with a description of the required input data. Additionally, several heuristics applied within srlife can reduce analysis time significantly while maintaining accurate life estimations for metallic receivers when compared to full analyses. Several examples demonstrating the utility of srlife in receiver design are also discussed. Part II focuses on the life estimation of ceramic receivers, using time-dependent reliability analysis and various ceramic failure models implemented in srlife.

Creep-fatigue analysis↗