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At least 721 records · Page 40

Hydrogen Component Leak Rate Quantification for System Risk and Reliability Assessment through QRA and PHM Frameworks: Preprint

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Hydrogen Safety Research and Development (HSR&D) program in collaboration with the University of Maryland's Systems Risk and Reliability Analysis Laboratory (SyRRA) are working to improve reliability and reduce risk in hydrogen systems. This approach strives to use quantitative data on component leaks and failures, together with Prognosis and Health Management (PHM), and Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) to identify at-risk components, reduce component failures and downtime, and predict when components require maintenance. Hydrogen component failures increase facility maintenance cost, facility downtime, and reduce public acceptance of hydrogen technologies, ultimately increasing facility size and cost because of potentially overly conservative requirements. Leaks are a predominant failure mode for hydrogen components. However, uncertainties in the amount of hydrogen emitted from leaking components and the frequency of those failure events limit the understanding of the risks that they present under real-world operational conditions. NREL has deployed a test fixture, the Leak Rate Quantification Apparatus (LRQA), to quantify the mass flow rate of leaking gases from medium and high-pressure components that have failed while in service. Quantitative hydrogen leak rate data from this system could ultimately be used to better inform risk assessment and Regulation Codes and Standards (RCS). Parallel activity explores the use of PHM and QRA techniques to assess and reduce risk, thereby improving safety and reliability of hydrogen systems. The results of QRAs could further provide a systematic and science-based foundation for the design and implementation of RCS, as in the latest versions of the NFPA 2 code for gaseous hydrogen stations. Alternatively, data-driven techniques of PHM could provide new damage diagnosis and health-state prognosis tools. This research will help end users, station owners and operators, and regulatory bodies move towards risk-informed preventative maintenance versus emergency corrective maintenance, reducing cost and improving reliability. Predictive modelling of failures could improve safety and affect RCS requirements such as setback distances at liquid refuelling sites. The combination of leak rate quantification research, PHM, and QRA can lead to better informed models enabling data-based decision to be made for hydrogen system safety improvements.

codes and standards↗

Alignment among environmental programs in higher education: What Food-Energy-Water Nexus concepts are covered in introductory courses?

Interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability (IES) programs are different from other fields because they focus on a complex integration of humanities, social, and natural sciences concepts centered on the interactions of coupled human and natural systems. The interdisciplinary nature of IES programs does not lend itself to traditional discipline-specific concept inventory frameworks for critically evaluating preconceptions and learning. We discuss the results of the first phase of a research project to develop a next generation concept inventory for evaluating interdisciplinary concepts important for introductory IES courses. Using the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus (the intersections/interdependencies of food, energy, and water sectors) as our focus, we conducted a content analysis of eight representative college-level introductory environmental course syllabi and course materials (e.g., textbooks, journal articles, print media) to identify common interdisciplinary FEW Nexus concepts taught in introductory IES courses. Results demonstrate that all IES introductory course materials reference the FEW Nexus. Food, energy, and/or water resources as individual elements of the FEW Nexus are frequently described, but connections between these resource systems are included less often. Biology, energy systems, waste and pollution in the natural environment, agriculture, earth sciences and geology, climate change, behavioral social sciences, and economics concepts are most associated with FEW concepts, hinting at commonalities across IES topics that anchor systems thinking. Despite differences in IES programs, there appears to be some alignment between core concepts being taught at the FEW Nexus in introductory courses.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

jFuzz: A Concolic Whitebox Fuzzer for Java

We present jFuzz, a automatic testing tool for Java programs. jFuzz is a concolic whitebox fuzzer, built on the NASA Java PathFinder, an explicit-state Java model checker, and a framework for developing reliability and analysis tools for Java. Starting from a seed input, jFuzz automatically and systematically generates inputs that exercise new program paths. jFuzz uses a combination of concrete and symbolic execution, and constraint solving. Time spent on solving constraints can be significant. We implemented several well-known optimizations and name-independent caching, which aggressively normalizes the constraints to reduce the number of calls to the constraint solver. We present preliminary results due to the optimizations, and demonstrate the effectiveness of jFuzz in creating good test inputs. The source code of jFuzz is available as part of the NASA Java PathFinder. jFuzz is intended to be a research testbed for investigating new testing and analysis techniques based on concrete and symbolic execution. The source code of jFuzz is available as part of the NASA Java PathFinder.

Jayaraman, Karthick↗

A Collection of Nonlinear Aircraft Simulations in MATLAB

Nonlinear six degree-of-freedom simulations for a variety of aircraft were created using MATLAB. Data for aircraft geometry, aerodynamic characteristics, mass / inertia properties, and engine characteristics were obtained from open literature publications documenting wind tunnel experiments and flight tests. Each nonlinear simulation was implemented within a common framework in MATLAB, and includes an interface with another commercially-available program to read pilot inputs and produce a three-dimensional (3-D) display of the simulated airplane motion. Aircraft simulations include the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, Convair F-106B Delta Dart, Grumman F-14 Tomcat, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom, NASA Langley Free-Flying Aircraft for Sub-scale Experimental Research (FASER), NASA HL-20 Lifting Body, NASA / DARPA X-31 Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability Demonstrator, and the Vought A-7 Corsair II. All nonlinear simulations and 3-D displays run in real time in response to pilot inputs, using contemporary desktop personal computer hardware. The simulations can also be run in batch mode. Each nonlinear simulation includes the full nonlinear dynamics of the bare airframe, with a scaled direct connection from pilot inputs to control surface deflections to provide adequate pilot control. Since all the nonlinear simulations are implemented entirely in MATLAB, user-defined control laws can be added in a straightforward fashion, and the simulations are portable across various computing platforms. Routines for trim, linearization, and numerical integration are included. The general nonlinear simulation framework and the specifics for each particular aircraft are documented.

Frederico R Garza↗

VISILIENCE: An Interactive Visualization Framework for Resilience Analysis using Control-Flow Graph

Soft errors have become one of the major concerns for the error resilience of HPC applications, as those errors can cause HPC applications to generate serious outcomes such as Silent Data Corruptions (SDCs). A large body of approaches has been proposed to analyze the resilience of HPC applications. However, existing studies rarely address the challenges of the analysis result perception. Specifically, resilience analysis techniques often produce a massive volume of unstructured data, making it difficult for programmers to conduct the resilience analysis due to non-intuitive raw data. Furthermore, different analysis models produce diverse results with multiple levels of details, which may create hurdles to compare and explore the resilience of HPC program execution. To this end, we present VISILIENCE, an interactive VISual resILIENCE analysis framework to allow programmers to facilitate the resilience analysis of HPC applications. In particular, VISILIENCE leverages an effective visualization approach Control Flow Graph (CFG) to present a function execution. In addition, three widely-used models for resilience analysis (i.e., Y-Branch, IPAS, and TRIDENT) are seamlessly embedded into the framework for resilience analysis and result comparison. Multiple case studies have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework VISILIENCE.

Jiang, Hailong↗

A Framework for Distributed Rover Control and Three Sample Applications

In order to develop quality control software for multiple robots, a common interface is required. By developing components in a modular fashion with well-defined boundaries, roboticists can write code to program a generic rover, and only require very simple modifications to run on any robot with a properly implemented framework. The proposed framework advances a Generic Rover that could be any rover, from Real World Interface's All Terrain Robot Vehicle Jr. series to the Fido-class rovers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to any other research robot. Using these generic hardware interfaces, software designers and engineers can concentrate on the actual code, and not have to worry about hardware details. In addition to the hardware support framework, three sample applications have been developed to demonstrate the flexibility and extensibility of the framework.

McGuire, Steve↗

Forging the Forge

As part of the NASA Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) effort to revitalize and recommit to our “Dare Unite Explore” vision for the future, the Center is exploring a new strategy to spread the innovation mindset and increase collaboration across the workforce. In order to maintain JSC’s leadership in human spaceflight, there is a need for working at the speed of commercial industry, breaking down silos between organizations, improving innovation and increasing workforce flexibility. Through brainstorming concepts and benchmarking other facilities, the leadership team evaluated several ideas, assessed constraints and derived that an “Innovation Team” was relatively easy to adopt. Modeled after productive teams like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Innovation Foundry and Glenn Research Center's Compass team, JSC is laying the foundation of a new innovation team called the Forge. This team is as much about getting employees tempered in the ways of innovative thinking as it is about refining design studies and hammering out proposals. By the dictionary definition of the verb, forge can mean either to move ahead slowly and steadily or to move with a sudden increase of speed and power. Driving cultural change in a large government organization like NASA often involves slow perseverance with small injections of momentum to forge ahead. Leveraging lessons learned from the Innovation Foundry and Compass, this paper describes how the collaborative, concurrent engineering framework was tailored to JSC’s needs, as well as the aspects that were considered given JSC’s operation-focused, Program-driven landscape. Our process to drive cultural change, the steps taken, and challenges encountered are discussed. The first two pilots of the teaming framework are described with initial results presented in terms of employee engagement and fostering innovation. We also describe the planned future work and next steps to continue to push the initiative forward. Long has the Center been resting on its operations heritage, now we are forging a new path to Dare to expand frontiers, Unite with our partners and Explore space to benefit humanity.

Culture Change↗

Web Based Prognostics and 24/7 Monitoring

We created a general framework for analysts to store and view data in a way that removes the boundaries created by operating systems, programming languages, and proximity. With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3 with JavaScript the distribution of information is limited to only those who lack a browser. We created a framework based on the methodology: one server, one web based application. Additional benefits are increased opportunities for collaboration. Today the idea of a group in a single room is antiquated. Groups will communicate and collaborate with others from other universities, organizations, as well as other continents across times zones. There are many varieties of data gathering and condition-monitoring software available as well as companies who specialize in customizing software to individual applications. One single group will depend on multiple languages, environments, and computers to oversee recording and collaborating with one another in a single lab. The heterogeneous nature of the system creates challenges for seamless exchange of data and ideas between members. To address these limitations we designed a framework to allow users seamless accessibility to their data. Our framework was deployed using the data feed on the NASA Ames' planetary rover testbed. Our paper demonstrates the process and implementation we followed on the rover.

CSS3↗

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and WBS dictionary

This document is intended to provide the framework for defining all work to be accomplished under the proposed contract for the mission support program as defined by Section J-1 Statement of Work (SOW) of the RFP No.8-1-3-TA-50030 dated 11/2/93. The time period of performance of this contract will be from 3/1/94 through to the end of fiscal 1999. In addition to providing the framework for the integration of the cost, schedule, and manpower planning necessary to accomplish this work it establishes the association among the WBS elements, the SOW, and the Technical Proposal.

Cocuzzo, F.↗

Human Systems Integration (HSI) Framework and Training - Shifting the View of HSI for Better Implementation

The Implementation of Human Systems Integration (HSI) presents challenges within the acquisition community for two reasons. The first is that misconceptions of HSI still exist, with many Program Managers (PMs) and leadership uncertain of the value or where to begin. The second is due to an unbalanced approach to HSI in its own framework. These implementation challenges lead to barriers in the early prevention of mishaps. Understanding HSI practices and how they should be implemented in the Acquisition Product Life Cycle (PLC) has been a challenge across the government, leaving the value of HSI unknown and misunderstood with Program Managers. In the case for many acquisition programs, HSI is not implemented in early design, losing the perspective on human capabilities and limitations, creating impacts on human-centered design. Expectations in human performance are not clearly set and operations are baselined with no margin for changes in technology and processes that will affect system performance. The HSI framework addresses total system performance holistically using collaboration as the primary tool. The goal is to create a system with efficiencies while minimizing risk to the operators, maintainers, and support personnel, as well as any collateral personnel and systems. To accomplish this, HSI should be implemented as part of preemptive measures to minimize potential human error and mishaps during the operation phase. Investigative and assessment tools exist that consider events, issues, and other outside influences of a system that may not fall under the current construct of the HSI domains, leaving gaps in early HSI implementation and affecting the prevention of human errors and mishaps. This presentation will outline what NASA HSI is doing to support Early HSI implementation and Operational Performance shifts that affect human performance.

Anthony T Thomas↗

AI for nuclear physics: the EXCLAIM project

An overview of the recent activity of the newly funded EXCLusives with AI and Machine learning (EXCLAIM) collaboration is presented. The main goal of the collaboration is to develop a framework to implement AI and machine learning techniques in problems emerging from the phenomenology of high energy exclusive scattering processes from nucleons and nuclei, maximizing the information that can be extracted from various sets of experimental data, while implementing theoretical constraints from lattice QCD. A specific perspective embraced by EXCLAIM is to use the methods of theoretical physics to understand the working of ML, beyond its standardized applications to physics analyses which most often rely on industrially provided tools, in an automated way.

Analysis and statistical methods↗

Europa Clipper Payload Verification and Validation: Early Architecture and Implementation

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will investigate the Jovian icy moon Europa with a sophisticated payload consisting of a suite of nine instruments. Clipper’s observations will help provide answers to a broad range of scientific objectives related to Europa’s habitability. As the project proceeds through Phase C, we are building confidence in the system’s ability to achieve these science goals by implementing a rigorous payload verification and validation (V&V) program. This paper details the planned structure and implementation of the Europa Clipper payload V&V program as it exists leading up to the project critical design review (CDR), before the bulk of instrument- or payload- level V&V activities have begun. We first explain the context for payload V&V on Europa Clipper, including its interfaces with other parts of the project system. We then describe the taxonomy of V&V concepts and their interrelationships, followed by a discussion on how this framework allows us to codify interfaces, processes, and ideas that are key to a successful V&V program. We focus on key aspects of the planning phases of V&V, especially establishing a complete set of verification items and accurately mapping them into appropriate verification activities. The second half of the paper describes the logistics of implementing this framework onto our actual payload system, including the processes and tools we use to manage and communicate agreements, changes, and risks across the project. We conclude with a reflection on the unique drivers and challenges of the V&V program concept development so far and the work that is planned for phase D implementation.

Srivastava, Priyanka↗

DER Cybersecurity R&D

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted more than 30 assessments for utilities across the United States with a cybersecurity assessment tool based on the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (C2M2) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and focused on business process. With funding from the DOE Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Federal Energy Management Program, NREL modified the current cyber governance assessment tool to include an assessment process specifically for distributed energy resources (DERs). The Distributed Energy Resources Cybersecurity Framework (DER-CF) was developed to help federal agencies mitigate gaps in their cybersecurity posture for distributed energy systems.

cybersecurity valuation↗

Idiomatic Correctness-Checking via Julienne in Fortran 2023

This paper presents a unified approach to unit testing and runtime assertion checking using Fortran 2023. The paper describes the support for our approach in the Julienne framework. Julienne leverages recent Fortran standards to implement object-oriented design patterns, support testing parallel programs, and implement functional programming patterns in order to craft idioms inspired by natural-language expressions. The presented idioms employ novel operators to write expressions that evaluate to a test-diagnosis object encapsulating two components: (1) the test outcome or assertion outcome and (2) an automatically generated diagnostic string. Two other novel aspects of the approach include (1) the ability to enforce assertions inside pure procedures and (2) the ability to output rich diagnostic information inside pure procedures during error termination when assertions fail. The latter capability mitigates against a reason that Fortran programmers commonly cite for not writing pure procedures: difficulty obtaining useful program output inside pure procedures when debugging code. This paper demonstrates how the adoption of the proposed idioms leads naturally to a unifying theme across two otherwise disparate technologies: unit testing and runtime assertion checking. Finally, this paper describes the usage of the Julienne testing framework for writing unit tests and assertions in the Matcha high-performance computing application and the Fiats deep learning library.

Rouson, Damian↗

Developing CORBA-Based Distributed Scientific Applications From Legacy Fortran Programs

An efficient methodology is presented for integrating legacy applications written in Fortran into a distributed object framework. Issues and strategies regarding the conversion and decomposition of Fortran codes into Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) objects are discussed. Fortran codes are modified as little as possible as they are decomposed into modules and wrapped as objects. A new conversion tool takes the Fortran application as input and generates the C/C++ header file and Interface Definition Language (IDL) file. In addition, the performance of the client server computing is evaluated.

Sang, Janche↗

Rocket Engine Numerical Simulator (RENS)

Work is being done at three universities to help today's NASA engineers use the knowledge and experience of their Apolloera predecessors in designing liquid rocket engines. Ground-breaking work is being done in important subject areas to create a prototype of the most important functions for the Rocket Engine Numerical Simulator (RENS). The goal of RENS is to develop an interactive, realtime application that engineers can utilize for comprehensive preliminary propulsion system design functions. RENS will employ computer science and artificial intelligence research in knowledge acquisition, computer code parallelization and objectification, expert system architecture design, and object-oriented programming. In 1995, a 3year grant from the NASA Lewis Research Center was awarded to Dr. Douglas Moreman and Dr. John Dyer of Southern University at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to begin acquiring knowledge in liquid rocket propulsion systems. Resources of the University of West Florida in Pensacola were enlisted to begin the process of enlisting knowledge from senior NASA engineers who are recognized experts in liquid rocket engine propulsion systems. Dr. John Coffey of the University of West Florida is utilizing his expertise in interviewing and concept mapping techniques to encode, classify, and integrate information obtained through personal interviews. The expertise extracted from the NASA engineers has been put into concept maps with supporting textual, audio, graphic, and video material. A fundamental concept map was delivered by the end of the first year of work and the development of maps containing increasing amounts of information is continuing. Find out more information about this work at the Southern University/University of West Florida. In 1996, the Southern University/University of West Florida team conducted a 4day group interview with a panel of five experts to discuss failures of the RL10 rocket engine in conjunction with the Centaur launch vehicle. The discussion was recorded on video and audio tape. Transcriptions of the entire proceedings and an abbreviated video presentation of the discussion highlights are under development. Also in 1996, two additional 3year grants were awarded to conduct parallel efforts that would complement the work being done by Southern University and the University of West Florida. Dr. Prem Bhalla of Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, is developing the architectural framework for RENS. By employing the Rose Rational language and Booch Object Oriented Programming (OOP) technology, Dr. Bhalla is developing the basic structure of RENS by identifying and encoding propulsion system components, their individual characteristics, and cross-functionality and dependencies. Dr. Ruknet Cezzar of Hampton University, located in Hampton, Virginia, began working on the parallelization and objectification of rocket engine analysis and design codes. Dr. Cezzar will use the Turbo C++ OOP language to translate important liquid rocket engine computer codes from FORTRAN and permit their inclusion into the RENS framework being developed at Jackson State University. The Southern University/University of West Florida grant was extended by 1 year to coordinate the conclusion of all three efforts in 1999.

Davidian, Kenneth O.↗

Toward a high-fidelity tritium transport modeling for retention and permeation experiments

We report Tritium Migration Analysis Program version 8 (TMAP8), the latest version of TMAP, was developed within the framework of the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE). Created at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), MOOSE is an open-source, dimension-agnostic, fully coupled, and fully implicit multiphysics platform featuring massively parallel computation capabilities. Using TMAP8, tritium transport in a divertor monoblock was analyzed to elucidate the effects of pulsed operation (up to fifty 1,600 s plasma discharge and cool-down cycles) on the tritium in-vessel inventory source term and ex-vessel release term (i.e., tritium retention and permeation) for safety analysis. With its built-in Message Passing Interface capability, TMAP8 can, in under 2 h, simulate tritium transport in three different layered materials (i.e., tungsten, copper, and copper-chromium-zirconium alloy) in 2D geometry, using a single device/computer with 10 cores. The MOOSE-based TMAP8 code can leverage other MOOSE tools developed under the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program to perform tritium and thermal transport in complex geometries and multiphysics environments. And via its massively parallel computation, MOOSE will enable the fusion pilot plant designers to conduct high-fidelity multiphysics modeling for the design of the divertor and blanket systems as well as for the safety analysis.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗