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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 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

A Hardware-in-the-Loop Experimental Testbed Using Air Conditioners for Grid Balancing

Driven by the need to offset the variability of renewable generation on the grid, development of load control is a highly active field of research. However, practical use of residential loads for grid balancing remains rare, in part due to the cost of communicating with large numbers of small loads and also the limited experimentation done so far to demonstrate reliable operation. To establish a basis for the safe and reliable use of fleets of compressor loads as distributed energy resources, we constructed an experimental testbed in a laboratory, so that load coordination schemes could be tested at extreme conditions. Here, this experimental testbed was used to tune a simulation testbed to which it was then linked, thereby augmenting the effective size of the fleet. Modeling of the system was done both to demonstrate the experimental testbed's behavior and also to understand how to tune the behavior of each load. Implementing this testbed has enabled rapid turnaround of experiments on various load control algorithms, and year-round testing without the constraints and limitations arising in seasonal field tests with real houses. Experimental results show the practical feasibility of an ensemble of small loads contributing to grid balancing.

Air Conditioners↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Integrated ECLSS Ground Testbed Development and Status for 2025

The reliability of Spacecraft Life Support systems and the associated mass needed to support human spaceflight is one of the largest risks for missions beyond Low Earth Orbit. The reliability of these systems directly corresponds to the number of spares needed to support the mission. Performance improvements for these systems can reduce the consumables needed for long-duration missions. The only integrated spacecraft regenerative Life Support System exists in Low Earth Orbit. It is not practical to use the ISS system to fully understand the reliability of the technology as these systems are currently maintaining a livable environment and crew’s lives are dependent on the availability of these systems. To achieve advancement on reliability and mass, NASA has initiated the development of an Integrated ECLSS ground Testbed. This paper will provide a status on the testbed development, hardware development and areas for investigation. This paper will also cover planned testbed integration and support for Earth Independent Operations (EIO). This paper will be relevant to sessions: 205, 300, 301, 404, 406, 500, 50, 506, and 511.

Christopher Brown↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development of a DC Distribution Testbed for High-Power EV Charging

This paper explores the design and implementation of a power hardware-in-the-loop (P-HIL) setup for DC distribution infrastructure integrated with high-power charging (HPC) of electric vehicles (EVs), DC loads, and sources. The utilization of DC distribution holds significant potential for enhancing the operation of a HPC station architecture. However, there are challenges establishing a DC charging hub including interoperability, commoditization, distributed energy resource integration, stability, DC protection, and lack of common system level controllers. To address these challenges, a testing setup is required that accommodates commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products to evaluate different use cases at rated power and voltage levels. The developed P-HIL setup features a dedicated DC charging hub, DC-coupled chargers, DC loads/sources, DC protection, and a communication architecture. The integrated P-HIL system provides a versatile testing environment to address technology and interoperability gaps and implements a smart energy management system (SEMS). This platform enables comprehensive and robust testing of COTS devices, charger prototypes, SEMS controllers and protection schemes, which together will accelerate transition to EVs at scale. The setup is tested for various use-cases at full-scale, integrating 950 V DC bus voltage, 660 kW grid-tied inverter, 150 kW COTS charger, and 100 kW energy storage system within an open-source SEMS platform.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,POWER TRANSMISSION AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

A hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed for cyber-physical energy systems in smart commercial buildings

In recent years, there has been a growing trend toward the development of smart buildings that rely on cyber-physical systems (CPS) to optimize occupant comfort, safety, and energy efficiency. To ensure the reliable and efficient operation of CPS with designed control strategies, it is important to evaluate their performance under various scenarios before deploying them in the real world. This is where a Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed designed for studying sensor and control-related studies in smart buildings can be highly valuable. With the growing threat of cyber-attacks and physical faults targeting smart buildings, it is essential to ensure the security of building operations. A HIL testbed can emulate cyber-attack and physical fault scenarios, allowing researchers to develop and test threat detection and mitigation algorithms. This enables researchers to identify potential issues and optimize the algorithms in a safe and controlled environment before they are deployed in real-world settings, reducing the risk of failures that can negatively impact occupant comfort, safety, and energy efficiency. Therefore, this paper developed a HIL testbed designed for cyber-physical energy systems (e.g. buildings automation system (BAS)) in smart commercial buildings. The HIL testbed is comprised of a real-time building and Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) emulator using Modelica-based dynamic models, a set of BAS controllers, and a BAS computer server. The data generation capability of the HIL testbed is demonstrated by tracking normal and faulty operating data in the BAS, as well as monitoring detailed network traffic in the local BAS network. Here, this study further demonstrates the HIL testbed’s capability by conducting case studies on real-time physical fault and cyber-attack experiments using a Department of Energy (DOE) prototype commercial building. It is anticipated that the fully functional HIL testbed will be utilized for a variety of sensor and control-related studies, including but not limited to testing, developing, validating of different HVAC control strategies, fault detection & diagnosis, energy monitoring and analysis, cyber security study, etc.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development of A Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) Testbed for Cyber-Physical Security in Smart Buildings

As smart buildings move towards open communication technologies, providing access to the Building Automation System (BAS) through the building's intranet, or even remotely through the Internet, has become a common practice. However, BAS was historically developed as a closed environment and designed with limited cyber-security considerations. Thus, smart buildings are vulnerable to cyber-attacks with the increased accessibility. This study introduces the development and capability of a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIT) testbed for testing and evaluating the cyber-physical security of typical BASs in smart buildings. The testbed consists of three subsystems: (1) a real-time HIL emulator simulating the behavior of a virtual building as well as the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) equipment via a dynamic simulation in Modelica; (2) a set of real HVAC controllers monitoring the virtual building operation and providing local control signals to control HVAC equipment in the HIL emulator; and (3) a BAS server along with a web-based service for users to fully access the schedule, setpoints, trends, alarms, and other control functions of the HVAC controllers remotely through the BACnet network. The server generates rule-based setpoints to local HVAC controllers. Based on these three subsystems, the HIL testbed supports attack/fault-free and attack/fault-injection experiments at various levels of the building system. The resulting test data can be used to inform the building community and support the cyber-physical security technology transfer to the building industry.

Li, Guowen↗
NASA NTRS1993

Precision slew/settle technologies for flexible spacecraft

Many spacecraft missions in the next decade will require both a high degree of agility and precision pointing. Agility includes both rotational maneuvering for retargeting and translational motion for orbit adjustment and threat avoidance. The major challenge associated with such missions is the need for control over a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies, ranging from tens of degrees at less than 1 Hz to a few micron radians at hundreds of Hz. TRW's internally funded Precision Control of Agile Spacecraft (PCAS) project is concerned with developing and validating in hardware the tools necessary to successfully complete the combined agile maneuvering/precision pointing missions. Development has been undertaken on a number of fronts for quietly slewing flexible structures. Various methods for designing slew torque profiles have been investigated. Prime candidates for slew/settle scenarios include Inverse Dynamics and Parameterized Function Space. Joint work with Processor Bayo at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor Flashner at the University of Southern California has led to promising torque profile design methods. Active and passive vibration suppression techniques also play a key role for rapid slew/settle mission scenarios. Active members with local control loops and passive members with high loss factor viscoelastic material have been selected for hardware verification. Progress in each of these areas produces large gains in the quiet slewing of flexible spacecraft. The main thrust of the effort to date has been the development of a modular testbed for hardware validation of the precision control concepts. The testbed is a slewing eighteen foot long flexible truss. Active and passive members can be interchanged with the baseline aluminum members to augment the inherent damping in the system. For precision control the active members utilize control laws running on a high speed digital structural control processor. Tip and midspan motions of the truss are determined using optical sensors while accelerometers can be used to monitor the motions of other points of interest. Preliminary results indicate that a mix of technologies produces the greatest benefit. For example, shaping the torque profile produces large improvements in slew/settle performance, but without added damping settling times may still be excessive. With the introduction of moderate amounts of damping, slew/settle performance is vastly improved. On the other hand, introducing damping without shaping the torque profile may not yield the desired level of performance.

Manning, R. A.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Looking at NGST Through the Eyes of DCATT

The first phase of the Developmental Characterized Active Telescope Testbed (DCATT) hardware system was integrated at Goddard Space Flight Center in early March of 1999 and has been operational for almost a year. Experiments are currently being conducted on the testbed to quantify and refine various methods and techniques in the baseline wavefront sensing and control process. This paper addresses the actual optical design of the Phase 0 hardware configuration and discusses the open loop system level performance of the system. Lessons learned for NGST during the buildup and characterization of the system are presented.

Davila, Pam↗
DOE OSTI2021

TRUST Nonlinear Dynamics Testbed Assessment

The following assessment evaluates the efficacy of the control script for carrying out a linear signal to generate a linear mechanical response of the system: the TRUST nonlinear dynamics (TRUSTND) testbed. The hardware has three main components: the controller (NI PXIe 8861) embedded in the National Instruments chassis (NI PXIe 1092), the signal amplifier (The Modal Shop Linear Power Amplifier 2050E09) to amplify the output of a custom LabVIEW script, and a shaker (The Modal Shop Electrodynamic Exciter 2075E) where wave spring specimens live and are tested within the attached aluminum testbed (center mass). Different kinds of signals (single-tone, swept frequency and white noise) were sent through this hardware in the E-1 lab space at TA-53. First, the linearity of the setup was tested by specifying a sine wave in the control script and checking the quality of the oscillations in a wave spring (McMaster-Carr 9714K19 [1]). When passing a sine wave through the amplifier was succeeded, the frequency response of the wave spring was tested with white noise for comparison to finite-element model predictions. The testbed outputs a repeatable, linear response to the input excitation when used with the wave spring. These measurements reduce the uncertainty associated with the testbed and test procedure to better characterize uncertainty associated with material behavior (SX358 foam samples) in future tests

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
NASA NTRS1993

Passive millimeter-wave imaging

Millimeter-wave hardware systems are being developed. Our approach begins with identifying and defining the applications. System requirements are then specified based on mission needs using our end-to-end performance model. The model was benchmarked against existing data bases and, where data is deficient, it is acquired via field measurements. The derived system requirements are then validated with the appropriate field measurements using our imaging testbeds and hardware breadboards. The result is a final system that satisfies all the requirements of the target mission.

Young, Stephen K.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Research on an autonomous vision-guided helicopter

Integration of computer vision with on-board sensors to autonomously fly helicopters was researched. The key components developed were custom designed vision processing hardware and an indoor testbed. The custom designed hardware provided flexible integration of on-board sensors with real-time image processing resulting in a significant improvement in vision-based state estimation. The indoor testbed provided convenient calibrated experimentation in constructing real autonomous systems.

Amidi, Omead↗
DOE OSTI2022

Emulation Framework for Distributed Large-Scale Systems Integration

Recent trends in systems engineering include integration of very large-scale systems, which entails significant challenges when they are geographically dispersed. In these scenarios, intelligent integration of distributed large-scale systems requires significant coordination among hardware elements as well as all software components. The approach of integrated systems (both computing platform and experimental equipment) for end-to-end orchestration is called federation. Virtual frameworks can aid in the testing, assessment, and implementation of a functional system of interconnected resources. We present an emulation framework that replicates the software environments of multi-site federations of computing systems and instruments. Our emulation framework allows systems engineers to reduce developmentcost and avoid disruptions to production infrastructure. Our framework was effectively used to develop and test software modules for various tasks including container orchestration and instrument access. For performance assessment, however, the emulated framework is severely limited in providing accurate network and IO measurements at 10 Gbps and higher data rates. The data transfer performance profiles estimated using these emulated measurements are usually inaccurate for high bandwidth and high latency connections, since emulation does not accurately reflect the critical network transport dynamics.We utilize measurements from a physical testbed with hardware network emulators to obtain data transfer profiles that closely match the expected profiles for the emulated federations. We show the effectiveness of our approach by an illustrative example of integrated (federated) multi-site ultra large-scale systems that are connected via high speed wide area networks.

Imam, Neena↗
DOE OSTI2025

Microreactor Automated Control System - Digital Twin Models and Advanced Control Systems Updates

Automation of control systems is expected to be important in the economic and safe operation of microreactors. Therefore, there is a need to develop and demonstrate automated control for microreactors, along with the development of testbeds for this purpose. This report provides updates on the status of a nonnuclear microreactor automated control system (MACS)—a real-time, hardware-in-the-loop testbed for non-nuclear testing of microreactor control system automation. A real-time hardware-in-the-loop testbed incorporates the realistic dynamics of physical systems into control system development and testing. The collaborative effort between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) resulted in the development of a prototypic microreactor plant-level digital twin that includes the reactor and a balance of plant system. Advanced control strategies were incorporated to demonstrate testing of control automation solutions. The gRPC communication protocol, which was implemented in the hardware-in-the-loop testbed by INL, was coupled to a digital twin model developed using the TRANsient Simulation Framework of Reconfigurable Models (TRANSFORM) library in Modelica. This digital twin simulation was tested with the ViBRANT hardware for realistic feedback and visual representation of control action in real time. A modular Python client structure was developed to manage functional mock-up unit-based simulation and real-time gRPC communication. Hardware-in-the-loop testing indicated that the modeled reactor—a natural-convection, molten-salt coolant loop configuration—responds well to control of drum positioning for modulation of reactor core power, as well as system-level control and downstream demand changes. Ongoing research is focused on integrating additional control algorithms that utilize data from newly included sensors within the MACS hardware testbed, as well as demonstrating and assessing the performance of the different automated control algorithms on multiple additional operational scenarios.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

LEED: A Lightwave Energy-Efficient Datacenter

The Lightwave Energy-Efficient Datacenter (LEED) program is a disruptive “green-field” approach that provides a quantum leap in the energy efficiency of datacenters. LEED’s fundamental value proposition is that a novel and re-architected optical network—RotorNet— can deliver “more bandwidth per buck” as well as unique system-level attributes that significantly improve overall datacenter energy efficiency and performance. LEED has developed three system-level testbeds. The first testbed uses calibrated hardware and software power measurements to determine server energy efficiency as a function of network bandwidth and workload. These measurements have shown that increasing network communications bandwidth dramatically increases server energy efficiency providing a realistic path to the overall ENLITENED program goal of doubling the number of transactions per joule. The second testbed demonstrates key hardware: a prototype low-loss, high-port count optical “selector switch”. This switch was fabricated, racked, and tested. Measured switch characteristics include loss, bandwidth, crosstalk, switch time, system-level switch time (including the transceivers), and bit error rate. The third testbed demonstrates a fully working and manufactured pinwheel design which dramatically lowers the cost of design, while delivering high switch radix and low reconfiguration times. The LEED project has tied these three novel photonic switch prototypes together with production servers and software through the development of a novel FPGA-based NIC platform called Corundum. Corundum ensures that the packet-switched protocols supported by commodity operating systems and devices can interface with the Rotor switch design. The LEED group has used this combined hardware and software prototype to characterize applications running at a commercially relevant scale. The project has used a combination of enhanced optical modulation amplitude (OMA) modulators, broadband multiplexers and demultiplexers, avalanche photodiodes, and a novel burst-mode receivers to enable the insertion of LEED-developed optical switches without the need for expensive optical amplification. Our modeling has shown that measured LEED-developed device characteristics can achieve link characteristics of 2 pJ/bit including both transceivers and the Rotor switch. In summary, the LEED program has demonstrated a credible and practical path, through novel hardware and software, to realize the program objectives of ENLITENED. The net result will ensure that the United States maintains its strength in the crucial sector of Information Technology, which is vital to both our economic security and our national security.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗