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DOE OSTI2017

FINAL REPORT - Development of High Pressure Hydrogen Storage Tank for Storage and Gaseous Truck Delivery

The “Development of High Pressure Hydrogen Storage Tanks for Storage and Gaseous Truck Delivery” project [DE-FG36-08GO18062] was initiated on 01 July 2008. Hexagon Lincoln (then Lincoln Composites) received grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the design and development of an improved bulk hauling and storage solution for hydrogen in terms of cost, safety, weight and volumetric efficiency. The development of this capability required parallel development and qualification of large all-composites pressure vessels, a custom ISO container to transport and store said tanks, and performance of trade studies to identify optimal operating pressure for the system. Qualification of the 250 bar TITAN® module was completed in 2009 with supervision from the American Bureau of Shipping [ABS], and the equipment has been used internationally for bulk transportation of fuel gases since 2010. Phase 1 of the project was successfully completed in 2012 with the issuance of USDOT SP 14951, the special permit authorizing the manufacture, marking, sale and use of TITAN® Mobile Pipeline® equipment in the United States. The introduction of tube trailers with light weight composite tankage has meant that 2 to 3 times as much gaseous fuel can be transported with each trip. This increased hauling efficiency offers dramatically reduced operating costs and has enabled a profitable business model for over-the-road compressed natural gas delivery. The economic drivers of this business opportunity vary from country to country and region to region, but in many places gas distribution companies have realized profitable operations. Additional testing was performed in 2015 to characterize hydrogen-specific operating protocols for use of TITAN® systems in CHG service at 250 bar. This program demonstrated that existing compression and decompression methodologies can efficiently and safely fill and unload lightweight bulk hauling systems. Hexagon Lincoln and U.S. DOE agreed to continue into Phase 2 of the project without pursuing the development of higher pressure capabilities as originally planned. At 250 bar, development of equipment for hydrogen transport is supported by strong activity in the adjacent natural gas transportation sector. Trade studies performed since 2011 indicate optimization of hauling efficiency and system cost for hydrogen transport at about 350 bar (5076 psi). However, due to reduced efficiency of compression of natural gas above 250 bar, 350 bar operation is not an attractive option for natural gas transportation. The CHG market is not developed at this time, and it is difficult to forecast the arrival of significant revenues. On the investment side, the cost to fully qualify a large tank module at 350 bar is estimated at $3MM to $5MM. There is insufficient CHG market definition to support a stand-alone business case for this investment without near term revenue in the adjacent CNG transportation market. Therefore development of a 350 bar TITAN® system was deferred and not pursued under this project. Hexagon Lincoln continues to support the development of tankage and equipment for operation at 350 bar and above; with 700 bar vehicle tanks and 950 bar tanks for ground storage applications. Phase 2 activities were focused on reducing system cost, increasing system capacity, increasing system safety and characterization of polymer material performance specific to hydrogen pressure vessel usage. With the successful launch of TITAN® modules and trailers in natural gas transportation, over 600 units have been produced through the end of 2016, resulting in improved purchasing power for raw materials and manufactured components. This has allowed Hexagon Lincoln to approach the current project goals for system cost. At $590/kg of compressed hydrogen delivered, the system cost of the baseline TITAN® module is below the project’s 2015 target of $730/kg H2 delivered, and very close to the project’s 2020 target of $575/kg H2 delivered. [Based on product pricing in 1Q2017.] Emphasis was placed on configuration of larger capacity systems within the vehicle weights and dimensions allowed on federal and state highways in the United States and other countries. These activities resulted in the design and development of integrated tube trailer systems that have increased delivery capacities by 45%. The hydrogen delivery capacity of our largest system is 845 kg, exceeding the project’s 2015 target of 700 kg H2 delivered. Emerging technologies offering improvement of the safety systems used on the equipment were investigated, with particular focus on improving the reliability and cost of the emergency venting system for fire protection. Finally, investment in our materials laboratory improved detection and characterization of hydrogen-induced damage in polymer materials, supporting the development of operational protocols to avoid damage to pressure vessel liners and valve components.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2015

A measurement of the proton’s spin structure function g2 at low Q2

JLab E08-027, a measurement of g2p and the longitudinal-transverse (LT) spin polarizability, successfully collected data from March to May, 2012. Nucleon spin structure study has been an active research area, which has attracted a very large effort from both experimentalists and theorists. The spin structure study for the last 2 decades has provided us with many exciting and often surprising results. Recently, new precision results in the low-to-intermediate momentum transfer Q2 region from JLab have provided extensive information on the nucleon structure in the confinement region and the transition region between asymptotic free to confinement. In particular, the extensive comparisons of experimental results with Chiral Perturbation Theory (the effective theory of QCD at low energy) calculations show general good agreements, but strong disagreement in the case of the neutron LT spin polarizability. This experiment completed the measurements of gp2 and the LT spin polarizability on the proton in the low-to-intermediate Q2 region. The experiment used a polarized proton (NH3) target for the first time in Hall A. Scattered electrons were detected by a pair of Hall A high resolution spectrometer (HRS) with a pair of septum magnets. To avoid too much depolarization of the target, beam current was limited to 50-100 nA during the experiment. Since the existing beam current monitors (BCMs), beam position monitors (BPMs) and calibration methods did not work at such a low current range, new BPM and BCM receivers were designed and used for current condition. A pair of super-harps and a tungsten calorimeter were installed to calibrate the BPMs and BCMs. To compensate for the effect of the 2.5/5T transverse magnet field, two chicane dipole magnets were installed. A pair of slow rasters were installed for the first time in Hall A, combining with a pair of fast raster. The standard Hall A DAQ system and the improved high resolution DAQ system were used to record the detector information and the helicity dependent beam information, respectively. In order to achieve the required accuracy of the beam position and angle and reconstruct them event by event at the target location, the data of the BPMs and harps were carefully analyzed. The final uncertainty of BCM after the calibration using the tungsten calorimeter is below 1%, which is important for the asymmetry extraction. Before the acceptance and the dilution factor are available, the models from fitting to the world data were used instead to extract the unpolarized cross section and the dilution factor. The longitudinal and transverse physics asymmetries were extracted and compared with the model, with the study of the radiative correction. The preliminary g1 and g2 results were then extracted using the measured asymmetry and the model.

Zhu, Pengjia↗

DOE OSTI2020

Mesh Failure Prediction Using Deep Learning Techniques

The goal of this joint effort between SRI and LLNL has been to investigate the use of state-of-the-art deep learning architectures to effectively explore the correlations between a set of mesh zone attributes and manifestations of failure in a given mesh simulation and draw useful conclusions towards a practical failure detection system. Each zone attribute is a scalar feature that is recorded separately for each zone during simulation, resulting in a multivariate time series signal for each zone. Currently, these features are used to manually decide where to apply manual relaxations so that simulations run without any failures. Our long-term vision is to build a machine learning system that is capable of reliably detecting upcoming failures and is able to apply finer-grained targeted relaxations automatically to relevant zones to avoid an expected failure.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2023

Design and Development of a High Fidelity Cyber-Physical Testbed

In order to ensure that future critical infrastructure systems are resilient to various types of such advanced and persistent threats, it is important to develop and integrate tailored solutions that holistically address cyber-attack detection and mitigation in a timely manner such that adverse system impacts that impact a large population are avoided. Further, it is essential to create environments that allow control, protection and communication to exist within a realistic environment to analyze the effects of adverse conditions and system operating modes. This project aims to establish a high-fidelity testbed environment for modeling and simulating a single microgrid all the way up to a network of microgrids along with baseline controls, protection, and associated cyber communication. This is an important activity because accurately modeling and simulating the various power-electronics-based DERs and loads in a microgrid is critical to adequately capturing their behaviors over a wide range of off-normal conditions, as well as to evaluate the resilience of the system using the developed controls. The work presented in this report focuses on the process of building this high-fidelity testbed and the associated experimentation it enables. The model enables the creation of high-fidelity use cases and associated datasets that have been used extensively within the initiative to study resilience and support novel control development and prototyping. The work heavily leverages existing capability that is part of the high-fidelity cyber-physical system experimentation lab to create a power hardware-in-the-loop setup. The report also details the creation of an automated model building platform that can enable high-fidelity real-time models to be built without much effort allowing existing low-fidelity models to be analyzed in higher fidelity. Lastly, the report also discusses efforts center around scaling to large complex power system models to make the experimentation more effective.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS1972

Manual control theory applied to air traffic controller-pilot cooperation

Reduced runway separation standards are among the means which have been proposed for increasing airport capacity. The probability of a blunder will dominate the calculation of safe separation standards. Then the determinant of safe system performance will be the system reaction time comprised of the air traffic controller's detection, decision and communication delays, and the response times of the pilot and aircraft in executing a collision avoidance manuever. Estimates of these times, based on existing data, show that the delays ascribable to the human portions of the man-machine system are comparatively unimportant. New developments in radar, computers, and data links will be required to provide any substantial improvement of the existing system, and the goal of 2500 ft of separation may not be achievable.

Graham, D.↗

NASA NTRS1995

Robotic-Vehicle Perception Control For Detecting Obstacles

Obstacle-detection systems designed to make most of limited data-processing resources. Bump or step identified, from stereoscopic images of scene ahead, by obstacle-detection algorithm. If bump or step exceeds specified step height, marked as obstacle, and control actions taken to avoid obstacle.

Grandjean, Pierrick C.↗

NASA NTRS2003

EAGLE Monitors by Collecting Facts and Generating Obligations

We present a rule-based framework, called EAGLE, that has been shown to be capable of defining and implementing a range of finite trace monitoring logics, including future and past time temporal logic, extended regular expressions, real-time and metric temporal logics, interval logics, forms of quantified temporal logics, and so on. A monitor for an EAGLE formula checks if a finite trace of states satisfies the given formula. We present, in details, an algorithm for the synthesis of monitors for EAGLE. The algorithm is implemented as a Java application and involves novel techniques for rule definition, manipulation and execution. Monitoring is achieved on a state-by-state basis avoiding any need to store the input trace of states. Our initial experiments have been successful as EAGLE detected a previously unknown bug while testing a planetary rover controller.

Barrnger, Howard↗

NASA NTRS2007

Application-Program-Installer Builder

A computer program builds application programming interfaces (APIs) and related software components for installing and uninstalling application programs in any of a variety of computers and operating systems that support the Java programming language in its binary form. This program is partly similar in function to commercial (e.g., Install-Shield) software. This program is intended to enable satisfaction of a quasi-industry-standard set of requirements for a set of APIs that would enable such installation and uninstallation and that would avoid the pitfalls that are commonly encountered during installation of software. The requirements include the following: 1) Properly detecting prerequisites to an application program before performing the installation; 2) Properly registering component requirements; 3) Correctly measuring the required hard-disk space, including accounting for prerequisite components that have already been installed; and 4) Correctly uninstalling an application program. Correct uninstallation includes (1) detecting whether any component of the program to be removed is required by another program, (2) not removing that component, and (3) deleting references to requirements of the to-be-removed program for components of other programs so that those components can be properly removed at a later time.

Wolgast, Paul↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Active Thermography Based on Tensor Rank Decomposition

Principal Component Thermography applies Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to post-process data that are derived from active thermographic inspections. SVD provides useful compression of the data and allows for better understanding of substructure and indications of potential damage. In the standard approach, SVD is applied to a certain reshaping of a three-dimensional data stack into a two-dimensional array. This work applies the CANDECOMP-PARAFAC (CP) tensor rank decomposition directly to the three-dimensional data to avoid the initial reshaping step in order to begin to develop an inspection method that can more accurately detect defects in non-homogeneous and anisotropic materials. Tests against simulated data that compare the CP decomposition method with traditional Principal Component Thermography based on SVD are described. Finally, the method of Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD) is used to derive the CP decomposition, and its performance against other algorithms is also discussed.

Thermography↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Thermal Data-driven Model Reduction for Enhanced Battery Health Monitoring

Electric aviation faces a major challenge of avoiding potentially catastrophic consequences of the battery’s thermal runaway while keeping the weight of the battery low. Detection of early warning signals of battery failures requires accurate monitoring of the battery’s health throughout its lifespan. However, identifying the parameters of the battery from field data is notoriously difficult. We investigate this problem within the framework of modeling the temperature dynamics of a Li-ion cell during tests simulating loading in electric aircraft flights. It is found that the parameters of a higher-fidelity physics-based thermal model cannot be identified from the simulated flight data. To resolve this issue, we reduce the higher-fidelity thermal model to a model with fewer parameters. The resulting reduced-order model can predict temperature dynamics accurately and is identifiable throughout the cell’s lifespan which allows using the model’s parameters to monitor the state-of-health of the aging cell and detect anomalies in thermal behavior.

Li ion batteries↗

NASA NTRS2017

A Dynamic Model for the Evaluation of Aircraft Engine Icing Detection and Control-Based Mitigation Strategies

Aircraft flying in regions of high ice crystal concentrations are susceptible to the buildup of ice within the compression system of their gas turbine engines. This ice buildup can restrict engine airflow and cause an uncommanded loss of thrust, also known as engine rollback, which poses a potential safety hazard. The aviation community is conducting research to understand this phenomena, and to identify avoidance and mitigation strategies to address the concern. To support this research, a dynamic turbofan engine model has been created to enable the development and evaluation of engine icing detection and control-based mitigation strategies. This model captures the dynamic engine response due to high ice water ingestion and the buildup of ice blockage in the engines low pressure compressor. It includes a fuel control system allowing engine closed-loop control effects during engine icing events to be emulated. The model also includes bleed air valve and horsepower extraction actuators that, when modulated, change overall engine operating performance. This system-level model has been developed and compared against test data acquired from an aircraft turbofan engine undergoing engine icing studies in an altitude test facility and also against outputs from the manufacturers customer deck. This paper will describe the model and show results of its dynamic response under open-loop and closed-loop control operating scenarios in the presence of ice blockage buildup compared against engine test cell data. Planned follow-on use of the model for the development and evaluation of icing detection and control-based mitigation strategies will also be discussed. The intent is to combine the model and control mitigation logic with an engine icing risk calculation tool capable of predicting the risk of engine icing based on current operating conditions. Upon detection of an operating region of risk for engine icing events, the control mitigation logic will seek to change the engines operating point to a region of lower risk through the modulation of available control actuators while maintaining the desired engine thrust output. Follow-on work will assess the feasibility and effectiveness of such control-based mitigation strategies.

engine control↗

NASA NTRS2017

A Dynamic Model for the Evaluation of Aircraft Engine Icing Detection and Control-Based Mitigation Strategies

engine control↗

NASA NTRS1995

Collision management utilizing CCD and remote sensing technology

With the threat of damage to aerospace systems (space station, shuttle, hypersonic a/c, solar power satellites, loss of life, etc.) from collision with debris (manmade/artificial), there exists an opportunity for the design of a novel system (collision avoidance) to be incorporated into the overall design. While incorporating techniques from ccd and remote sensing technologies, an integrated system utilized in the infrared/visible spectrum for detection, tracking, localization, and maneuvering from doppler shift measurements is achievable. Other analysis such as impact assessment, station keeping, chemical, and optical tracking/fire control solutions are possible through this system. Utilizing modified field programmable gated arrays (software reconfiguring the hardware) the mission and mission effectiveness can be varied. This paper outlines the theoretical operation of a prototype system as it applies to collision avoidance (to be followed up by research).

Mcdaniel, Harvey E., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2011

RFI Mitigation and Detection for the SMAP Radar

The planned Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will use both active radar and passive radiometer instruments at L-Band to measure and monitor both soilmoisture and freeze/thaw state globally. The frequency band allocated for the SMAP radar is shared with the Global Navigation Satellite Systems and ground-basedradiolocation services. Signals from those users present significant sources of anthropogenic radio frequency interference (RFI) which contaminate the radarmeasurements. To mitigate RFI, the radar is designed with tunable operating frequency, which allows the center frequency to be tuned to avoid RFI. The filtering scheme in the receiver is configured to get a high level of RFI suppression. To meet the high accuracy measurement requirements, RFI detection and correction will be required during ground data processing. Some candidate algorithms have been evaluated, and they have been tested against simulated SMAP data derived from the PALSAR data.

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)↗

DOE OSTI2014

Detection of a faint fast-moving near-Earth asteroid using the synthetic tracking technique

We report a detection of a faint near-Earth asteroid (NEA) using our synthetic tracking technique and the CHIMERA instrument on the Palomar 200 inch telescope. With an apparent magnitude of 23 (H = 29, assuming detection at 20 lunar distances), the asteroid was moving at 6.°32 day{sup –1} and was detected at a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 15 using 30 s of data taken at a 16.7 Hz frame rate. The detection was confirmed by a second observation 77 minutes later at the same S/N. Because of its high proper motion, the NEA moved 7 arcsec over the 30 s of observation. Synthetic tracking avoided image degradation due to trailing loss that affects conventional techniques relying on 30 s exposures; the trailing loss would have degraded the surface brightness of the NEA image on the CCD down to an approximate magnitude of 25 making the object undetectable. This detection was a result of our 12 hr blind search conducted on the Palomar 200 inch telescope over two nights, scanning twice over six (5.°3 × 0.°046) fields. Detecting only one asteroid is consistent with Harris's estimates for the distribution of the asteroid population, which was used to predict a detection of 1.2 NEAs in the H-magnitude range 28-31 for the two nights. The experimental design, data analysis methods, and algorithms are presented. We also demonstrate milliarcsecond-level astrometry using observations of two known bright asteroids on the same system with synthetic tracking. We conclude by discussing strategies for scheduling observations to detect and characterize small and fast-moving NEAs using the new technique.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2017

Study of radiative heat transfer in Ångström- and nanometre-sized gaps

Radiative heat transfer in Ångström- and nanometre-sized gaps is of great interest because of both its technological importance and open questions regarding the physics of energy transfer in this regime. Here in this paper we report studies of radiative heat transfer in few Å to 5nm gap sizes, performed under ultrahigh vacuum conditions between a Au-coated probe featuring embedded nanoscale thermocouples and a heated planar Au substrate that were both subjected to various surface-cleaning procedures. By drawing on the apparent tunnelling barrier height as a signature of cleanliness, we found that upon systematically cleaning via a plasma or locally pushing the tip into the substrate by a few nanometres, the observed radiative conductances decreased from unexpectedly large values to extremely small ones—below the detection limit of our probe—as expected from our computational results. Our results show that it is possible to avoid the confounding effects of surface contamination and systematically study thermal radiation in Ångström- and nanometre-sized gaps.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Stability analysis of the Eulerian–Lagrangian finite volume methods for nonlinear hyperbolic equations in one space dimension

In this paper, we construct a novel Eulerian–Lagrangian finite volume (ELFV) method for nonlinear scalar hyperbolic equations in one space dimension. It is well known that the exact solutions to such problems may contain shocks though the initial conditions are smooth, and direct numerical methods may suffer from restricted time step sizes. To relieve the restriction, we propose an ELFV method, where the space-time domain was separated by the partition lines originated from the cell interfaces whose slopes are obtained following the Rakine–Hugoniot junmp condition. Unfortunately, to avoid the intersection of the partition lines, the time step sizes are still limited. To fix this gap, we detect effective troubled cells (ETCs) and carefully design the influence region of each ETC, within which the partitioned space-time regions are merged together to form a new one. Then with the new partition of the space-time domain, we theoretically prove that the proposed first-order scheme with Euler forward time discretization is total-variation-diminishing and maximum-principle-preserving with at least twice larger time step constraints than the classical first order Eulerian method for Burgers’ equation. Numerical experiments verify the optimality of the designed time step sizes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2019

Assessing overall building energy performance of a large population of residential single-family homes using limited field data

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), through the Building Energy Codes Program (BECP), supports building energy code development and implementation processes to achieve the maximum practicable, cost-effective improvements in energy efficiency while providing safe, healthy buildings for occupants. Currently, there is a lack of statistically representative data that shows how energy codes are implemented in the field and the energy savings opportunities that exist. To address this gap, DOE initiated a research study targeted at new residential single-family homes in 8 states starting in the fall of 2014. The study comprises of a baseline phase to determine current levels of compliance with the key energy provisions of the residential building energy code, identify issues, and calculate potential energy savings from improved compliance; a second phase implementing education, training and outreach activities designed to increase targeted code compliance; and a post-study phase to measure the impact of the training and outreach activities compared to the baseline phase. Initial analyses determined the code requirements with the largest energy impact and the minimum number of observations required to detect statistically significant differences in energy use. Data was collected in the field during a single site visit to avoid bias from repeat visits. However, the single site visit principle prevented energy simulation of individual homes due to the lack of all required model inputs. To address this, energy simulation was conducted using Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s prototype building models and employing bootstrap random sampling on the data collected from all homes visited. The modeled energy consumption using the observed field data was evaluated relative to that associated with the minimum code requirements and potential savings associated with improved compliance of select items were assessed. This paper discusses the methodology developed for this field study, and presents the results and findings from the baseline phase.

Xie, YuLong↗