Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Software development tools”

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 919 records · Page 51
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

PSIP For HDF5 Pilot Project (Final Report)

Productivity and Sustainability Improvement Planning (PSIP) is a lightweight, incremental and iterative approach (much in the same spirit as Agile methodologies) for making routine software process improvements in software projects. It is designed to be easily applied in existing development workflows. Quoting from a November 2019 workshop paper describing PSIP. PSIP breaks from classic software process improvement approaches such as CMM(I), SPICE, ISO 9000 or Six Sigma, in that it trades comprehensive standards and certification-driven assessment for self-defined, internally driven goals. It does, however, carry forward such ideas as having staged models of improvement (like CMM(I)) in the form of progress tracking cards. Additionally, PSIP is more aligned with lean and agile methods; it adopts their emphasis on iterative improvement and continuous learning. At its core, PSIP is an instantiation of the Plan-Do-Check-Act management cycle (PDCA, also known as Plan-Do-Study-Adjust) which provides the foundation for much of the modern software process improvement literature. This situates PSIP within a constellation of bottom-up, inductive software process improvement methods. PSIP is designed around the notion that already overburdened teams can define and carry out a series of small, incremental steps of progression towards improvement goals without significant (there will be some, but the goal is to avoid significant) disruption to ongoing development activities. A key enabling tool in PSIP is the use of Progress Tracking Cards (PTCs) which define the steps of progression towards a given improvement goal. This is the theory of PSIP. The PSIP for HDF5 project was aimed at putting PSIP into practice with the purpose of evaluating its effectiveness in planning and facilitating quality and process improvements in a scientific software project as well as its associated artifacts. The HDF5 project was chosen as a use case to evaluate PSIP for several reasons. First, NNSA labs and LLNL in particular have a keen interest in how HDF5 quality impacts its uptake and sustainability as a community adopted and supported code. Next, HDF5 is a foundational library, a key substrate in the HPC/CSE software stack, and any improvements there realized through this contract will have benefits to many DOE applications depending on it. HDF5 also represents an older, legacy code with technical debts to pay down. These characteristics are similar to many NNSA and even some ECP code projects. But, because HDF5 is an I/O library, it represents a simpler use case within which to study PSIP than a full-fledged and significantly more complex PDE simulation code. We believe these attributes make HDF5 an ideal use case for evaluating PSIP.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Kokkos EcoSystem: Comprehensive Performance Portability For High Performance Computing

State of the art Engineering and Science codes have grown in complexity dramatically over the last two decades. As a consequence application teams have adopted more sophisticated development strategies, leveraging third party libraries, deploying comprehensive testing and using advanced debugging and profiling tools. In todays environment of diverse hardware platforms, these applications also desire performance portability - avoiding the need to duplicate work for various platforms - which makes it necessary that these tools and libraries also work across the various systems. The Kokkos EcoSystem provides that portable software stack. Based on the Kokkos Core Programming Model, the EcoSystem provides math libraries, interoperability capabilities with Python and Fortran, and Tools for analysing, debugging, and optimizing applications. In this paper we will provide an overview of the components, discuss some specific use cases, and highlight how co-designing these components enables a more developer friendly experience.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

MOOSE: A Modular Platform for Fission and Fusion Multiphysics

The Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) Framework, as well as MOOSE-based simulation tools, have accelerated the development of fission energy and advanced reactor technologies through the United States Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Science, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling & Simulation (NEAMS) Program. MOOSE contains a complete platform of multiphysics simulation capabilities, capable of running on massively parallel systems, and is developed in an open-source manner with great attention paid to high-quality software quality assurance practices. This overall approach could greatly benefit the fusion energy community, which requires rapid design iteration and improvement in order to facilitate the successful development of fusion as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels. In the first half of this talk, applications of MOOSE and MOOSE-based tools for advanced reactor designs will be showcased, as well as MOOSE ecosystem infrastructure (such as the NEAMS Virtual Test Bed) that enables and accelerates fission reactor design. In the second half, a discussion of how the MOOSE approach to modeling and simulation is currently being applied internationally in fusion energy research and development at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority will be discussed, and ongoing/future domestic research efforts will be highlighted.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Developing a Vorticity-Velocity-Based Off-Body Solver to Perform Multifidelity Simulations of Wind Farms

Wind power has become a key player in satisfying the global energy needs. With increased market penetration, unanticipated unsteady loading induced failures, installation related reductions in power generation, and significant maintenance costs have underscored the need to predict the unsteady fluid-structure interactions related to turbine layout and off-design wind conditions. Contemporary turbine design tools are incapable of accounting for such loadings. As a result, researchers have started utilizing high-Performance-Computing (HPC) based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solvers, such as the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored ExaWind software package, to investigate these phenomena. Unfortunately, such HPC tools are computationally expensive for routine industrial use, often because of the sheer number of cells required to resolve the wake flowfield. This paper describes a preliminary effort to address this issue by developing a vorticity-velocity based CFD off-body solver, VorTran-M2-AMReX, that integrates directly with DOE's ExaWind wind turbine analysis system to perform accurate and reliable simulations of wind turbine/farm at a lower computational cost than ExaWind alone. This article summarizes work undertaken to date concerning the assembly of the proposed analysis tool, and provides preliminary validation and verification of the VorTran-M2-AMReX off-body solver.

adaptive mesh refinement↗
DOE OSTI2020

Report of the Atmosphere to Electrons Land-Based Mesoscale-to-Microscale Coupling Project (FY2020)

The overall goal of the Mesoscale-to-Microscale Coupling (MMC) project is to improve coupling between mesoscale and microscale simulations via improved guidance and new strategies for setting up simulations and for the development of new tools that can be used across the community. Including the mesoscale forcing is critical to modeling the full energy transfer across scales in the atmosphere. The project-specific objectives include: 1) To apply rigorous verification and validation (V&V) techniques to the new modeling tools that are developed as part of the project to ensure the accuracy of our codes and results and to develop estimates of the relative uncertainty. 2) To improve computational performance of the coupled MMC models through the development of methods that can be used to reduce turbulence spin-up time and hence the size of computational domains. 3) To improve representation of the surface layer in microscale models to enhance simulations of hub-height wind speed. 4) To develop guidance for the community describing the best ways to couple mesoscale and microscale models, including specific spatial scales at which the handoff to the microscale model should occur. 5) To prepare documentation and a suite of software tools that can be used across the community. And 6) To transition MMC research to the offshore environment. Major progress was made in each of these areas during FY20. The land-based portion of the project is reported herein, while the offshore portion will be reported separately. The team continued to advance the MMC tools and methodologies as well as to document their performance in journal papers and conference presentations, although several planned conferences were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Perspective on Sustainable Computational Chemistry Software Development and Integration

The power of quantum chemistry to predict the ground and excited state properties of complex chemical systems has driven the development of computational quantum chemistry software, integrating advances in theory, applied mathematics, and computer science. The emergence of new computational paradigms associated with exascale technologies also poses significant challenges that require a flexible forward strategy to take full advantage of existing and forthcoming computational resources. In this context, the sustainability and interoperability of computational chemistry software development are among the most pressing issues. In this perspective, we discuss software infrastructure needs and investments with an eye to fully utilize exascale resources and provide unique computational tools for next-generation science problems and scientific discoveries.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Application of Rank-Weight Methods to Blockchain Cybersecurity Vulnerability Assessment Framework

Cybersecurity vulnerability assessment tools, frameworks, and methodologies are used to understand the cybersecurity maturity of a system or a facility. However, these tools are strictly developed based on standards defined by organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Department of Energy; the majority of these tools and frameworks do not provide a platform to prioritize the requirements to reach a desired cybersecurity maturity. To address that challenge, we have been developing a framework and software application called cybersecurity vulnerability mitigation framework through empirical paradigm (CyFEr). CyFEr treats the problem at hand as a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) problem, which requires that various criteria be weighed relatively. Defining those weights is non-trivial and often leads to subjective decisions leading to undesired complications. To facilitate such a weighting system in CyFEr, we evaluated the application of various rank-weight methods (such as rank sum, reciprocal rank, rank exponent, and rank order centroid). The efficacy of those rank-weight methods was evaluated by applying them and testing against the blockchain cybersecurity framework (BC2F). BC2F was developed using the NIST cybersecurity framework to evaluate the cybersecurity posture of the blockchain nodes and networks in a given blockchain application or use-case. This paper provides 1) technical insights on the application of rank-weight methods to cybersecurity vulnerability assessments, 2) an overview of BC2F, 3) the application of rank-weight methods to BC2F, and 4) a depiction of the integration of the discussed rank-weight methods in CyFEr.

Gourisetti, Sri Nikhil G.↗
DOE OSTI2017

The Trinity Center of Excellence Co-Design Best Practices

Co-design between application developers and the vendors providing high-performance computing systems is essential to efficiently using current-generation HPC systems and shaping next-generation architectures. Application developers are faced with the challenge of effectively orchestrating many hardware threads and exploiting vector instructions, which can require code modifications. Will refactoring applications for current-generation systems apply to future-generation systems? Is there help available for this enormous task? Over the past 10 years, a partnership has evolved to address these issues. Centers of Excellence are mutually beneficial collaborations between application developers and vendors; vendors receive a better understanding of the needs of their users, and users receive a better understanding of the characteristics of the hardware, system software, and tools available to address their challenges. Lastly, this article describes the partnership between two vendors, Cray and Intel, and the application teams working together in the Trinity Center of Excellence.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

A Simulation Framework for Battery Cell Impact Safety Modeling Using LS-DYNA

The development process of electrified vehicles can benefit significantly from computer-aided engineering tools that predict themultiphysics response of batteries during abusive events. A coupled structural, electrical, electrochemical, and thermal model framework has been developed within the commercially available LS-DYNA software. The finite element model leverages a three-dimensional mesh structure that fully resolves the unit cell components. The mechanical solver predicts the distributed stress and strain response with failure thresholds leading to the onset of an internal short circuit. In this implementation, an arbitrary compressive strain criterion is applied locally to each unit cell. A spatially distributed equivalent circuit model provides an empirical representation of the electrochemical responsewith minimal computational complexity.The thermalmodel provides state information to index the electrical model parameters, while simultaneously accepting irreversible and reversible sources of heat generation. The spatially distributed models of the electrical and thermal dynamics allow for the localization of current density and corresponding temperature response. The ability to predict the distributed thermal response of the cell as its stored energy is completely discharged through the short circuit enables an engineering safety assessment. A parametric analysis of an exemplary model is used to demonstrate the simulation capabilities.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Anchoring

This software provides methods and functions for training deep image classification models based on the principle of anchoring. It features a user-friendly PyTorch wrapper that facilitates the easy conversion of any model into an anchored model. The software supports various standard datasets and includes scripts for conducting evaluations. Developed with PyTorch, it is compatible with common neural network architectures used for image data. Additionally, it offers tools for computing evaluation metrics to assess model performance.

Narayanaswamy, Vivek Sivaraman↗
DOE OSTI2016

The FaceBase Consortium: A comprehensive resource for craniofacial researchers

The FaceBase Consortium, funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, is designed to accelerate understanding of craniofacial developmental biology by generating comprehensive data resources to empower the research community, exploring high-throughput technology, fostering new scientific collaborations among researchers and human/computer interactions, facilitating hypothesis-driven research, and translating science into improved health care to benefit patients. The resources generated by the FaceBase projects include a number of dynamic imaging modalities, genome-wide association studies, software tools for analyzing human facial abnormalities, detailed phenotyping, anatomical and molecular atlases, global and specific gene expression patterns, and transcriptional profiling over the course of embryonic and postnatal development in animal models and humans. The integrated data visualization tools, faceted search infrastructure, and curation provided by the FaceBase Hub offer flexible and intuitive ways to interact with these multidisciplinary data. In parallel, the datasets also offer unique opportunities for new collaborations and training for researchers coming into the field of craniofacial studies. Here we highlight the focus of each spoke project and the integration of datasets contributed by the spokes to facilitate craniofacial research.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2014

Neutronics Studies of Uranium-bearing Fully Ceramic Micro-encapsulated Fuel for PWRs

Our study evaluated the neutronics and some of the fuel cycle characteristics of using uranium-based fully ceramic microencapsulated (FCM) fuel in a pressurized water reactor (PWR). Specific PWR lattice designs with FCM fuel have been developed that are expected to achieve higher specific burnup levels in the fuel while also increasing the tolerance to reactor accidents. The SCALE software system was the primary analysis tool used to model the lattice designs. A parametric study was performed by varying tristructural isotropic particle design features (e.g., kernel diameter, coating layer thicknesses, and packing fraction) to understand the impact on reactivity and resulting operating cycle length. Moreover, to match the lifetime of an 18-month PWR cycle, the FCM particle fuel design required roughly 10% additional fissile material at beginning of life compared with that of a standard uranium dioxide (UO 2 ) rod. Uranium mononitride proved to be a favorable fuel for the fuel kernel due to its higher heavy metal loading density compared with UO 2 . The FCM fuel designs evaluated maintain acceptable neutronics design features for fuel lifetime, lattice peaking factors, and nonproliferation figure of merit.

10 SYNTHETIC FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Methodology and Software for Gross Defect Detection of Spent Nuclear Fuel at the Atucha-I Reactor [Novel Methodology and Software for Spent Fuel Gross Defect Detection at the Atucha-I Reactor]

Here, fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool are stored by suspending them in two vertically stacked layers at the Atucha Unit 1 nuclear power plant (Atucha-I). This introduces the unique problem of verifying the presence of fuel in either layer without physically moving the fuel assemblies. Given that the facility uses both natural uranium and slightly enriched uranium at 0.85 wt% 235 U and has been in operation since 1974, a wide range of burnups and cooling times can exist in any given pool. A gross defect detection tool, the spent fuel neutron counter (SFNC), has been used at the site to verify the presence of fuel up to burnups of 8000 MWd/t. At higher discharge burnups, the existing signal processing software of the tool was found to fail due to nonlinearity of the source term with burnup.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Contingency Contractor Optimization Phase 3 Sustainment Verification and Validation V&V) Report - Contingency Contractor Optimization Engineering - Prototype

The reports and test plans contained within this document serve as supporting materials to the activities listed within the “Contingency Contractor Optimization Tool – Prototype (CCOT-P) Verification & Validation Plan” [1]. The activities included test development, testing, peer reviews, and expert reviews. The engineering prototype reviews were done for both the software and the mathematical model used in CCOT-P. Section 2 includes the peer and expert review reports, which summarize the findings from each of the reviews and document the resolution of any issues. Section 3 details the test plans that were followed for functional testing of the application through the interface. Section 4 describes the unit tests that were run on the code.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

LLVM Infrastructure and Tools Project Summary

This project works with the open source LLVM Compiler Infrastructure (http://llvm.org) to provide tools and capabilities that address needs and challenges faced by ECP community (applications, libraries, and other components of the software stack). Our focus is on providing a more productive development environment that enables (i) improved compilation times and code generation for parallelism, (ii) additional features/capabilities within the design and implementations of LLVM components for improved platform/performance portability and (iii) improved aspects related to composition of the underlying implementation details of the programming environment, capturing resource utilization, overheads, etc. -- including runtime systems that are often not easily addressed by application and library developers.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2018

Prototype System for Detecting Interactions between Current Plant Configuration States and Component Manipulations Directed by In-Use Procedures

This research effort is a part of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, which is a research and development (R&D) program sponsored by the Department of Energy. The LWRS Program is performed in close collaboration with industry R&D programs that provide the technical foundations for licensing and managing the long term, safe, and economical operation of current nuclear power plants (NPPs). The LWRS Program serves to help the United States (U.S.) nuclear industry adopt new technologies and engineering solutions that facilitate the continued safe operation of these NPPs and extension of their current operating licenses. The Outage Risk Management Improvement Pilot Project seeks to improve the management of nuclear power plant outages through the development of tools to assist in evaluating pending activities against requirements to detect undesired interactions. Significant efforts are expended to manage the nuclear risk of an outage. The utilities conduct pre outage risk assessments, based on a very detailed review of the outage schedule, to identify where combinations of outage work and equipment out of service would result in degraded conditions with respect to nuclear safety or regulatory compliance. Probabilistic risk assessment studies are conducted to quantify the incremental core damage frequency as a result of the outage activities and system unavailability. These studies are usually presented to site and fleet management, the site plant operational review committee, and the NPP’s independent Nuclear Safety Review Board for concurrence that the outage is planned safely and that reasonable measures have been taken to reduce the added risk of conducting the outage. During the outage, the plant configuration is monitored continuously to ensure that it conforms to the approved safety plan. Deviations must be assessed and approved by management committees and, in some cases, the plant operational review committee. In virtually all outage meetings and job briefings, the current nuclear safety status of the plant is communicated, including information on the specific equipment that is being relied on to meet the requirements of the nuclear safety plan. In addition, Operations and the Outage organizations implement several layers of physical and administrative barriers to prevent unintended interaction with the systems and equipment credited for nuclear safety. In spite of all these efforts, nuclear safety challenges still occur too frequently in outages. While some of these are due to failures of equipment credited for safety, the majority occur because of human error. These typically involve some form of interaction between work activities and plant configuration changes. Some of them are very subtle and are extremely challenging to detect in advance. Nevertheless, they are not acceptable and represent clear opportunities to improve nuclear safety during outages. This project will develop tools and strategies to minimize these interactions. This report describes a prototype tool designed to support plant personnel in controlling work during NPP outages to prevent unintended interactions. A software application was created to manage and display important configuration information and utilize natural language processing to access the impacts of upcoming procedures and work orders. Initial industry feedback is also presented.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

AGGREGATE: dAta-driven modelinG preservinG contRollable dEr for outaGe mAnagemenT and rEsiliency (Report for Task 14: Model Verification/Validation Test Plan (Deliverable D10))

This report summarizes the technical progress and validation plan for each of AGGREGATE project modules, and integrated modules. The overall validation plan can be divided into two major parts. Firstly, it provides offline validation results of each module using the IEEE-123 node distribution system with certain modifications to support individual module results verification. The offline validation plan tentatively validated the usability and practicability of developed AGGREGATE tools. Secondly, the realworld test system - Seattle City Light (SCL) test feeder for verifying each module and the integrated modules using GE advanced distribution management system (ADMS) software.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

High-Burnup BWR LOCA Burst Analysis Using High-Fidelity Multiphysics Simulations

The US nuclear industry is looking to improve on the operating economics of the current fleet of light-water reactors (LWRs). One way of achieving this is by operating fuel to higher burnup. In pressurized water reactors (PWRs), relaxing the current burnup limit will allow for cycle length extensions and power uprates; in boiling water reactors (BWRs) it may allow for improved fuel utilization and reduced feed assemblies, as well as more efficient power uprates and increased capacity factors that will support the Administration’s Executive Order to facilitate 5 GW of power uprates at existing nuclear facilities. However, one of the key limitations to operating fuel to higher burnup is the risk of fuel fragmentation, relocation, and dispersal (FFRD). Recognizing the high interest in extending burnup limits, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1434, which defines an approach that would be acceptable to the NRC for addressing FFRD risk. The approach defined will require better understanding of the phenomena leading to FFRD as well as best-estimate simulation methods to understand FFRD risk in high-burnup cores. The Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program is supporting the FFRD industry challenge problem through development of state-of-the-art, high-fidelity modeling and simulation LWR analysis capabilities; namely, the BISON fuel performance code and the VERA core simulator software. These tools, along with the US NRC TRACE system analysis code, have been utilized for analysis of FFRD risk in both PWR and BWR cores in recent years. The work documented in this report addresses the lack of high-fidelity research for BWRs and builds on a previous activity where the framework has been applied to Cycles 16 through 18 of Limerick Unit 1, a BWR/4, with introduction of 8 high-burnup lead use assemblies (HBLUAs) that were representative of the 8 HBLUAs loaded into Limerick Unit 2 in 2021. VERA was used in this previous activity to model rod-by-rod depletion in these cycles, and its solution was used to initialize a TRACE simulation of a large-break loss-of-coolant accident (LBLOCA) at the end of Cycle 18. In the work documented in this report, the TRACE model was improved by refining the core mesh and utilizing a new feature that allows for capturing the full 3D VERA power distribution in the model. This allows for a more detailed solution for setting BISON boundary conditions. Furthermore, the solutions from VERA and TRACE were used to set up and perform BISON simulations of about 1,000 rods sampled from the core, including all burnup levels. Utilizing two cladding burst models, it was shown that no fuel rods were predicted to burst during the postulated LBLOCA transient. Additionally, a sensitivity study was performed by artificially increasing linear heat rate during the postulated LBLOCA to identify parameters that correlate with rod burst susceptibility. Burnup, fission gas release, and hoop strain were all found to be positively correlated with rod burst susceptibility. Small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA) analyses were also performed; these analyses predicted cladding temperature increases that were bounded by the LBLOCA cladding temperatures for all small break sizes studied for this plant. However, future refinements to the plant response assumptions during the SBLOCA could impact the predicted cladding response. Finally, a benchmark study was performed between CTF and TRACE for LOCA conditions to better qualify CTF for BWR LOCA modeling.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗