Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Dimensionality Reduction”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 721 records · Page 40

Silicone elastomers capable of large isotropic dimensional change

Described herein is a highly effective route towards the controlled and isotropic reduction in size-scale, of complex 3D structures using silicone network polymer chemistry. In particular, a class of silicone structures were developed that once patterned and cured can `shrink` micron scale additive manufactured and lithographically patterned structures by as much as 1 order of magnitude while preserving the dimensions and integrity of these parts. This class of silicone materials is compatible with existing additive manufacture and soft lithographic fabrication processes and will allow access to a hitherto unobtainable dimensionality of fabrication.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

AdS 2 holographic dictionary

Here, we construct the holographic dictionary for both running and constant dilaton solutions of the two dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theory that is obtained by a circle reduction from Einstein-Hilbert gravity with negative cosmological constant in three dimensions. This specific model ensures that the dual theory has a well defined ultraviolet completion in terms of a two dimensional conformal field theory, but our results apply qualitatively to a wider class of two dimensional dilaton gravity theories. For each type of solutions we perform holographic renormalization, compute the exact renormalized one-point functions in the presence of arbitrary sources, and derive the asymptotic symmetries and the corresponding conserved charges. In both cases we find that the scalar operator dual to the dilaton plays a crucial role in the description of the dynamics. Its source gives rise to a matter conformal anomaly for the running dilaton solutions, while its expectation value is the only non trivial observable for constant dilaton solutions. The role of this operator has been largely overlooked in the literature. We further show that the only non trivial conserved charges for running dilaton solutions are the mass and the electric charge, while for constant dilaton solutions only the electric charge is non zero. However, by uplifting the solutions to three dimensions we show that constant dilaton solutions can support non trivial extended symmetry algebras, including the one found by Compère, Song and Strominger, in agreement with the results of Castro and Song. Finally, we demonstrate that any solution of this specific dilaton gravity model can be uplifted to a family of asymptotically AdS 2 × S 2 or conformally AdS 2 × S 2 solutions of the STU model in four dimensions, including non extremal black holes. As a result, the four dimensional solutions obtained by uplifting the running dilaton solutions coincide with the so called ‘subtracted geometries’, while those obtained from the uplift of the constant dilaton ones are new.

2D gravity↗

Iterative methods for dose reduction and image enhancement in tomography

A system and method for creating a three dimensional cross sectional image of an object by the reconstruction of its projections that have been iteratively refined through modification in object space and Fourier space is disclosed. The invention provides systems and methods for use with any tomographic imaging system that reconstructs an object from its projections. In one embodiment, the invention presents a method to eliminate interpolations present in conventional tomography. The method has been experimentally shown to provide higher resolution and improved image quality parameters over existing approaches. A primary benefit of the method is radiation dose reduction since the invention can produce an image of a desired quality with a fewer number projections than seen with conventional methods.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

SU-E-J-183: Quantifying the Image Quality and Dose Reduction of Respiratory Triggered 4D Cone-Beam Computed Tomography with Patient- Measured Breathing

Purpose: Respiratory triggered four dimensional cone-beam computed tomography (RT 4D CBCT) is a novel technique that uses a patient's respiratory signal to drive the image acquisition with the goal of imaging dose reduction without degrading image quality. This work investigates image quality and dose using patient-measured respiratory signals for RT 4D CBCT simulations instead of synthetic sinusoidal signals used in previous work. Methods: Studies were performed that simulate a 4D CBCT image acquisition using both the novel RT 4D CBCT technique and a conventional 4D CBCT technique from a database of oversampled Rando phantom CBCT projections. A database containing 111 free breathing lung cancer patient respiratory signal files was used to create 111 RT 4D CBCT and 111 conventional 4D CBCT image datasets from realistic simulations of a 4D RT CBCT system. Each of these image datasets were compared to a ground truth dataset from which a root mean square error (RMSE) metric was calculated to quantify the degradation of image quality. The number of projections used in each simulation is counted and was assumed as a surrogate for imaging dose. Results: Based on 111 breathing traces, when comparing RT 4D CBCT with conventional 4D CBCT the average image quality was reduced by 7.6%. However, the average imaging dose reduction was 53% based on needing fewer projections (617 on average) than conventional 4D CBCT (1320 projections). Conclusion: The simulation studies using a wide range of patient breathing traces have demonstrated that the RT 4D CBCT method can potentially offer a substantial saving of imaging dose of 53% on average compared to conventional 4D CBCT in simulation studies with a minimal impact on image quality. A patent application (PCT/US2012/048693) has been filed which is related to this work.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Topological Bismuth (1 1̅ 0) Facet for Efficient Oxygen Reduction Cathode in Fuel Cells

The performance of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells is strongly dependent on the efficiency of the electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Here, we report both two-dimensional (4 monolayer, ML) and three-dimensional Bi (16 ML) (11̅0) facets deliver a strong correlation between nontrivial topological surface states and low electrochemical overpotential toward ORR. Both topological Bi (11̅0) film and slab have two slightly gapped (9–45 meV) Dirac cones with the invariant Z 2 =1, derived from the parity products for the occupied states at four time-reversal invariant momentum points. By contrast, the Bi (110) film is stabilized as an ordinary insulator due to atomic buckling. The much lower thermodynamic ORR overpotential (η = 0.58 V) and higher H 2 O selectivity by four steps of H + /e – transfer are obtained on the topological Bi (11̅0) surface compared with the nontopological (110) facet (η = 0.84 V). This promotional effect can be attributed to the accumulation of topological surface bands (Bi 6p orbitals) near the Fermi energy, which provide stronger electronic transport channels along the surface Bi–Bi and Bi–O bonds. Finally, a 16 ML Bi (11̅0) slab is also constructed to simulate the topological (11̅0) surface of three-dimensional bulk Bi as a topological crystalline insulator (TCI). Furthermore, the consistent topological properties and slightly lower thermodynamic ORR overpotential (η = 0.53 V) are also observed on the thicker slab.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Intracellular Biomacromolecule Delivery by Stimuli-Responsive Protein Vesicles Loaded by Hydrophobic Ion Pairing

Proteins can perform ideal therapeutic functions. However, their large size and significant surface hydrophilicity and charge prohibit them from reaching intracellular targets. These chemical features also render them poorly encapsulated by nanoparticles used for intracellular delivery. In this work, a novel combination of protein vesicles and hydrophobic ion pairing (HIP) was used to load protein cargo and achieve cytosolic delivery to overcome the limitations of previous protein vesicle properties. Protein vesicles are thermally self-assembling nanoparticles made from elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) fused to an arginine-rich leucine zipper and a globular protein fused to a glutamate-rich leucine zipper. To impart stimuli-responsive disassembly, physiological stability, and small size, the ELP sequence was modified to include histidine and tyrosine residues. HIP was used to load and release protein cargo requiring endosomal escape for cytosolic function. HIP vesicles enabled delivery of cytochrome c, a cytosolically active protein, and a significant reduction in viability in both a traditional two-dimensional (2D) human cancer cell line culture and a biomimetic three-dimensional (3D) organoid model of acute myeloid leukemia. By examining the uptake of positively and negatively charged fluorescent protein cargos loaded by HIP, this work revealed the necessity of HIP for cytosolic cargo delivery and how HIP loading influences protein vesicle self-assembly and disassembly using microscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering, and nanoparticle tracking analysis. HIP protein vesicles have the potential to broaden the use of intracellular proteins as therapeutics for various diseases and extend protein vesicles to deliver other biomacromolecules, as the strategy developed here resulted in the first cytosolic protein cargo delivery using protein vesicles.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Speeding up biomolecular interactions by molecular sledding

In numerous biological processes associations involve a protein with its binding partner, an event that is preceded by a diffusion-mediated search bringing the two partners together. Often hindered by crowding in biologically relevant environments, three-dimensional diffusion can be slow and result in long bimolecular association times. Moreover, the initial association step between two binding partners often represents a rate-limiting step in biotechnologically relevant reactions. We also demonstrate the practical use of an 11-a.a. DNA-interacting peptide derived from adenovirus to reduce the dimensionality of diffusional search processes and speed up associations between biological macromolecules. We functionalize binding partners with the peptide and demonstrate that the ability of the peptide to one-dimensionally diffuse along DNA results in a 20-fold reduction in reaction time. We also show that modifying PCR primers with the peptide sled enables significant acceleration of standard PCR reactions.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Bilayer twisting as a mean to isolate connected flat bands in a kagome lattice throughWigner crystallization*

The physics of flat band is novel and rich but difficult to access. In this regard, recently twisting of bilayer van der Waals (vdW)-bounded two-dimensional (2D) materials has attracted much attention, because the reduction of Brillouin zone will eventually lead to a diminishing kinetic energy. Alternatively, one may start with a 2D kagome lattice, which already possesses flat bands at the Fermi level, but unfortunately these bands connect quadratically to other (dispersive) bands, leading to undesirable effects. Here, we propose, by first-principles calculation and tight-binding modeling, that the same bilayer twisting approach can be used to isolate the kagome flat bands. As the starting kinetic energy is already vanishingly small, the interlayer vdW potential is always sufficiently large irrespective of the twisting angle. As such the electronic states in the (connected) flat bands become unstable against a spontaneous Wigner crystallization, which is expected to have interesting interplays with other flat-band phenomena such as novel superconductivity and anomalous quantum Hall effect.

Physics↗

Noise transmission through flat rectangular panels into a closed cavity

Five panels backed by a closed cavity were studied experimentally and analytically to determine the noise transmission characteristics of the coupled panel-cavity system. The closed cavity was studied both with and without fiber-glass lining to provide either an absorbent or a reverberant acoustic space. The effects on noise reduction of cavity absorption, measurement location within the cavity, panel mass, and panel stiffness were examined. Results indicated that both measurement location and absorption in the cavity have significant effects on the noise reduction. Increasing panel mass improves the noise reduction at almost all frequencies, and increasing panel stiffness improves nose reduction below the fundamental resonance frequency. A simple, one dimensional analytical model was developed which provided good agreement with the experimental results.

Barton, C. K.↗

Wire EDM for Refractory Materials

In an attempt to reduce fabrication time and costs, Wire Electrical Discharge Machine (Wire EDM) method was investigated as tool for fabricating matched blade roots and disk slots. Eight high-strength nickel-base superalloys were used. Computer-controlled Wire EDM technique provided high quality surfaces with excellent dimensional tolerances. Wire EDM method offers potential for substantial reductions in fabrication costs for "hard to machine" alloys and electrically conductive materials in specific high-precision applications.

Zellars, G. R.↗

Active control of transition by periodic suction-blowing

A numerical study is conducted to investigate a new method of transition control by periodic suction-blowing. It is shown that significant reduction in the amplitudes of two- and three-dimensional finite-amplitude disturbances can be obtained by the application of this method to transition in plane channel flow.

Biringen, S.↗

Experimental investigation of the effect of aspect ratio and Mach number on the flutter of cantilever wings

The results of some wind-tunnel experiments to investigate the effects of aspect ratio and Mach number on the flutter of uniform, unswept, cantilever wings are reported. Models having aspect ratios ranging from 2 to 13 were tested at Mach numbers up to 0.92. No general attempt is made to correlate the data with three-dimensional-flow theory, but an examination of the data is made on the basis of reference theoretical values obtained from the two-dimensional incompressible-flow theory. On this basis a reduction in aspect ratio, in general, increased the ratio of the experimental flutter speed to the calculated flutter speed. The analysis also indicated that for a given aspect ratio, this ratio decreased slightly as the Mach number is increased.

Widmayer, E , Jr↗

Radiation-induced second cancers: the impact of 3D-CRT and IMRT

Information concerning radiation-induced malignancies comes from the A-bomb survivors and from medically exposed individuals, including second cancers in radiation therapy patients. The A-bomb survivors show an excess incidence of carcinomas in tissues such as the gastrointestinal tract, breast, thyroid, and bladder, which is linear with dose up to about 2.5 Sv. There is great uncertainty concerning the dose-response relationship for radiation-induced carcinogenesis at higher doses. Some animal and human data suggest a decrease at higher doses, usually attributed to cell killing; other data suggest a plateau in dose. Radiotherapy patients also show an excess incidence of carcinomas, often in sites remote from the treatment fields; in addition there is an excess incidence of sarcomas in the heavily irradiated in-field tissues. The transition from conventional radiotherapy to three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT) involves a reduction in the volume of normal tissues receiving a high dose, with an increase in dose to the target volume that includes the tumor and a limited amount of normal tissue. One might expect a decrease in the number of sarcomas induced and also (less certain) a small decrease in the number of carcinomas. All around, a good thing. By contrast, the move from 3D-CRT to intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) involves more fields, and the dose-volume histograms show that, as a consequence, a larger volume of normal tissue is exposed to lower doses. In addition, the number of monitor units is increased by a factor of 2 to 3, increasing the total body exposure, due to leakage radiation. Both factors will tend to increase the risk of second cancers. Altogether, IMRT is likely to almost double the incidence of second malignancies compared with conventional radiotherapy from about 1% to 1.75% for patients surviving 10 years. The numbers may be larger for longer survival (or for younger patients), but the ratio should remain the same.

Review, Tutorial↗

The application scope of the reductive perturbation method and the upper limit of the dust acoustic solitary waves in a dusty plasma

The dust acoustic solitary waves have been numerically investigated by using one dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell method. By comparing the numerical results with those obtained from the traditional reductive perturbation method, it is found that there exist the maximum dimensionless amplitude and propagation speed of the dust acoustic solitary wave. And these limitations of the solitary wave are explained by using the Sagdeev potential technique. Furthermore, it is noticed that although ϵ ≪ 1 is required in the reductive perturbation method generally, the reductive perturbation method is also valid for ϵ < 1 in a dusty plasma, which may be extended to branches where the reductive perturbation method is used.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Investigation of Computational Corrections to X-Ray Computed Tomography for Dimensional Metrology of Complex Additively Manufactured Parts

X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a nondestructive evaluation technique that may be used to image complex internal features without the line-of-sight restrictions inherent in conventional optical and contact (stylus) metrology instrumentation. Applications of CT metrology include material defects (porosity), dimensions and surface texture. However, scan artifacts, such as streaking, caused primarily by beam hardening and scatter, limit the accuracy of CTbased metrology. Reduction of these artifacts would improve the accuracy material properties and dimensional metrology information. This paper reports on the development of additively manufactured (AM) Ti5553 and 316L measurement phantoms with integral lattice (lattice) structures specifically designed to exhibit these artifacts. The phantoms were scanned in three CT systems and a scanning-probe CMM measurement. Surfaces generated from uncorrected CT data exhibited “dimple” defects that are not present in the CMM measurement. Correction methods were developed in Livermore Tomography Tools (LTT) software and this paper reports on the successful correction of these artifacts. This work is expected to have application in areas where characterization of defects, dimensions and surface texture using CT are critical.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Coupling flux balance analysis with reactive transport modeling through machine learning for rapid and stable simulation of microbial metabolic switching

Integrating genome-scale metabolic networks with reactive transport models (RTMs) provides a detailed description of the dynamic changes in microbial growth and metabolism. Despite promising demonstrations in the past, computational inefficiency has been pointed out as a critical issue to overcome because it requires repeated application of linear programming (LP) to obtain flux balance analysis (FBA) solutions in every time step and spatial grid. To address this challenge, we propose a new simulation method where we train and validate artificial neural networks (ANNs) using randomly sampled FBA solutions and incorporate the resulting surrogate FBA model (represented as algebraic equations) into RTMs as source/sink terms. We demonstrate the efficiency of our method via a case study of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. During aerobic growth on lactate, S. oneidensis produces metabolic byproducts (such as pyruvate and acetate), which are subsequently consumed as alternative carbon sources when the preferred nutrients are depleted. To effectively simulate these complex dynamics, we used a cybernetic approach that models metabolic switches as the outcome of dynamic competition among multiple growth options. In both zero-dimensional batch and one-dimensional column configurations, the ANN-based surrogate models achieved substantial reduction of computational time by several orders of magnitude compared to the original LP-based FBA models. Moreover, the ANN models produced robust solutions without any special measures to prevent numerical instability. These developments significantly promote our ability to utilize genome-scale networks in complex, multi-physics, and multi-dimensional ecosystem modeling.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Fringe biasing: A variance reduction technique for optically thick meshes

Fringe biasing is a stratified sampling scheme applicable to Monte Carlo thermal radiation transport codes. The thermal emission source in optically thick cells is partitioned into separate contributions from the cell interiors (where the likelihood of the particles escaping the cells is virtually zero) and the 'fringe' regions close to the cell boundaries. Thermal emission in the cell interiors can now be modelled with fewer particles, the remaining particles being concentrated in the fringes so that they are more likely to contribute to the energy exchange between cells. Unlike other techniques for improving the efficiency in optically thick regions (such as random walk and discrete diffusion treatments), fringe biasing has the benefit of simplicity, as the associated changes are restricted to the sourcing routines with the particle tracking routines being unaffected. This paper presents an analysis of the potential for variance reduction achieved from employing the fringe biasing technique. The aim of this analysis is to guide the implementation of this technique in Monte Carlo thermal radiation codes, specifically in order to aid the choice of the fringe width and the proportion of particles allocated to the fringe (which are interrelated) in multi-dimensional simulations, and to confirm that the significant levels of variance reduction achieved in simulations can be understood by studying the behaviour for simple test cases. The variance reduction properties are studied for a single cell in a slab geometry purely absorbing medium, investigating the accuracy of the scalar flux and current tallies on one of the interfaces with the surrounding medium. (authors)

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Two-dimensional nanostructured Y{sub 2}O{sub 3} particles for viscosity modification

Nanoparticle additives have been shown to improve the mechanical and transport phenomena of various liquids; however, little has been done to try and explain the rheological modifications provided from such modifications from a theoretical standpoint. Here, we report a non-Einstein-like reduction of viscosity of mineral oil with the utilization of yttrium oxide nanosheet additives. Experimental results, coupled with generalized smoothed-particle hydrodynamics simulations, provide insight into the mechanism behind this reduction of fluid shear stress. The ordered inclination of these two-dimensional nanoparticle additives markedly improves the lubricating properties of the mineral oil, ultimately reducing the friction, and providing a way in designing and understanding next generation of lubricants.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗