Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Applications”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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

At least 901 records · Page 50
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2015

Layered Thermal Insulation Systems for Industrial and Commercial Applications

From the high performance arena of cryogenic equipment, several different layered thermal insulation systems have been developed for industrial and commercial applications. In addition to the proven areas in cold-work applications for piping and tanks, the new Layered Composite Insulation for Extreme Environments (LCX) has potential for broader industrial use as well as for commercial applications. The LCX technology provides a unique combination of thermal, mechanical, and weathering performance capability that is both cost-effective and enabling. Industry applications may include, for example, liquid nitrogen (LN2) systems for food processing, liquefied natural gas (LNG) systems for transportation or power, and chilled water cooling facilities. Example commercial applications may include commercial residential building construction, hot water piping, HVAC systems, refrigerated trucks, cold chain shipping containers, and a various consumer products. The LCX system is highly tailorable to the end-use application and can be pre-fabricated or field assembled as needed. Product forms of LCX include rigid sheets, semi-flexible sheets, cylindrical clam-shells, removable covers, or flexible strips for wrapping. With increasing system control and reliability requirements as well as demands for higher energy efficiencies, thermal insulation in harsh environments is a growing challenge. The LCX technology grew out of solving problems in the insulation of mechanically complex cryogenic systems that must operate in outdoor, humid conditions. Insulation for cold work includes equipment for everything from liquid helium to chilled water. And in the middle are systems for LNG, LN2, liquid oxygen (LO2), liquid hydrogen (LH2) that must operate in the ambient environment. Different LCX systems have been demonstrated for sub-ambient conditions but are capable of moderately high temperature applications as well.

thermal conductivity↗
NASA NTRS2022

Application Table: A Bridge Connecting the Designing “With-The-Material” and “The-Material” Paradigms

Over the last few decades, advances in high-performance computing, new material characterization methods, and, more recently, an emphasis on integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) have been a catalyst for multiscale modeling and simulation-based design of materials and structures in the aerospace industry. In 2016 NASA sponsored a 2040 Vision study (which appeared in 2018) to define the potential 25-year future state required for integrated multiscale modeling of materials and systems (e.g., load-bearing structures) to accelerate the pace and reduce the expense of innovation in future aerospace and aeronautical systems. The study envisions a cyber-physical-social ecosystem comprised of experimentally verified and validated (V & V) computational models, tools, and techniques, along with the associated digital tapestry, that impacts the entire supply chain to enable cost-effective, rapid, and revolutionary design of “fit-for-purpose” materials, components, and systems. Consequently, the development of a robust information management system that incorporates (across the full life cycle) both experimental (real data) and virtual data resulting from the application of various simulation tools (at single or multiple length scales), therefore enabling the virtual design and optimization of materials throughout their processing – internal structure – property – performance envelope, has become critical. This need is also fueled by the demands for higher efficiency in material testing; consistency, quality, and traceability of data; product design; engineering analysis; as well as control of access to proprietary or sensitive information. This is particularly true when attempting to merge ICME practices with recent additive manufacturing technology which will enable production of the resulting 2040 Vision material and structural designs. At NASA Glenn Research Center we are exploring the future of material science through the use of novel characterization methodologies, high performance computing, and recently an emphasis on integrated computational materials engineering (ICME). Herein, recent efforts to incorporate an Application Table within NASA Glenn Research Center’s ICME Granta MI database is presented. The goal is to provide a place where material and structural application information/requirements can be linked so as to marry the “design the-material” and the “design-with-material” paradigms and thereby enable application-driven design and optimization of materials and structures by providing a central location that links material processing at various length scales to the application’s performance requirements. This paper discusses the specifics of this Application Table as well as best practices and key principles for the development of a robust materials information management system to enable the 2040 Vision integrated materials and structures ecosystem. Furthermore, it presents the intended role of the Application Table in the future of ICME design of “fit-for-purpose” materials, showing the need for a well-established framework that can successfully bridge the gap between the design “the material” and design “with-the-material” paradigms.

Materials↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Leveraging Existing Satellite Precipitation Missions for AOS Applications Development

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) seeks to explore fundamental questions of how interconnections between aerosols, clouds and precipitation impact our weather and climate, addressing real-world challenges to benefit society. AOS will provide key information to enhance the communities’ ability to improve weather and air quality forecasting today, seasonal to sub-seasonal changes in the near future, and societal challenges resulting from climate change in the decades to come. A fundamental component of the AOS mission is ensuring that applications are considered to the greatest extent possible in mission design.As a result, the Applications Impact Team (AIT) was implemented to address this objective.The overarching goal of the AIT is to help improve the capacity for transitioning science to applications to make it possible to more quickly and effectively inform decisions that will directly benefit society. We seek to maximize AOS benefit to impact decisions through early engagement in the mission development phase in order to prepare stakeholders to apply observations as soon as AOS mission data becomes available.To support these efforts, we leverage existing mission applications activities and initiatives, such as NASA’s GPM and TROPICS missions, to form a framework to enhance precipitation applications for AOS. Engaging with existing missions helps identify and understand data needs, gaps and opportunities for current and future stakeholders, determine what precipitation data products are of highest value and use, and helps connect stakeholders with current mission data that can serve as AOS proxy data, among others. In this presentation, we provide an overview of AOS AIT activities and initiatives and highlight how existing satellite precipitation missions and their applications activities can play a critical role in AOS applications development during mission design.

Andrea Portier↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Application Table: A Bridge Connecting the Designing “With-the-Material” and “the-Material”

Over the last few decades, advances in high-performance computing, new material characterization methods, and, more recently, an emphasis on integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) have been a catalyst for multiscale modeling and simulation-based design of materials and structures in the aerospace industry. In 2016 NASA sponsored a 2040 Vision study (which appeared in 2018) to define the potential 25-year future state required for integrated multiscale modeling of materials and systems (e.g., load-bearing structures) to accelerate the pace and reduce the expense of innovation in future aerospace and aeronautical systems. The study envisions a cyber-physical-social ecosystem comprised of experimentally verified and validated (V & V) computational models, tools, and techniques, along with the associated digital tapestry, that impacts the entire supply chain to enable cost-effective, rapid, and revolutionary design of “fit-for-purpose” materials, components, and systems. Consequently, the development of a robust information management system that incorporates (across the full life cycle) both experimental (real data) and virtual data resulting from the application of various simulation tools (at single or multiple length scales), therefore enabling the virtual design and optimization of materials throughout their processing – internal structure – property – performance envelope, has become critical. This need is also fueled by the demands for higher efficiency in material testing; consistency, quality, and traceability of data; product design; engineering analysis; as well as control of access to proprietary or sensitive information. This is particularly true when attempting to merge ICME practices with recent additive manufacturing technology which will enable production of the resulting 2040 Vision material and structural designs. At NASA Glenn Research Center we are exploring the future of material science through the use of novel characterization methodologies, high performance computing, and recently an emphasis on integrated computational materials engineering (ICME). Herein, recent efforts to incorporate an Application Table within NASA Glenn Research Center’s ICME Granta MI database is presented. The goal is to provide a place where material and structural application information/requirements can be linked so as to marry the “design the-material” and the “design-with-material” paradigms and thereby enable application-driven design and optimization of materials and structures by providing a central location that links material processing at various length scales to the application’s performance requirements. This paper discusses the specifics of this Application Table as well as best practices and key principles for the development of a robust materials information management system to enable the 2040 Vision integrated materials and structures ecosystem. Furthermore, it presents the intended role of the Application Table in the future of ICME design of “fit-for-purpose” materials, showing the need for a well-established framework that can successfully bridge the gap between the design “the material” and design “with-the-material” paradigms.

Materials↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A new template for developing C++ applications in NASA's Core Flight System

In this presentation, we will demonstrate an example Core Flight System (cFS) application written in C++, compatible with the Draco releases of the Core Flight Executive (cFE) and NASA Operating System Abstraction Layer (OSAL). The application boilerplate, supporting library, and associated generation script were recently developed and licensed under the permissive Apache License 2.0 with the goal of easing the cFS app development with C++. The design and features of this application will be presented, including a higher-level interface for interactions with the cFE software bus pipes, tables, and event services. Data structures are provided for centralized telecommand and telemetry parsing which isolates bookkeeping of message components from the calling code in an application's core logic. Specific advantages of writing a cFS application in C++ will be shown, including easier avoidance of symbol collisions via namespaces, expanded compile-time checks via constant expressions, default initialization for data structures, null safety via references, improved syntax for operating on multi-dimensional arrays, and reliable serialization of enumerations via enumeration classes. Special considerations needed for integrating a C++ application will be identified, including function linkage, exceptions, and stack unwinding. Evidence for the usefulness of this template will be discussed in the context of development of a flight software application used for interfacing with a solid-state data recorder.

Dominick Allen↗
DOE OSTI2012

Reducing power consumption during execution of an application on a plurality of compute nodes

Methods, apparatus, and products are disclosed for reducing power consumption during execution of an application on a plurality of compute nodes that include: executing, by each compute node, an application, the application including power consumption directives corresponding to one or more portions of the application; identifying, by each compute node, the power consumption directives included within the application during execution of the portions of the application corresponding to those identified power consumption directives; and reducing power, by each compute node, to one or more components of that compute node according to the identified power consumption directives during execution of the portions of the application corresponding to those identified power consumption directives.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Blockchain applicability framework

Technology related to blockchain cybersecurity solutions and a blockchain applicability framework is disclosed. In one example of the disclosed technology, a system is configured to receive parameters for a blockchain candidate application and evaluate the parameters to determine a recommendation for types of blockchain to apply to the candidate application. The recommendation may be based on an evaluation of the parameters to determine a level of applicability of blockchain usage, a level of applicability of one or more blockchain privacy types, and a level of applicability of one or more blockchain consensus types. The system may be configured to calculate an overall percentage distribution of the levels of applicability and to output an indication of the overall percentage distribution.

Gourisetti, Sri Nikhil Gupta↗
DOE OSTI2017

Exploring performance and energy tradeoffs for irregular applications: A case study on the Tilera many-core architecture

High performance, parallel applications with irregular data accesses are becoming a critical workload class for modern systems. In particular, the execution of such workloads on emerging many-core systems is expected to be a significant component of applications in data mining, machine learning, scientific computing and graph analytics. However, power and energy constraints limit the capabilities of individual cores, memory hierarchy and on-chip interconnect of such systems, thus leading to architectural and software trade-os that must be understood in the context of the intended application’s behavior. Irregular applications are notoriously hard to optimize given their data-dependent access patterns, lack of structured locality and complex data structures and code patterns. We have ported two irregular applications, graph community detection using the Louvain method (Grappolo) and high-performance conjugate gradient (HPCCG), to the Tilera many-core system and have conducted a detailed study of platform-independent and platform-specific optimizations that improve their performance as well as reduce their overall energy consumption. To conduct this study, we employ an auto-tuning based approach that explores the optimization design space along three dimensions - memory layout schemes, GCC compiler flag choices and OpenMP loop scheduling options. We leverage MIT’s OpenTuner auto-tuning framework to explore and recommend energy optimal choices for different combinations of parameters. We then conduct an in-depth architectural characterization to understand the memory behavior of the selected workloads. Finally, we perform a correlation study to demonstrate the interplay between the hardware behavior and application characteristics. Using auto-tuning, we demonstrate whole-node energy savings and performance improvements of up to 49:6% and 60% relative to a baseline instantiation, and up to 31% and 45:4% relative to manually optimized variants.

auto tuning↗
DOE OSTI2020

Sonochemical synthesis of carbon dots, mechanism, effect of parameters, and catalytic, energy, biomedical and tissue engineering applications

Carbon-based nanomaterials are gaining more and more interest because of their wide range of applications. In this study, carbon dots (CDs) have shown exclusive interest due to unique and novel physicochemical, optical, electrical, and biological properties. Since their discovery, CDs became a promising material for wide range of research applications from energy to biomedical and tissue engineering applications. At same time several new methods have been developed for the synthesis of CDs. Compared to many of these methods, the sonochemical preparation is a green method with advantages such as facile, mild experimental conditions, green energy sources, and feasibility to formulate CDs and doped CDs with controlled physicochemical properties and lower toxicity. In the last five years, the sonochemically synthesized CDs were extensively studied in a wide range of applications. In this review, we discussed the sonochemical assisted synthesis of CDs, doped CDs and their nanocomposites. In addition to the synthetic route, we will discuss the effect of various experimental parameters on the physicochemical properties of CDs; and their applications in different research areas such as bioimaging, drug delivery, catalysis, antibacterial, polymerization, neural tissue engineering, dye absorption, ointments, electronic devices, lithium ion batteries, and supercapacitors. This review concludes with further research directions to be explored for the applications of sonochemical synthesized CDs.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Programmer-guided reliability for extreme-scale applications

We present “programmer-guided reliability” (PGR) as a systematic conceptual approach to address the expected rise in soft errors in coming extreme-scale systems at the application level. The approach involves instrumentation of the application with code to detect data corruption errors. The location and nature of these error detectors are at the discretion of the programmer, who uses their knowledge and experience with the problem domain, the application, the solution algorithms, etc., to determine the most vulnerable areas of the code and the most appropriate ways to detect data corruption. To illustrate the approach, we provide examples of error detectors from four different benchmark-scale applications. We also describe a simple control framework that allows for runtime configuration of the error detectors without recompilation of the application, as well as dynamic reconfiguration during the execution of the application. Lastly, we discuss a number of future directions building on the basic PGR approach, including the incorporation of some general error detectors into the programming environment in order to make them more easily usable by the programmer.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Understanding the use of message passing interface in exascale proxy applications

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) focuses on the development of future exascale-capable applications. Most ECP applications use the message passing interface (MPI) as their parallel programming model with mini-apps serving as proxies. This paper explores the explicit usage of MPI in such ECP proxy applications. We empirically analyze 14 proxy applications from the ECP Proxy Apps Suite. We use the MPI profiling interface (PMPI) to collect MPI usage patterns in ECP proxy apps. Our analysis shows that a small subset of features from MPI is commonly used in the proxies of exascale-capable applications, even when they reference third-party libraries. Overall, this study is intended to provide a better understanding of the use of MPI in current exascale applications. The findings can help focus software investments made for exascale systems in the MPI middleware including optimization, fault-tolerance, tuning, and hardware-offload.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

SOMA: Observability, monitoring, and in situ analytics for exascale applications

With the rise of exascale systems and large, data-centric workflows, the need to observe and analyze high performance computing (HPC) applications during their execution is becoming increasingly important. HPC applications are typically not designed with online monitoring in mind, therefore, the observability challenge lies in being able to access and analyze interesting events with low overhead while seamlessly integrating such capabilities into existing and new applications. We explore how our service-based observation, monitoring, and analytics (SOMA) approach to collecting and aggregating both application-specific diagnostic data and performance data addresses these needs. Furthermore, we present our SOMA framework and demonstrate its viability with LULESH, a hydrodynamics proxy application. Then we focus on Astaroth, a multi-GPU library for stencil computations, highlighting the integration of the TAU and APEX performance tools and SOMA for application and performance data monitoring.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Integrating Carbon Nanomaterials with Metals for Bio-sensing Applications

Age structure in most developed countries is changing fast as the average lifespan is increasing significantly, calling for solutions to provide improved treatments for age-related neurological diseases and disorders. In order to address these problems, a reliable way of recording information about neurotransmitters from in vitro and in vivo applications is needed to better understand neurological diseases and disorders as well as currently used treatments. Likewise, recent developments in medicine, especially with the opioid crisis, are demanding a swift move to personalized medicine to administer patient needs rather than population-wide averages. In order to enable the so-called personalized medicine, it is necessary to be able to do measurements in vivo and in real time. These actions require sensitive and selective detection of different analytes from very demanding environments. Current state-of-the-art materials are unable to provide sensitive and selective detection of neurotransmitters as well as the required time resolution needed for drug molecules at a reasonable cost. To meet these challenges, we have utilized different metals to grow carbon nanomaterials and applied them for sensing applications showing that there are clear differences in their electrochemical properties based on the selected catalyst metal. Additionally, we have combined atomistic simulations to support optimizing materials for experiments and to gain further understanding of the atomistic level reactions between different analytes and the sensor surface. With carbon nanostructures grown from Ni and Al + Co + Fe hybrid, we can detect dopamine, ascorbic acid, and uric acid simultaneously. On the other hand, nanostructures grown from platinum provide a feasible platform for detection of H 2 O 2 making them suitable candidates for enzymatic biosensors for detection of glutamate, for example. Tetrahedral amorphous carbon electrodes have an ability to detect morphine, paracetamol, tramadol, and O-desmethyltramadol. With carbon nanomaterial-based sensors, it is possible to reach metal-like properties in sensing applications using only a fraction of the metal as seed for the material growth. We have also seen that by using nanodiamonds as growth catalyst for carbon nanofibers, it is not possible to detect dopamine and ascorbic acid simultaneously, although the morphology of the resulting nanofibers is similar to the ones grown using Ni. This further indicates the importance of the metal selection for specific applications. However, Ni as a continuous layer or as separate islands does not provide adequate performance. Thus, it appears that metal nanoparticles combined with fiber-like morphology are needed for optimized sensor performance for neurotransmitter detection. This opens up a new research approach of application-specific nanomaterials, where carefully selected metals are integrated with carbon nanomaterials to match the needs of the sensing application in question.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Brick : Metadata schema for portable smart building applications

Buildings account for 32% of worldwide energy usage. A new regime of exciting new “applications” that span a distributed fabric of sensors, actuators and humans has emerged to improve building energy efficiency and operations management. These applications leverage the technological advances in embedded sensing, processing, networking and methods by which they can be coupled with supervisory control and data acquisition systems deployed in modern buildings and with users on mobile wireless platforms. There are, however, several technical challenges to confront before such a vision of smart building applications and cyber-physical systems can be realized. The sensory data produced by these systems need significant curation before it can be used meaningfully. This is largely a manual, cost-prohibitive task and hence such solutions rarely experience widespread adoption due to the lack of a common descriptive schema. Recent attempts have sought to address this through data standards and metadata schemata but fall short in capturing the richness of relationships required by applications. Here, this paper describes Brick, a uniform metadata schema for representing buildings that builds upon recent advances in the area. Our schema defines a concrete ontology for sensors, subsystems and the relationships between them, which enables portable applications. We demonstrate the completeness and effectiveness of Brick by using it to represent the entire vendor-specific sensor metadata of six diverse buildings across different campuses, comprising 17,700 data points, and running eight unmodified energy efficiency applications on these buildings.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2018

Applications of CALPHAD modeling and databases in advanced lightweight metallic materials

Here this paper presents an overview on the application of CALPHAD (CALculation of Phase Diagrams) methodology in the design and development of advanced lightweight metallic materials including magnesium, aluminum, titanium, aluminum-based metal matrix composites, and high entropy alloys. In this work, CALPHAD methodology has been established and summarized from the construction of databases describing thermodynamics, atomic mobility, kinetics, thermo-physical properties (such as viscosity) to the application of computational design of lightweight materials. The examples in this paper have demonstrated the effectiveness and capability of CALPHAD methodology in accelerating the design of advanced lightweight materials by optimizing the compositions and various heat-treatment conditions, modifying the evolution of microstructures during processing, and finally predicting the mechanical properties (e.g., yield strength and hardness) of the lightweight components. Although the examples are given in lightweight alloys for structural applications, the fundamental methodology and modeling principles are applicable to all materials and engineering applications. Thus, the future of the advanced material design will be strongly based on development of CALPHAD methodology such as the construction of reliable databases coupled with CALPHAD-based models for various applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Regionalization of land use impact models for life cycle assessment: Recommendations for their use on the global scale and their applicability to Brazil

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the main technique for evaluate the environmental impacts of product life cycles. A major challenge in the field of LCA is spatial and temporal differentiation in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods, especially impacts resulting from land occupation and land transformation. Land use characterization modeling has advanced considerably over the last two decades and many approaches have recently included crucial aspects such as geographic differentiation. Nevertheless, characterization models have so far not been systematically reviewed and evaluated to determine their applicability to South America. Given that Brazil is the largest country in South America, this paper analyzes the main international characterization models currently available in the literature, with a view to recommending regionalized models applicable on a global scale for land use life cycle impact assessments, and discusses their feasibility for regionalized assessment in Brazil. The analytical methodology involves classification based on the following criteria: midpoint/endpoint approach, scope of application, area of data collection, biogeographical differentiation, definition of recovery time and reference situation; followed by an evaluation of thirteen scientific robustness and environmental relevance subcriteria. The results of the scope of application are distributed among 25% of the models developed for the European context, and 50% have a global scope. There is no consensus in the literature about the definition of parameters such biogeographical differentiation and reference situation, and our review indicates that 35% of the models use ecoregion division while 40% use the concept of potential natural vegetation. Four characterization models show high scores in terms of scientific robustness and environmental relevance. These models are recommended for application in land use life cycle impact assessments, and also to serve as references for the development or adaptation of regional methodological procedures for Brazil. - Highlights: • A discussion is made on performing regionalized impact assessments using spatial differentiation in LCA. • A review is made of 20 characterization models for land use impacts in Life Cycle Impact Assessment. • Four characterization models are recommended according to different land use impact pathways for application in Brazil.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

A characterization of workflow management systems for extreme-scale applications

We present that the automation of the execution of computational tasks is at the heart of improving scientific productivity. Over the last years, scientific workflows have been established as an important abstraction that captures data processing and computation of large and complex scientific applications. By allowing scientists to model and express entire data processing steps and their dependencies, workflow management systems relieve scientists from the details of an application and manage its execution on a computational infrastructure. As the resource requirements of today’s computational and data science applications that process vast amounts of data keep increasing, there is a compelling case for a new generation of advances in high-performance computing, commonly termed as extreme-scale computing, which will bring forth multiple challenges for the design of workflow applications and management systems. This paper presents a novel characterization of workflow management systems using features commonly associated with extreme-scale computing applications. We classify 15 popular workflow management systems in terms of workflow execution models, heterogeneous computing environments, and data access methods. Finally, the paper also surveys workflow applications and identifies gaps for future research on the road to extreme-scale workflows and management systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2013

Validation of nuclear models used in space radiation shielding applications

A program of verification and validation has been undertaken to assess the applicability of models to space radiation shielding applications and to track progress as these models are developed over time. In this work, simple validation metrics applicable to testing both model accuracy and consistency with experimental data are developed. The developed metrics treat experimental measurement uncertainty as an interval and are therefore applicable to cases in which epistemic uncertainty dominates the experimental data. To demonstrate the applicability of the metrics, nuclear physics models used by NASA for space radiation shielding applications are compared to an experimental database consisting of over 3600 experimental cross sections. A cumulative uncertainty metric is applied to the question of overall model accuracy, while a metric based on the median uncertainty is used to analyze the models from the perspective of model development by examining subsets of the model parameter space.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗