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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 739 records · Page 41
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Enhancing Docking Accuracy with PECAN2, a 3D Atomic Neural Network Trained without Co-Complex Crystal Structures

Decades of drug development research have explored a vast chemical space for highly active compounds. The exponential growth of virtual libraries enables easy access to billions of synthesizable molecules. Computational modeling, particularly molecular docking, utilizes physics-based calculations to prioritize molecules for synthesis and testing. Nevertheless, the molecular docking process often yields docking poses with favorable scores that prove to be inaccurate with experimental testing. To address these issues, several approaches using machine learning (ML) have been proposed to filter incorrect poses based on the crystal structures. However, most of the methods are limited by the availability of structure data. Here, we propose a new pose classification approach, PECAN2 (Pose Classification with 3D Atomic Network 2), without the need for crystal structures, based on a 3D atomic neural network with Point Cloud Network (PCN). The new approach uses the correlation between docking scores and experimental data to assign labels, instead of relying on the crystal structures. We validate the proposed classifier on multiple datasets including human mu, delta, and kappa opioid receptors and SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. Our results demonstrate that leveraging the correlation between docking scores and experimental data alone enhances molecular docking performance by filtering out false positives and false negatives.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Machine learning prediction of the mechanical properties of refractory multicomponent alloys based on a dataset of phase and first principles simulation

In this work, a dataset including structural and mechanical properties of refractory multicomponent alloys was developed by fusing computations of phase diagram (CALPHAD) and density functional theory (DFT). The refractory multicomponent alloys, also named refractory complex concentrated alloys (CCAs) which contain 2–5 types of refractory elements were constructed based on Special Quasi-random Structure (SQS). The phase of alloys was predicted using CALPHAD and the mechanical property of alloys with stable and single body-centered cubic (BCC) at high temperature (over 1,500°C) was investigated using DFT-based simulation. As a result, a dataset with 393 refractory alloys and 12 features, including volume, melting temperature, density, energy, elastic constants, mechanical moduli, and hardness, were produced. To test the capability of the dataset on supporting machine learning (ML) study to investigate the property of CCAs, CALPHAD, and DFT calculations were compared with principal components analysis (PCA) technique and rule of mixture (ROM), respectively. It is demonstrated that the CALPHAD and DFT results are more in line with experimental observations for the alloy phase, structural and mechanical properties. Furthermore, the data were utilized to train a verity of ML models to predict the performance of certain CCAs with advanced mechanical properties, highlighting the usefulness of the dataset for ML technique on CCA property prediction.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Assessment of Machine Learning for Ultrasonic Nondestructive Evaluation of Alkali–Silica Reaction in Concrete

Alkali–silica reaction (ASR) is a type of material degradation in concrete structures that leads to concrete cracking and rebar corrosion, thereby reducing the material’s structural integrity and the overall structure’s lifetime and raising safety concerns. Ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation (NDE) has been proven to be a valuable technique for assessing concrete properties and monitoring ASR progression in concrete. However, the deployment and analysis of ultrasonic NDE and its data requires specialized expertise, often relying on the engineer’s subjective interpretation. With the surge in computational power, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms have become popular in automating NDE data analysis. Various industrial sectors are increasingly adopting ML algorithms for NDE data analysis with a growing emphasis on AI–assisted automation. Regulatory agencies are also preparing for this technological shift, anticipating corresponding revisions in standards. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify the capabilities and limitations of current ML technologies for the evaluation of concrete material properties and damage status. Furthermore, the effects of various factors on ML model performance must be thoroughly investigated. The study summarized herein evaluated the effectiveness of two ML models (i.e., support vector regression (SVR) and deep neural network (DNN)) in predicting concrete material damage induced by ASR based on the long-term ultrasonic monitoring data. Four distinct concrete specimens were cast with artificially induced ASR, and over a period exceeding 500 days, ultrasonic signals and expansion data were continuously collected. For the SVR model, wave velocity and 12 other wave features were extracted from the ultrasonic signals, with 6 out of 13 features selected as input for the model. Different combinations of training and testing datasets were designed to explore factors influencing prediction performance, including the range of data within training and testing sets, in addition to various signal preprocessing methodologies. These findings suggest the importance of using a training dataset with a broader data range compared with testing datasets for improved model performance alongside consistent signal preprocessing across datasets.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

FAIR Data and Interpretable AI Framework for Architectured Metamaterials

Our interdisciplinary effort successfully generated FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) benchmark datasets for mechanical metamaterials while introducing a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework known as Learning Refined Compositional Rules (LRCR). This framework was specifically designed to bridge the gap across varying computational length scales and extract the underlying physical mechanisms that connect a material's structural geometry to its bulk acoustic properties. Historically, the discovery of such structured materials relied heavily on human intuition or opaque, black-box optimization algorithms that were difficult to generalize. By combining interpretable machine learning techniques with rigorous experimental validation, this project established clear, generalizable design guidelines for tuning wave dispersion and controlling vibrations. Ultimately, the public availability of these structured datasets and algorithms will significantly reduce computational costs and accelerate the design of advanced multi-functional acoustic devices, offering broad societal impacts across fields like aerospace engineering, telecommunications, and biomedical implant design.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

CP decomposition for tensors via alternating least squares with QR decomposition

The CP tensor decomposition is used in applications such as machine learning and signal processing to discover latent low-rank structure in multidimensional data. Computing a CP decomposition via an alternating least squares (ALS) method reduces the problem to several linear least squares problems. The standard way to solve these linear least squares subproblems is to use the normal equations, which inherit special tensor structure that can be exploited for computational efficiency. However, the normal equations are sensitive to numerical ill-conditioning, which can compromise the results of the decomposition. In this paper, we develop versions of the CP-ALS algorithm using the QR decomposition and the singular value decomposition, which are more numerically stable than the normal equations, to solve the linear least squares problems. Our algorithms utilize the tensor structure of the CP-ALS subproblems efficiently, have the same complexity as the standard CP-ALS algorithm when the input is dense and the rank is small, and are shown via examples to produce more stable results when ill-conditioning is present. Our MATLAB implementation achieves the same running time as the standard algorithm for small ranks, and we show that the new methods can obtain lower approximation error.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

High-dimensional data analytics in civil engineering: A review on matrix and tensor decomposition

Recent developments in sensing and monitoring techniques have led to the generation of high-dimensional data in the field of civil engineering. High-dimensional data analytics methods have thus been developed to interpret such complex data. Among the different high-dimensional data analytics techniques, matrix and tensor decomposition methods have acquired a notable interest in the civil engineering community over the past decade. Due to their unique ability to deal with highly redundant and correlated data, these methods are establishing themselves as promising and efficient tools to analyze high-dimensional data in the civil engineering arena. In this paper, high-dimensional data is referred to as a data set in which the number of features is comparable or larger than the number of observations. This review paper aims to summarize the applications of matrix and tensor decomposition methods in civil engineering over the last decade. The survey begins with a general overview of matrix and tensor decomposition followed by highlighting their significance in the field. Afterward, various applications of these high-dimensional data analytics methods in civil engineering are presented, while the advantages offered by these methods are discussed. Lastly, challenges and potential research avenues for employing matrix and tensor decomposition and future emerging trends for their novel use are highlighted.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

PDB-IHM: A System for Deposition, Curation, Validation, and Dissemination of Integrative Structures

Structures of many large biomolecular assemblies are now being determined using integrative approaches. In these approaches, information derived from multiple experimental and computational methods is combined to compute three-dimensional structures of multi-protein complexes and other macromolecular machines. A standalone prototype data resource for integrative structures called PDB-Dev was built, based on recommendations of the Integrative and Hybrid Methods (IHM) Task Force of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB). This effort included developing data standards and software tools for collecting, curating, validating, visualizing, archiving, and disseminating integrative structures that span diverse spatiotemporal scales and conformational states. Mechanisms have been created to validate integrative structures based on the experimental data underpinning them. Building upon this foundational framework, PDB-Dev has been further expanded to handle large dynamic macromolecular systems and integrative structures that combine, for example, experimental restraints with atomic coordinates computed by machine learning algorithms. Data standards and supporting tools have also been extended to capture information about biomolecular dynamics, such as conformational transitions and related kinetic data derived from biophysical methods. Recently, PDB-Dev was unified with the PDB archive and rebranded as PDB-IHM (pdb-ihm.org), further promoting FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles of data stewardship for integrative structural biology.

IHMCIF↗
DOE OSTI2026

In Situ UV–vis Quantification of Chlorobasicity in Binary Molten Chlorides

Optical basicity measurements provide a basis for determining the relative chlorobasicity of a given molten salt composition. This study uses Bi3+ as a spectroscopic probe to investigate optical basicity across three binary molten chloride systems (LiCl-KCl, MgCl2–KCl, and ZnCl2–KCl) through in situ UV–vis spectroscopy measurements of the 1S0→3P1 transition. LiCl-KCl systems exhibit the highest optical basicity with minimal compositional dependence, while both divalent systems show stronger, yet nonlinear, dependence that is reminiscent of acid–base titration curves. The influence of cation electronegativity and polarizing power (Li+ < Mg2+ < Zn2+) directly reflects the basicity curves, with ZnCl2–KCl displaying the steepest gradients and lowest basicity values. Nonlinear dependencies in divalent systems indicate formation of chloride-bridged network structures with coordination states dictated by the amount of KCl in a salt composition, which was further investigated and validated by molecular dynamics simulations of polymeric structures formed in ZnCl2 and MgCl2-based salts using machine learning force fields. The temperature dependence of chlorobasicity in terms of optical basicity was investigated, and a loose, positive correlation between the two was revealed. These findings establish Bi3+ as a sensitive probe for understanding electronic environments in molten chloride systems and provide insights for predicting the chemical behavior of molten salts for use in high-temperature environments.

Buttice, Kailee [Department of Nuclear Engineering↗
DOE OSTI2017

Adsorption of CO on Low-Energy, Low-Symmetry Pt Nanoparticles: Energy Decomposition Analysis and Prediction via Machine-Learning Models

We present a systematic analysis of CO adsorption on Pt nanoclusters in the 0.2–1.5 nm size range with the aim of unraveling size-dependent trends and developing predictive models for site-specific adsorption behavior. Using an empirical-potential-based genetic algorithm and density functional theory (DFT) modeling, we show that there exists a size window (40–70 atoms) over which Pt nanoclusters bind CO weakly, the binding energies being comparable to those on (111) or (100) facets. The size-dependent adsorption energy trends are, however, distinctly nonmonotonic and are not readily captured using traditional descriptors such as d-band energies or (generalized) coordination numbers of the Pt binding sites. Instead, by applying machine-learning algorithms, we show that multiple descriptors, broadly categorized as structural and electronic descriptors, are essential for qualitatively capturing the CO adsorption trends. Nevertheless, attaining quantitative accuracy requires further refinement, and we propose the use of an additional descriptors—the fully frozen adsorption energy—that is a computationally inexpensive probe of CO–Pt bond formation. With these three categories of descriptors, we achieve an absolute mean error in CO adsorption energy prediction of 0.12 eV, which is similar to the underlying error of DFT adsorption calculations. Our approach allows for building quantitatively predictive models of site-specific adsorbate binding on realistic, low-symmetry nanostructures, which is an important step in modeling reaction networks as well as for rational catalyst design in general.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Biomimetic Control over Bimetallic Nanoparticle Structure and Activity via Peptide Capping Ligand Sequence

Here, the controlled design of bimetallic nanoparticles (BNPs) is a key goal in tailoring their catalytic properties. Recently, biomimetic pathways demonstrated potent control over the distribution of different metals within BNPs, but a direct understanding of the peptide effect on the compositional distribution at the interparticle and intraparticle levels remains lacking. We synthesized two sets of PtAu systems with two peptides and correlated their structure, composition, and distributions with the catalytic activity. Structural and compositional analyses were performed by a combined machine learning-assisted refinement of X-ray absorption spectra and Z-contrast measurements by scanning transmission electron microscopy. The difference in the catalytic activities between nanoparticles synthesized with different peptides was attributed to the details of interparticle distribution of Pt and Au across these markedly heterogeneous systems, comprising Pt-rich, Au-rich, and Au core/Pt shell nanoparticles. The total amount of Pt in the shells of the BNPs was proposed to be the key catalytic activity descriptor. This approach can be extended to other systems of metals and peptides to facilitate the targeted design of catalysts with the desired activity.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

The northeast materials database for magnetic materials

The discovery of magnetic materials with high operating temperature ranges and optimized performance is essential for advanced applications. Current data-driven approaches are limited by the lack of accurate, comprehensive, and feature-rich databases. This study aims to address this challenge by using Large Language Models (LLMs) to create a comprehensive, experiment-based, magnetic materials database named the Northeast Materials Database (NEMAD), which consists of 67,573 magnetic materials entries (www.nemad.org). The database incorporates chemical composition, magnetic phase transition temperatures, structural details, and magnetic properties. Enabled by NEMAD, we trained machine learning models to classify materials and predict transition temperatures. Our classification model achieved an accuracy of 90% in categorizing materials as ferromagnetic (FM), antiferromagnetic (AFM), and non-magnetic (NM). The regression models predict Curie (Néel) temperature with a coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of 0.87 (0.83) and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 56K (38K). These models identified 25 (13) FM (AFM) candidates with a predicted Curie (Néel) temperature above 500K (100K) from the Materials Project. This work shows the feasibility of combining LLMs for automated data extraction and machine learning models to accelerate the discovery of magnetic materials.

Ferromagnetism↗
DOE OSTI2021

Forming mechanism of equilibrium and non-equilibrium metallurgical phases in dissimilar aluminum/steel (Al–Fe) joints

Abstract Forming metallurgical phases has a critical impact on the performance of dissimilar materials joints. Here, we shed light on the forming mechanism of equilibrium and non-equilibrium intermetallic compounds (IMCs) in dissimilar aluminum/steel joints with respect to processing history (e.g., the pressure and temperature profiles) and chemical composition, where the knowledge of free energy and atomic diffusion in the Al–Fe system was taken from first-principles phonon calculations and data available in the literature. We found that the metastable and ductile (judged by the presently predicted elastic constants) Al 6 Fe is a pressure ( P ) favored IMC observed in processes involving high pressures. The MoSi 2 -type Al 2 Fe is brittle and a strong P -favored IMC observed at high pressures. The stable, brittle η-Al 5 Fe 2 is the most observed IMC (followed by θ-Al 13 Fe 4 ) in almost all processes, such as fusion/solid-state welding and additive manufacturing (AM), since η-Al 5 Fe 2 is temperature-favored, possessing high thermodynamic driving force of formation and the fastest atomic diffusivity among all Al–Fe IMCs. Notably, the ductile AlFe 3 , the less ductile AlFe, and most of the other IMCs can be formed during AM, making AM a superior process to achieve desired IMCs in dissimilar materials. In addition, the unknown configurations of Al 2 Fe and Al 5 Fe 2 were also examined by machine learning based datamining together with first-principles verifications and structure predictions. All the IMCs that are not P- favored can be identified using the conventional equilibrium phase diagram and the Scheil-Gulliver non-equilibrium simulations.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Delocalization error poisons the density-functional many-body expansion

The many-body expansion is a fragment-based approach to large-scale quantum chemistry that partitions a single monolithic calculation into manageable subsystems. This technique is increasingly being used as a basis for fitting classical force fields to electronic structure data, especially for water and aqueous ions, and for machine learning. Here, we show that the many-body expansion based on semilocal density functional theory affords wild oscillations and runaway error accumulation for ion–water interactions, typified by F − (H 2 O) N with N ≳ 15. We attribute these oscillations to self-interaction error in the density-functional approximation. The effect is minor or negligible in small water clusters, explaining why it has not been noticed previously, but grows to catastrophic proportion in clusters that are only moderately larger. This behavior can be counteracted with hybrid functionals but only if the fraction of exact exchange is ≳50%, whereas modern meta-generalized gradient approximations including ωB97X-V, SCAN, and SCAN0 are insufficient to eliminate divergent behavior. Other mitigation strategies including counterpoise correction, density correction (i.e., exchange–correlation functionals evaluated atop Hartree–Fock densities), and dielectric continuum boundary conditions do little to curtail the problematic oscillations. In contrast, energy-based screening to cull unimportant subsystems can successfully forestall divergent behavior. These results suggest that extreme caution is warranted when the many-body expansion is combined with density functional theory.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Discovering exceptionally hard and wear-resistant metallic glasses by combining machine-learning with high throughput experimentation

Lack of crystalline order in amorphous alloys, commonly called metallic glasses (MGs), tends to make them harder and more wear-resistant than their crystalline counterparts. However, finding inexpensive MGs is daunting; finding one with enhanced wear resistance is a further challenge. Relying on machine learning (ML) predictions of MGs alone requires a highly precise model; however, incorporating high-throughput (HiTp) experiments into the search rapidly leads to higher performing materials even from moderately accurate models. Here, we exploit this synergy between ML predictions and HiTp experimentation to discover new hard and wear-resistant MGs in the Fe–Nb–B ternary material system. Several of the new alloys exhibit hardness greater than 25 GPa, which is over three times harder than hardened stainless steel and only surpassed by diamond and diamond-like carbon. This ability to use less than perfect ML predictions to successfully guide HiTp experiments, demonstrated here, is especially important for searching the vast Multi-Principal-Element-Alloy combinatorial space, which is still poorly understood theoretically and sparsely explored experimentally.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

SymProp: Scaling Sparse Symmetric Tucker Decomposition via Symmetry Propagation

Sparse symmetric tensors are an important class of tensors, and their decompositions serve as powerful tools for revealing low-rank structures. This paper introduces SymProp, a novel approach for scaling sparse symmetric Tucker decomposition by propagating symmetry through intermediate computations. SymProp optimizes two key computational kernels: Sparse Symmetric Tensor Times Same Matrix chain (S3 TTMc) for Higher-Order Orthogonal Iteration (HOOI) and Sparse Symmetric Tensor Times Same Matrix chain Times Core (S3 TTMcTC) for Higher-Order QR Iteration (HOQRI). Our method employs a metaprogramming-based index iteration approach to efficiently handle the upper triangular parts of intermediate dense symmetric tensors. SymProp achieves up to 50.9× speedup over SPLATT and up to 360.8× over Compressed Sparse Symmetric (CSS) format on the S3 TTMc operation. Moreover, our S3 TTMc and S3 TTMcTC implementations support tensor orders four levels higher than state-of-the-art methods. Our HOQRI demonstrates superior scalability and up to a 33.6× speedup over optimized HOOI. By enabling more scalable Tucker decompositions for higher orders, decomposition ranks, and dimension sizes, SymProp opens new possibilities for analyzing complex hypergraph structures in fields such as network science, data mining, and machine learning.

Li, Zecheng [North Carolina State University]↗
DOE OSTI2018

DeepAnnotator

Given a collection of pairs ((A) written material such as reports, phrases, bulleted lists, etc., (B) structured labels called annotations) called the training data, we want to create software to take future written material (A) and correctly predict (B). In this case we have used medical reports and medical coder's structured labels as our training data. The software builds a machine learning model of type deep learning, specifically a convolutional neural network (CNN) using the training data so that when new data arrives in the future the annotations can be predicted.

Christian, JamesB.↗