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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 721 records · Page 40

Reinforcement Learning for Anomaly Detection in Nuclear Power Plant Operation and Maintenance

In nuclear power plants (NPPs), timely identification of sensor and human errors is critical to ensure safe and efficient plant operations. Anomaly detection models can be employed for this task. However, traditional anomaly detection approaches may have high dependency on labeled datasets and struggle with adaptability in complex, dynamic environments. Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated significant potential in fault diagnosis and anomaly detection; however, its application to anomaly detection in NPPs remains a relatively underexplored research direction. Hence, to address this gap, in this study, we present a novel physics-informed reinforcement learning model, PIRL-AD: Physics-Informed Reinforcement Learning for Anomaly Detection, that integrates domain knowledge from calorimetric equations into the RL framework for enhanced sensor and human error anomaly detection. We evaluate the performance of PIRL-AD against a non-physics informed RL benchmark and a support vector machine (SVM) on data collected from a forced flow loop testbed. Experimental results suggest that PIRL-AD outperforms other baselines on a range of anomalous datasets that include both sensor and human-induced anomalies across key performance metrics, statistically outperforming the RL and SVM benchmarks with respect to geometric mean (respectively, 92.96% vs. 91.06% vs. 83.01%) and F1-score (respectively, 89.23% vs. 86.98% vs. 77.01%). Furthermore, the findings suggest the potential of physics-integrated reinforcement learning models for enhanced anomaly detection performance in NPPs.

Reinforcement learning↗

A Reproducible Validation of Algorithms for Estimating Array Tilt and Azimuth from Photovoltaic Power Time Series

In this research, we assess the viability of four different, publicly available algorithms for estimating the azimuth and tilt parameters of solar photovoltaic systems using only the associated AC power time series data and site latitude-longitude coordinates. In this work, we curated a benchmarking data set of 44 fixed-tilt systems, comprising 275 measured AC power inverter data streams, with known azimuth and tilt parameters. Additionally, we isolated test cases in the data set with real- world issues, including shading and clipping, to determine how algorithm performance varies based on the presence of these phenomena. Using this data set for benchmarking, we evaluated the estimated vs. actual system characteristics for each algorithm, as well as the associated algorithm execution time using a standardized benchmarking process. The two highest performing algorithms were the Solar Data Tools and the PVWatts 5- based methods, which both achieved a median absolute error of approximately 5 and 1 degrees for azimuth and tilt, respectively. During run time analysis, the SDT method was approximately 5 times faster than the PVWatts 5-based method, with the median execution time for a stream varying between 6 and 8 seconds vs. a median run time of 31 seconds for the PVWatts 5-based method.

azimuth↗

Experimental Covariance Determination for Critical Integral Experiments

Integral benchmarks for criticality safety and nuclear data validation require expensive uncertainty quantification studies. In general, uncertainty quantification techniques ignore correlations between experiments and shared parts. Experiments, such as the TEX (Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments) campaigns, consist of many shared parts, such as the ‘Jemima’ HEU fuel plates, which create a strong correlation in their uncertainties. While these correlations are known to exist, they are often not estimated due to the complexity of such calculations. This paper describes an intuitive method of determining the covariance for each of the experimental components, providing a correlation for each family of parts across the multiple cases examined within a benchmark. A proof-of-principle study using the TEX-HEU experimental campaign was performed and verified that the correlations can be calculated with information commonly found in the ICSBEP (International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project) benchmarks. This study showed that the introduction of model and experimental covariances reduces the χ 2 per degree of freedom from 2.203 to 1.179, indicating that the omission causes overly pessimistic bias quantifications. This technique can be seamlessly integrated to current benchmark evaluations as well as reevaluations of legacy benchmarks.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

A Reproducible Validation of Algorithms for Estimating Array Tilt and Azimuth from Photovoltaic Power Time Series

In this research, we assess the viability of four different, publicly available algorithms for estimating the azimuth and tilt parameters of solar photovoltaic systems using only the associated AC power time series data and site latitude-longitude coordinates. In this work, we curated a benchmarking data set of 44 fixed-tilt systems, comprising 275 measured AC power inverter data streams, with known azimuth and tilt parameters. Additionally, we isolated test cases in the data set with real-world issues, including shading and clipping, to determine how algorithm performance varies based on the presence of these phenomena. Using this data set for benchmarking, we evaluated the estimated vs. actual system characteristics for each algorithm, as well as the associated algorithm execution time using a standardized benchmarking process. The two highest performing algorithms were the Solar Data Tools and the PVWatts 5-based methods, which both achieved a median absolute error of approximately 5 and 1 degrees for azimuth and tilt, respectively. During run time analysis, the SDT method was approximately 5 times faster than the PVWatts 5-based method, with the median execution time for a stream varying between 6 and 8 seconds vs. a median run time of 31 seconds for the PVWatts 5-based method.

algorithm validation↗

Optimal Client Sampling in Federated Learning with Client-level Heterogeneous Differential Privacy

Federated Learning with client-level differential privacy (DP) provides a promising framework for collaboratively training models while rigorously protecting clients’ privacy. However, classic approaches like DP-FedAvg struggle when clients have heterogeneous privacy requirements, as they must uniformly enforce the strictest privacy level across all clients, leading to excessive DP noise and significant degradation in model utility. Existing methods to improve the model utility in such heterogeneous privacy settings often assume a trusted server and are largely heuristic, resulting in suboptimal performance and lacking strong theoretical foundations. Here, in this work, we address these challenges under a practical attack model where both clients and the server are honest-but-curious. We propose GDPFed, which partitions clients into groups based on their privacy budgets and achieves client-level DP within each group to reduce the privacy budget waste and hence improve the model utility. Based on the privacy and convergence analysis of GDPFed, we find that the magnitude of DP noise depends on both model dimensionality and the per-group client sampling ratios. To further improve the performance of GDPFed, we introduce GDPFed+, which integrates model sparsification to eliminate unnecessary noise and optimizes per-group client sampling ratios to minimize convergence error. Extensive empirical evaluations on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of GDPFed+, showing substantial performance gains compared with state-of-the-art methods.

Xu, Jiahao [Univ. of Nevada, Reno, NV (United Stat↗

Accelerating Application Bulk Synchronous Writes in HPC Environments

High-bandwidth storage tiers are becoming more common for their capability to absorb high-rate, bursty I/Os. Notably, the designs of these fast storage tiers differ from system to system. The variation of these layers and non-uniform methods of access can pose chal- lenges for applications seeking to run at multiple HPC facilities. Therefore, in this work, we present Spectral, a rapid-output ab- straction library to accelerate application, bulk-synchronous writes on HPC systems. We design Spectral to enable applications to use high-bandwidth storage, such as node-local storage and dis- tributed, write-caches (e.g., burst buffers) transparently without requiring modifications to the application or file system source code. The key idea is to allow applications to spend most of the time performing productive work and to not require any source code changes for maximum portability on different HPC archi- tectures. Spectral internally re-routes write-only files through available, high-performance I/O resources before ultimately mi- grating them to the shared global parallel file system. For instance, on Summit, Spectral transparently places application outputs on node-local storage and then utilizes asynchronous migration to the center-wide GPFS file system. We evaluate Spectral on the Summit HPC system (1024 nodes) using the IOR benchmark and real scientific applications. Spectral shows linear performance scaling, improving application write performance by over an order of magnitude when compared to GPFS.

Khan, Awais↗

Dimensionality reduction using elastic measures

With the recent surge in big data analytics for hyperdimensional data, there is a renewed interest in dimensionality reduction techniques. In order for these methods to improve performance gains and understanding of the underlying data, a proper metric needs to be identified. This step is often overlooked, and metrics are typically chosen without consideration of the underlying geometry of the data. Here, in this paper, we present a method for incorporating elastic metrics into the t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE) and Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP). We apply our method to functional data, which is uniquely characterized by rotations, parameterization and scale. If these properties are ignored, they can lead to incorrect analysis and poor classification performance. Through our method, we demonstrate improved performance on shape identification tasks for three benchmark data sets (MPEG-7, Car data set and Plane data set of Thankoor), where we achieve 0.77, 0.95 and 1.00 F1 score, respectively.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Porting WarpX to GPU-accelerated platforms

WarpX is a general purpose electromagnetic particle-in-cell code that was originally designed to run on many-core CPU architectures. We describe the strategy, based on the AMReX library, followed to allow WarpX to use the GPU-accelerated nodes on OLCF’s Summit supercomputer, a strategy we believe will extend to the upcoming machines Frontier and Aurora. We summarize the challenges encountered, lessons learned, and give current performance results on a series of relevant benchmark problems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hydrodynamic conditions in laser irradiated buried layer experiments

The calculation of open shell ionization level and radiative properties of materials in Non-Local Thermal Equilibrium (NLTE) is currently still a major challenge for any atomic model. The predictions of various NLTE atomic codes at these conditions still differ significantly. In recent years, a new buried layer platform was developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. This platform is used to measure ionization distribution and emission of open L-shell, mid-Z ions and open M-shell, high-Z ions at NLTE conditions that are relevant in many laser plasma applications. These experiments offer a unique chance for benchmarking the atomic models. In order to perform these experiments, a uniform well characterized plasma source is required. In this work, we present one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional simulations of the experimental platform. These simulations were used for both the design and the analysis of the experiments. The simulations demonstrate the different phases of hydrodynamic evolution of the target and identify the time windows in which uniform conditions can be achieved. A 1D expansion of the target was found to be adequate to describe the target's evolution for most of the experiment duration. The fast 1D simulations were compared with recent experimental results from the Omega laser facility. The sensitivity of the results to several modeling parameters such as the electron flux limiter and laser resonant absorption is reported.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Reduced scaling formulation of CASPT2 analytical gradients using the supporting subspace method

We present a reduced scaling and exact reformulation of state specific complete active space second-order perturbation (CASPT2) analytical gradients in terms of the MP2 and Fock derivatives using the supporting subspace method. This work follows naturally from the supporting subspace formulation of the CASPT2 energy in terms of the MP2 energy using dressed orbitals and Fock builds. For a given active space configuration, the terms corresponding to the MP2-gradient can be evaluated with O(N5) operations, while the rest of the calculations can be computed with O(N3) operations using Fock builds, Fock gradients, and linear algebra. When tensor-hyper-contraction is applied simultaneously, the computational cost can be further reduced to O(N4) for a fixed active space size. The new formulation enables efficient implementation of CASPT2 analytical gradients by leveraging the existing graphical processing unit (GPU)-based MP2 and Fock routines. We present benchmark results that demonstrate the accuracy and performance of the new method. Example applications of the new method in ab initio molecular dynamics simulation and constrained geometry optimization are given.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Introducing the embedded random phase approximation: H 2 dissociative adsorption on Cu(111) as an exemplar

The random phase approximation (RPA) as a means of treating electron correlation recently has been shown to outperform standard density functional theory (DFT) approximations in a variety of cases. However, the computational cost of the RPA is substantially more than DFT, especially when aiming to study extended surfaces. Properly accounting for sufficient surface ensemble size, Brillouin zone sampling, and vacuum separation of periodic images in standard periodic-planewave-based DFT code raises the cost to achieve converged results. Here, we show that sub-system embedding schemes enable use of the RPA for modeling heterogeneous reactions at reduced computational cost. Further, we explore two different embedded RPA (emb-RPA) approaches, periodic emb-RPA and cluster emb-RPA. We use the (experimentally and theoretically) well-studied H 2 dissociative adsorption on Cu(111) as our exemplar, and first perform full periodic RPA calculations as a benchmark. The full RPA results match well the semi-empirical barrier fit to experimental observables and others derived from high-level computations, e.g., from recent embedded n-electron valence second order perturbation theory [Zhao et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 16(11), 7078–7088 (2020)] and quantum Monte Carlo [Doblhoff-Dier et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 13(7), 3208–3219 (2017)] simulations. Among the two emb-RPA approaches tested, the cluster emb-RPA accurately reproduces the energy profile (maximum error of 50 meV along the reaction pathway) while reducing the computational cost by approximately two orders of magnitude. We therefore expect that the embedded cluster approach will enable wider RPA implementation in heterogeneous catalysis.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Evolution of shape and collectivity along the Ge isotopic chain: The case of 80 Ge

In this work, the shape and collectivity of 80 Ge were investigated via a sub-barrier-energy Coulomb excitation measurement using the JANUS setup at the NSCL ReA3 facility. The 80 Ge spectroscopic quadrupole moment $Q_{s}(2^{+}_{1})$ of the $2^{+}_{1}$ state was measured for the first time, and the precision of the 80 Ge $B(E2; 0^{+}_{1}$ → $2^{+}_{1}$) transition strength was increased. The experimental $Q_{s}(2^{+}_{1})$ value indicates a large, prolate deformation for 80 Ge, which is consistent with large-scale shell-model calculations performed for comparison. These results provide important benchmarks for models that try to describe nuclear shape in neutron-rich nuclei near the magic number N=50.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Decoding polymer self-dynamics using a two-step approach

The self-correlation function and corresponding self-intermediate scattering function in Fourier space are important quantities for describing the molecular motions of liquids. This work draws attention to a largely overlooked issue concerning the analysis of these space-time density-density correlation functions of polymers. Here, we show that the interpretation of non-Gaussian behavior of polymers is generally complicated by intrachain averaging of distinct self-dynamics of different segments. By the very nature of the mathematics involved, the averaging process not only conceals critical dynamical information, but also contributes to the observed non-Gaussian dynamics. To fully expose this issue and provide a thorough benchmark of polymer self-dynamics, we perform analyses of coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of linear and ring polymer melts as well as several theoretical models using a “two-step” approach, where interchain and intrachain averagings of segmental self-dynamics are separated. While past investigations primarily focused on the average behavior, our results indicate that a more nuanced approach to polymer self-dynamics is clearly required.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Detecting Anomalies in Time Series Using Kernel Density Approaches

This paper introduces a novel anomaly detection approach tailored for time series data with exclusive reliance on normal events during training. Our key innovation lies in the application of kernel-density estimation (KDE) to scrutinize reconstruction errors, providing an empirically derived probability distribution for normal events post-reconstruction. This non-parametric density estimation technique offers a nuanced understanding of anomaly detection, differentiating it from prevalent threshold-based mechanisms in existing methodologies. In post-training, events are encoded, decoded, and evaluated against the estimated density, providing a comprehensive notion of normality. In addition, we propose a data augmentation strategy involving variational autoencoder-generated events and a smoothing step for enhanced model robustness. The significance of our autoencoder-based approach is evident in its capacity to learn normal representation without prior anomaly knowledge. Through the KDE step on reconstruction errors, our method addresses the versatility of anomalies, departing from assumptions tied to larger reconstruction errors for anomalous events. Our proposed likelihood measure then distinguishes normal from anomalous events, providing a concise yet comprehensive anomaly detection solution. The extensive experimental results support the feasibility of our proposed method, yielding significantly improved classification performance by nearly 10% on the UCR benchmark data.

Frehner, Robin↗

Porting the Kitten Lightweight Kernel Operating System to RISC-V

Hardware design in high-performance computing (HPC) is often highly experimental. Exploring new designs is difficult and time-consuming, requiring lengthy vendor cooperation. RISC-V is an open-source processor ISA that improves the accessibility of chip design, including the ability to do hardware/software co-design using open-source hardware and tools. Co-design allows design decisions to easily flow across the hardware/software boundary and influence future design ideas. However, new hardware designs require corresponding software to drive and test them. Conventional operating systems like Linux are massively complex and modification is time-prohibitive. In this paper, we describe our port of the Kitten lightweight kernel operating system to RISC-V in order to provide an alternative to Linux for conducting co-design research. Kitten's small code base and simple resource management policies are well matched for quickly exploring new hardware ideas that may require radical operating system modifications and restructuring. Our evaluation shows that Kitten on RISC-V is functional and provides similar performance to Linux for single-core benchmarks. This provides a solid foundation for using Kitten in future co-design research involving RISC-V.

Gordon, Nick↗

Direct Numerical Simulation of Transitional and Turbulent Flows Over Multi-Scale Surface Roughness—Part II: The Effect of Roughness on the Performance of a High-Pressure Turbine Blade

Abstract Turbine blades generally present surface roughness introduced in the manufacturing process or caused by in-service degradation, which can have a significant impact on aero-thermal performance. A better understanding of the fundamental physical mechanisms arising from the interaction between the roughness and the turbine flow at engine-relevant conditions can provide insights for the design of blades with improved efficiency and longer operational life. To this end, a high-fidelity numerical framework combining a well-validated solver for direct numerical simulation and a second-order accurate immersed boundary method is employed to predict roughness-induced aero-thermal effects on an LS89 high-pressure turbine (HPT) blade at engine-relevant conditions. Different amplitudes and distributions of surface roughness are investigated and a reference smooth-blade simulation under the same flow conditions is conducted for comparison. Roughness of increasing amplitude progressively shifts the blade suction side boundary layer transition upstream, producing larger values of the turbulent kinetic energy and higher total wake losses. The on-surface data-capturing capabilities of the numerical framework provide direct measurements of the heat flux and the skin friction coefficient, hence offering quantitative information between the surface topology and engineering-relevant performance parameters. This work may provide a benchmark for future numerical studies of turbomachinery flows with roughness.

Engineering↗

SwitchX : Gmin-Gmax Switching for Energy-efficient and Robust Implementation of Binarized Neural Networks on ReRAM Xbars

Memristive crossbars can efficiently implement Binarized Neural Networks (BNNs) wherein the weights are stored in high-resistance states (HRS) and low-resistance states (LRS) of the synapses. We propose SwitchX mapping of BNN weights onto ReRAM crossbars such that the impact of crossbar non-idealities, that lead to degradation in computational accuracy, are minimized. Essentially, SwitchX maps the binary weights in such a manner that a crossbar instance comprises of more HRS than LRS synapses. We find BNNs mapped onto crossbars with SwitchX to exhibit better robustness against adversarial attacks than the standard crossbar mapped BNNs, the baseline. Finally, we combine SwitchX with state-aware training (that further increases the feasibility of HRS states during weight mapping) to boost the robustness of a BNN on hardware. We find that this approach yields stronger defense against adversarial attacks than adversarial training, a state-of the-art software defense. We perform experiments on a VGG16 BNN with benchmark datasets (CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and TinyImagenet) and use Fast Gradient Sign Method (ϵ = 0.05 to 0.3) and Projected Gradient Descent (ϵ = $\frac{2}{255}$ to $\frac{32}{255}$, α = $\frac{2}{255}$) adversarial attacks. We show that SwitchX combined with state-aware training can yield upto ~35% improvements in clean accuracy and ~6–16% in adversarial accuracies against conventional BNNs. Furthermore, an important by-product of SwitchX mapping is increased crossbar power savings, owing to an increased proportion of HRS synapses, which is furthered with state-aware training. We obtain upto ~21–22% savings in crossbar power consumption for state-aware trained BNN mapped via SwitchX on 16 × 16 and 32 × 32 crossbars using the CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 datasets.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

pnnl/oedisi_dopf

OpenEDI - System Integration (OEDI-SI) - PNNL Distributed Optimal Power Flow (DOPF)

Slay, Tylor↗