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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 919 records · Page 51
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Atomic Energy Commission and His Security Clearance, Selected Documents

On April 14, 1954, Laboratory employees were formally notified by a “Special Bulletin to All Employees” (Appendix A) that the Atomic Energy Commission had convened a Personnel Security Board, at the request of J. Robert Oppenheimer, to investigate “substantial derogatory information” about their former director. Long on procedural detail and short on specifics, the Bulletin served primarily as an announcement that “A board was accordingly established for the purpose of hearing the case and advising the Commission as to whether or not suspension of clearance of Dr. Oppenheimer should be made permanent.”

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
NASA NTRS1974

Image dissector control and data system, part 1

A general description of the image dissector control and data system is presented along with detailed design information, operating instructions, and maintenance and trouble-shooting procedures for the four instrumentation packages. The four instrumentation packages include a 90 inch telescope, a simplified telescope module for use on the 90 inch or other telescopes, a photographic plate scanner module which permits the scanning of astronomical photographic plates in the laboratory, and the lunar experiment package module.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1979

International Planetary Patrol observations of Saturn's rings. I - Observations and data reduction

The paper describes the reduction procedure used for observations of Saturn's rings taken with the International Planetary Patrol Network in 1977. Corrections for atmospheric smearing are determined using an assumed ring model and performed by a two-dimensional Wiener filter developed at JPL's Image Processing Laboratory. These smearing corrections are shown to be consistent with the radial profile of the rings, not just on the major axis of the ring system, but over a range of azimuthal angle.

Lumme, K.↗
NASA NTRS1986

A modern space simulation facility to accommodate high production acceptance testing

A space simulation laboratory that supports acceptance testing of spacecraft and associated subsystems at throughput rates as high as nine per year is discussed. The laboratory includes a computer operated 27' by 30' space simulation, a 20' by 20' by 20' thermal cycle chamber and an eight station thermal cycle/thermal vacuum test system. The design philosophy and unique features of each system are discussed. The development of operating procedures, test team requirements, test team integration, and other peripheral activation details are described. A discussion of special accommodations for the efficient utilization of the systems in support of high rate production is presented.

Glover, J. D.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Systems engineering considerations for operational support systems

Operations support as considered here is the infrastructure of people, procedures, facilities and systems that provide NASA with the capability to conduct space missions. This infrastructure involves most of the Centers but is concentrated principally at the Johnson Space Center, the Kennedy Space Center, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It includes mission training and planning, launch and recovery, mission control, tracking, communications, data retrieval and data processing.

Aller, Robert O.↗
DOE OSTI2021

2020 Hyperion Infrasound Sensor Equilibration Evaluation

Sandia National Laboratories has performed testing on several Hyperion 5313A infrasound sensors in order to determine the length of time it takes for the sensors to thermally equilibrate under a variety of environmental conditions. The motivation for performing these tests is to aid in determining suitable procedures for station operators to follow when installing these sensors. The desired outcome is for the station operators to be able to determine more quickly and reliably whether the sensors are performing correctly at the time of installation.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
NASA NTRS1985

Modifications of system for elevated temperature tensile testing and stress-strain measurement of metal matrix composites

Composites consisting of tungsten alloy wires in superalloy matrices are being studied because they offer the potential for increased strength compared to current materials used at temperatures up to at least 1093 C (2000F). Previous research at the NASA Lewis Research Center and at other laboratories in the U.S., Europe, and Japan has demonstrated laboratory feasibility for fiber reinforced superalloys (FRS). The data for the mechanical and physical properties used to evaluate candidate materials is limited and a need exists for a more detailed and complete data base. The focus of this work is to develop a test procedure to provide a more complete FRS data base to quantitatively evaluate the composite's potential for component applications. This paper will describe and discuss the equipment and procedures under development to obtain elevated temperature tensile stress-strain, strength and modulus data for the first generation of tungsten fiber reinforced superalloy composite (TFRS) materials. Tensile stress-strain tests are conducted using a constant crosshead speed tensile testing machine and a modified load-strain measuring apparatus. Elevated temperature tensile tests are performed using a resistance wound commercial furnace capable of heating test specimens up to 1093 C (2000 F). Tensile stress-strain data are obtained for hollow tubular stainless steel specimens serving as a prototype for future composite specimens.

Diaz, J. O.↗
DOE OSTI2020

On the Road to Achieving Safety Excellence at the Idaho Cleanup Project: The Initial Challenges, Solutions, and Positive Results of Striving to be the Best and Safest in the DOE Complex - 20518

When Fluor Idaho, LLC (Fluor Idaho) assumed the Idaho Cleanup Project Core contract (ICP Core) in mid-2016, it inherited the successful multi-faceted, employee-owned safety programs of two prior contractors supporting cleanup operations at the Idaho National Laboratory Site. Fluor Idaho incorporated the best of both safety programs along with Fluor Corporate's 106-year legacy of safety initiatives and successes. Fluor Idaho integrated the separate programs and cultures under a One Fluor approach - one project, one mission, One Fluor. Job changes, management changes, and procedures, processes, and system changes presented multiple challenges. Those challenges combined with the severe Winter of 2016/2017 resulted in numerous slips, trips, and falls first aids and reportable injuries. The road to safety excellence started off bumpy and stayed that way for some time. Since then, Fluor Idaho has successfully implemented several key initiatives including employee engagement; management engagement and time in the field; communications improvements; safety culture sustainment; injury/illness prevention; organizational learning; and DOE Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) readiness and preparation. Management became more engaged by making more workplace visits and increasing their supervision of 'life critical work' or complex activities. Additional training became mandatory for first-line supervisors and front-line workers. Most recently, Fluor Idaho increased its injury and illness prevention initiatives extensively. In the last year, things have turned around in a dramatic way. This shift is directly attributable to the significant number of initiatives launched in late 2017 and 2018. These initiatives addressed safety performance in the five key areas of the DOE VPP and promoted sustainability of the company's safety culture. The five key areas are: management leadership, employee involvement, work-site analysis, hazard prevention and control, and safety and health training. Employees and managers alike recommitted to making safety the highest value. The result of this laser-like focus on safety and accident and injury prevention is that injuries and first aids are a fraction of what they were. During FY 2019, employees worked more than 4.2 million hours without a serious injury or lost work-day and 1 million hours without a recordable injury. Fluor Idaho is proud of its safety trend. The company invested significant resources in improving its safety record, and that investment is paying off. Other contractors in the DOE Complex can learn and benefit from this discussion of the challenges Fluor Idaho faced, as well as its innovative safety initiatives that are producing results that are being recognized by our U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) customer. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2026

Electrocoagulation in Water Treatment: Targeted Contaminant Removal and Laboratory Best Practices

Electrocoagulation for water treatment offers many advantages over traditional treatment technologies, including improved energy efficiency and modularity. One challenge with electrocoagulation is the lack of standardization in the methodology and reporting. This review provides a novel contribution by examining the past literature using a uniform metric (charge loading) as a basis for comparison, highlighting the importance of uniform reporting practices in this field. Furthermore, this review provides practical guidance for experimentalists in standardizing the electrocoagulation design and operating procedures. First, we present a comprehensive overview of contaminant-specific electrocoagulation as an electrochemical treatment technology for processing industrial, municipal, and agricultural water, with a focus on aluminum and iron electrocoagulation. We detail the fundamental mechanisms that allow for constituent removal during pretreatment. Specifically, we highlight electrocoagulation’s potential for organics, metalloids, microbes, and hardness remediation, examining the optimal removal conditions in terms of charge loading and current density. We conclude this work with some experimental best practices for lab-scale electrocoagulation experiments.

aluminum↗
DOE OSTI2026

Alternative Method for Performing As-Built, As-Irradiated Neutronics Analyses

Neutronics analyses have been used to assist in the design, development, and qualification of miniature fuel (MiniFuel) experiments irradiated in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) since their conception almost a decade ago. In recent years, upon completion of a MiniFuel target’s irradiation, neutronics analyses that reflect the as-built, as-irradiated conditions of an experiment have also been performed to validate postirradiation examination (PIE) efforts. Several radiation transport and depletion/activation software wrapper programs have been developed to increase the fidelity of these calculations; at ORNL, a program called HFIRCON is the primary software method employed. However, the utilization of these wrapper programs comes at a cost. To produce accurate results, the radiation transport portion of these analyses requires significant time and resources to execute. Therefore, this report discusses an alternative methodology for calculating some of the desired output for PIE validation—specifically, the output used in evaluating the experiment’s fuel burnup—without complete reliance on ORNL’s wrapper program. The alternative method is not a new software but rather a procedure for utilizing the depletion/activation software, SCALE, in conjunction with limited input data and reasonable assumptions to bypass most of the radiation transport calculations and thereby reduce the time required for the completion of a standard analysis.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Improvement of Drop‐Hammer Impact Testing for Safety Assessment of High Explosives Using 10‐mg Samples

Here, in this study, we established an improved method for drop-hammer impact testing of small quantities of high explosives (10 mg). We performed about seven hundred impact tests under various experimental conditions (e.g., sandpaper vs bare anvil, different sample masses, drop-weights, and striker diameters) to determine an optimal set of conditions and reaction detection methods (e.g., gas analysis, video, and sound recordings) that give the most statistically reliable results with 10 mg samples. We used both Frequentist and Bayesian statistical approaches to compare estimates of the drop height (DH50) that initiates a reaction 50% of the time, and to quantify the associated uncertainty. Gas analysis proved to be the most reliable reaction detection method, showing unambiguous rises in HE decomposition products (e.g., CO 2 ) even when the other indicators (e.g., sound, video) were inconclusive. The impact tests performed with a bare anvil showed much better reproducibility than those conducted with sandpaper, reducing the largest uncertainty observed in the data sets by a factor of 1.7. The DH 50 values obtained from three different sample masses (10, 20, and 35 mg) fell within the uncertainties of the measurements. We demonstrated the improved procedure (i.e., 10-mg samples, gas analysis, bare anvil, and Bayesian approach) on a variety of PETN samples having different surface areas and thermal histories.

PETN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Comparative evaluation and selection of heat exchangers using multicriteria decision-making

Here, this study presents a well-structured method for comparing and selecting Heat Exchanger (HE) technologies for Integrated Energy Systems (IES). The decision to select a HE for a particular IES configuration can vary greatly depending not only on engineering requirements but also on customer’s specific demand. In other words, the HE selection for IES requires a multicriteria decision-making approach, taking into account diverse technical, economic, and safety aspects, as well as the relative priorities considered by energy users. This study employs a HE evaluation approach combining multicriteria decision-making techniques widely used in various industries: quality function deployment (QFD) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques. Of particular interest is the use of the proposed method to select a high-temperature HEs that couples advanced nuclear reactors and industrial processes. To build a practical basis for comparing HEs within the proposed framework, efforts were made to identify the various HEs requirements for IES purposes. In addition, leveraging the insights obtained from the literature review and the market survey of commercial HE suppliers, a knowledge base was built to facilitate the comparison of each requirement across various HE designs. Also, evaluation metrics were identified for HE requirements with robust rational to enhance the quality of decisions made throughout the proposed evaluation process. The evaluation procedure and knowledge base described in this study can provide a useful basis for those interested in screening the appropriate HE designs for various IES scenarios.

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)↗
DOE OSTI2026

Diffusion of NiH on Ni(111) and of Ni with Adsorbed H on Ni(111) in the Context of Ni Coarsening in Solid Oxide Cells

In the Ni-based hydrogen electrode of a solid oxide cell (SOC), Ni coarsening is an important degradation mechanism and could be enhanced by NiH diffusing on the Ni particle surfaces. Here, in this work, the average lifetime and diffusion distance of NiH on Ni(111) are computed using density-functional theory and kinetic Monte Carlo methods. It is found that NiH is extremely short-lived and, thus, cannot promote coarsening in the SOC. Also, the diffusion of Ni on Ni(111) is shown to be at most slightly accelerated by H along NiH dissociation paths involving the movement of Ni with a nearby H. Based on this result, coarsening is not likely to be dramatically accelerated by the diffusion of Ni with H on Ni(111). However, support is provided for the experimental procedure of measuring the product of surface coverage and single-species diffusivity of Ni on Ni(111) in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

Ni coarsening↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hierarchical Network Partitioning for Solution of Potential-Driven, Steady-State Nonlinear Network Flow Equations

The solution of potential-driven steady-state flow in large networks is a task which manifests in various engineering applications, such as transport of natural gas or water through pipeline networks. The resultant system of nonlinear equations depends on the network topology, and in general, there is no numerical algorithm that offers guaranteed convergence to the solution (assuming a solution exists). Some methods offer guarantees in cases where the network topology satisfies certain assumptions, but these methods fail for larger networks. On the other hand, the Newton-Raphson algorithm offers a convergence guarantee if the starting point lies close to the (unknown) solution. It would be advantageous to compute the solution of the large nonlinear system through the solution of smaller nonlinear sub-systems wherein the solution algorithms (Newton-Raphson or otherwise) are more likely to succeed. Here, this letter proposes and describes such a procedure, a hierarchical network partitioning algorithm that enables the solution of large nonlinear systems corresponding to potential-driven steady-state network flow equations.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

mmbo (Multi-modal Bayesian Optimization) [SWR-25-119]

This package implements Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) based surrogate models for multi-modal data. These models are fit using a custom Variational Bayes procedure leveraging conjugate posteriors in the last layer of the network, offering more accurate predictions with better-calibrated uncertainty quantification than mean-field Variational Bayes.

Taylor, Ian [National Laboratory of the Rockies (N↗
DOE OSTI2021

Resilience Service Framework Using Transactive Systems Valuation Methodology

Recent outage events have spurred national and international interest in improving grid resilience. Actions to make the grid more resilient must be valued against their costs and benefits. This is the goal of this report. We explore a resilience valuation framework, where the services procured by the utility are arranged such that the values associated with them are pinpointed. This is demonstrated by utilizing various diagrams developed in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Transactive System Program, called the Transactive Systems Valuation Methodology (TSVM). We show that TSVM can be utilized to guide traditional valuation methodologies such as integrated resource planning so that resilience considerations can be embedded. This report demonstrates this using a three-step procedure: (1) a use case is developed to define functional requirements, (2) value identification of the utility and the actors with which it interacts (both inside and outside its internal functions), and (3) value tracking of activity performed by actors interacting with the utility while services are procured to enable a resilient grid.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS1971

The NOL ballistic piston compressor 2: Operation up to 5,000 ATM

Experiments are described which demonstrated the feasibility of rapidly compressing inert gases in a ballistic piston compressor to simultaneously high temperatures and densities previously unobtainable in the laboratory. With argon, temperatures of the order of 6000 K and accompanying densities of the order of 100 Amagats have been obtained; and with nitrogen, temperatures and densities of 3000 K and 400 Amagats have been approached. Details of the design, assembly, instrumentation, and operating procedures are presented, and the results of mechanical and thermal performance tests up to 5000 atmospheres pressure are described. Emphasis is placed on experiments which demonstrated the usefulness of this apparatus for spectral line broadening studies.

Hammond, G. L.↗
NASA NTRS1970

Programmed Multiphasic Health Testing

Multiphase health screening procedures are advocated for detection and prevention of disease at an early stage through risk factor analysis. The use of an automated medical history questionnaire together with scheduled physical examination data provides a scanning input for computer printout. This system makes it possible to process laboratory results from 1,000 to 2,000 patients for biochemical determinations on an economically feasible base.

Hershberg, P. I.↗