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At least 919 records · Page 51
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

An Overview of the United States Department of Energy's Nuclear Criticality Safety Program and Future Challenges

The United States (US) Department of Energy (DOE)/National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) was formally established in January 1998 as part of the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) Recommendation 97-2 implementation plan. The NCSP was initially focused on seven NCSP tasks: Critical Experiments, Benchmarking, Analytical Methods, Nuclear Data, Training and Qualification, Information Preservation and Dissemination, and Applicable Ranges of Bounding Curves and Data. The first NCSP 5-year plan was published in August 1999. Now, more than 20 years later, NCSP continues to serve the United States and the nuclear criticality safety (NCS) community around five technical program elements (TPEs): Analytical Methods, Information Preservation and Dissemination, Integral Experiments, Nuclear Data, and Training and Education. NCSP has three chartered support groups, the Criticality Safety Support Group, the Nuclear Data Advisory Group, and the DOE Criticality Safety Coordinating Team, all of which provide technical advisement to the NCS community, to DOE, and to the NCSP manager. NCSP has a comprehensive mission and vision document that provides technical and budget priorities for TPE attributes and goals to ensure that the needs of the NCS community and DOE NCS are prioritized appropriately to meet the goals defined by the 1998 DNFSB recommendation. Like any DOE/NNSA program, NCSP faces significant challenges in the future that involves program funding, rising nuclear facility costs, aging critical assembly infrastructure, knowledge retention, and other issues. This paper discusses NCSP and provides some insights into these and other challenges moving into the future.

Bowen, Douglas G.↗
DOE OSTI2020

High-Throughput Optical Mapping for Accelerated Stress Testing of PV Module Materials

The study will provide guidance towards the design and application of larger and/or outdoor-use intended instruments. Measurement capability will be benchmarked against existing specimens, examined in a round-robin study using conventional spectrophotometer instruments. Data acquisition and storage will be integrated into the DuraMAT DataHub network along with data visualization tool, facilitating sharing of information.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Converged accelerated finite difference scheme for the multigroup neutron diffusion equation

Computer codes involving neutron transport theory for nuclear engineering applications always require verification to assess improvement. Generally, analytical and semi-analytical benchmarks are desirable, since they are capable of high precision solutions to provide accurate standards of comparison. However, these benchmarks often involve relatively simple problems, usually assuming a certain degree of abstract modeling. In the present work, we show how semi-analytical equivalent benchmarks can be numerically generated using convergence acceleration. Specifically, we investigate the error behavior of a 1D spatial finite difference scheme for the multigroup (MG) steady-state neutron diffusion equation in plane geometry. Since solutions depending on subsequent discretization can be envisioned as terms of an infinite sequence converging to the true solution, extrapolation methods can accelerate an iterative process to obtain the limit before numerical instability sets in. The obtained results have been compared to the analytical solution to the 1D multigroup diffusion equation when available, using FORTRAN as the computational language. Finally, a slowing down problem has been solved using a cascading source update, showing how a finite difference scheme performs for ultra-fine groups (104 groups) in a reasonable computational time using convergence acceleration. (authors)

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Sub-microsecond Transformers for Jet Tagging on FPGAs

We present the first sub-microsecond transformer implementation on an FPGA achieving competitive performance for state-of-the-art high-energy physics benchmarks. Transformers have shown exceptional performance on multiple tasks in modern machine learning applications, including jet tagging at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, their computational complexity prohibits use in real-time applications, such as the hardware trigger system of the collider experiments up until now. In this work, we demonstrate the first application of transformers for jet tagging on FPGAs, achieving $\mathcal{O}(100)$ nanosecond latency with superior performance compared to alternative baseline models. We leverage high-granularity quantization and distributed arithmetic optimization to fit the entire transformer model on a single FPGA, achieving the required throughput and latency. Furthermore, we add multi-head attention and linear attention support to hls4ml, making our work accessible to the broader fast machine learning community. This work advances the next-generation trigger systems for the High Luminosity LHC, enabling the use of transformers for real-time applications in high-energy physics and beyond.

Laatu, Lauri [Imperial Coll., London]↗
DOE OSTI2010

Large Matched-Index-of-Refraction (MIR) Flow Systems for International Collaboration In Fluid Mechanics

In recent international collaboration, INL and Uni. Erlangen have developed large MIR flow systems which can be ideal for joint graduate student education and research. The benefit of the MIR technique is that it permits optical measurements to determine flow characteristics in complex passages and around objects to be obtained without locating a disturbing transducer in the flow field and without distortion of the optical paths. The MIR technique is not new itself; others employed it earlier. The innovation of these MIR systems is their large size relative to previous experiments, yielding improved spatial and temporal resolution. This report will discuss the benefits of the technique, characteristics of the systems and some examples of their applications to complex situations. Typically their experiments have provided new fundamental understanding plus benchmark data for assessment and possible validation of computational thermal fluid dynamic codes.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2012

Benchmarking of Neutron Production of Heavy-Ion Transport Codes

Accurate prediction of radiation fields generated by heavy ion interactions is important in medical applications, space missions, and in design and operation of rare isotope research facilities. In recent years, several well-established computer codes in widespread use for particle and radiation transport calculations have been equipped with the capability to simulate heavy ion transport and interactions. To assess and validate these capabilities, we performed simulations of a series of benchmark-quality heavy ion experiments with the computer codes FLUKA, MARS15, MCNPX, and PHITS. We focus on the comparisons of secondary neutron production. Results are encouraging; however, further improvements in models and codes and additional benchmarking are required.

benchmarking↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Versatile Simulated Data Transport Layer for in Situ Workflows Performance Evaluation

In situ processing does not only allow scientific applications to face the explosion in data volume and velocity but also to address the time constraints of many simulation-analysis workflows by providing scientists with early insights about their applications at runtime. Multiple frameworks implement the concept of a data transport layer (DTL) to enable such in situ workflows. These tools are very versatile, directly or indirectly access the data generated on the same node, another node of the same compute cluster, or a completely distinct node, and allow data publishers and subscribers to run on the same computing resources or not. This versatility puts on researchers the onus of taking key decisions related to resource allocation and how to transport data to ensure the most efficient execution of their in situ workflows. However, domain scientists and workflow practitioners lack the appropriate tools to assess the respective performance of particular design and deployment options. In this paper we introduce a versatile simulated DTL designed to provide researchers with insights on the respective performance of different execution scenarios of in situ workflows. This open-source, standalone library builds on the SimGrid toolkit and can be linked to any SimGrid-based simulator. It facilitates the evaluation of the performance behavior, at scale, of different data transport configurations and the study of the effects of resource allocation strategies. We demonstrate the scalability, versatility, and accuracy of this simulated DTL by reproducing the execution of two synthetic benchmarks and of a real-world in situ workflow composed of an MPI application and a parallel data analysis. Results of simulations run on a single core show that the proposed library can simulate the interactions of tens of thousands of simulated processes deployed on two interconnected commodity clusters in a few seconds, and the execution by a thousand simulated processes of an in situ workflow in less than three minutes.

Suter, Fred [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000319021955)↗
DOE OSTI2025

Benchmarking Monte Carlo codes for the modelling of low-energy neutron production target reactions

The increasing adoption of accelerator-based neutron sources (ABNS) for applications including neutron capture therapy (NCT) research has highlighted the need for accurate simulation tools. Precise modelling of the neutron production target is crucial to ensure that simulated predictions of neutron beam characteristics used for subsequent beam shaping assembly design are reliable. This work presents a comprehensive benchmarking of four widely-used Monte Carlo codes - Geant4, PHITS, FLUKA (CERN), and MCNP - for modelling low-energy neutron production target reactions. Using their recommended physics models and cross-section libraries, we evaluate each code’s performance in simulating four beam-target reactions: 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be, 9 Be(p,n) 9 B, 9 Be(d,n) 10 B, and C(d,n)N. Predictions of neutron yield, angular distributions, and energy spectra are compared against available thick target experimental data. Results show varying levels of agreement between the codes depending on the reaction type, energy range, and beam characteristics. Geant4, MCNP and PHITS are the overall best performing codes for the simulation of total neutron yield and yield in the forward direction across most reactions. Across energies where experimental benchmarks exist, inter-code discrepancies in total and forward-directed yield are typically 10 to 30%, with larger deviations at near-threshold incident ion energies. PHITS provides the best overall reproduction of experimental spectra, particularly for the 9 Be(p,n) 9 B reaction. Additionally, PHITS demonstrates superior computational performance for most reactions. These findings provide valuable guidance for ABNS design, highlighting the strengths and limitations of each code for the simulation of low-energy neutron production reactions.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2013

A simulation infrastructure for examining the performance of resilience strategies at scale

Fault-tolerance is a major challenge for many current and future extreme-scale systems, with many studies showing it to be the key limiter to application scalability. While there are a number of studies investigating the performance of various resilience mechanisms, these are typically limited to scales orders of magnitude smaller than expected for next-generation systems and simple benchmark problems. In this paper we show how, with very minor changes, a previously published and validated simulation framework for investigating application performance of OS noise can be used to simulate the overheads of various resilience mechanisms at scale. Using this framework, we compare the failure-free performance of this simulator against an analytic model to validate its performance and demonstrate its ability to simulate the performance of two popular rollback recovery methods on traces from real.

Ferreira, Kurt Brian↗
DOE OSTI2011

PEBBED Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis of the CRP-5 PBMR DLOFC Transient Benchmark with the SUSA Code

The need for a defendable and systematic uncertainty and sensitivity approach that conforms to the Code Scaling, Applicability, and Uncertainty (CSAU) process, and that could be used for a wide variety of software codes, was defined in 2008. The GRS (Gesellschaft für Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit) company of Germany has developed one type of CSAU approach that is particularly well suited for legacy coupled core analysis codes, and a trial version of their commercial software product SUSA (Software for Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analyses) was acquired on May 12, 2010. This report summarized the results of the initial investigations performed with SUSA, utilizing a typical High Temperature Reactor benchmark (the IAEA CRP-5 PBMR 400MW Exercise 2) and the PEBBED-THERMIX suite of codes. The following steps were performed as part of the uncertainty and sensitivity analysis: 1. Eight PEBBED-THERMIX model input parameters were selected for inclusion in the uncertainty study: the total reactor power, inlet gas temperature, decay heat, and the specific heat capability and thermal conductivity of the fuel, pebble bed and reflector graphite. 2. The input parameters variations and probability density functions were specified, and a total of 800 PEBBED-THERMIX model calculations were performed, divided into 4 sets of 100 and 2 sets of 200 Steady State and Depressurized Loss of Forced Cooling (DLOFC) transient calculations each. 3. The steady state and DLOFC maximum fuel temperature, as well as the daily pebble fuel load rate data, were supplied to SUSA as model output parameters of interest. The 6 data sets were statistically analyzed to determine the 5% and 95% percentile values for each of the 3 output parameters with a 95% confidence level, and typical statistical indictors were also generated (e.g. Kendall, Pearson and Spearman coefficients). 4. A SUSA sensitivity study was performed to obtain correlation data between the input and output parameters, and to identify the primary contributors to the output data uncertainties. It was found that the uncertainties in the decay heat, pebble bed and reflector thermal conductivities were responsible for the bulk of the propagated uncertainty in the DLOFC maximum fuel temperature. It was also determined that the two standard deviation (2s) uncertainty on the maximum fuel temperature was between ±58oC (3.6%) and ±76oC (4.7%) on a mean value of 1604 oC. These values mostly depended on the selection of the distributions types, and not on the number of model calculations above the required Wilks criteria (a (95%,95%) statement would usually require 93 model runs).

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
NASA NTRS1991

Infrared cooling rate calculations in operational general circulation models - Comparisons with benchmark computations

The performance of several parameterized models is described with respect to numerical prediction and climate research at GFDL, NCAR, and GISS. The radiation codes of the models were compared to benchmark calculations and other codes for the intercomparison of radiation codes in climate models (ICRCCM). Cooling rates and fluxes calculated from the models are examined in terms of their application to established general circulation models (GCMs) from the three research institutions. The newest radiation parameterization techniques show the most significant agreement with the benchmark line-by-line (LBL) results. The LBL cooling rates correspond to cooling rate profiles from the models, but the parameterization of the water vapor continuum demonstrates uncertain results. These uncertainties affect the understanding of some lower tropospheric cooling, and therefore more accurate parameterization of the water vapor continuum, as well as the weaker absorption bands of CO2 and O3 is recommended.

Kiehl, J. T.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Validation Studies using ELK and the Open-Source MOOSE Framework Application Zapdos for Electromagnetic Coupled Plasma Simulation

An open source simulation platform that captures electromagnetics, plasma chemistry, and fluid treatment of the plasma domain would be a powerful tool for studying low temperature plasma (LTP) phenomena. Within the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) open source framework, ELK, CRANE, and Zapdos are combined to provide open source simulation capability for the LTP community. This talk presents continued validation of the general electromagnetic (EM) simulation tool ELK (Electromagnetic Library for Kinetics & fluids). Previous validation efforts focused on simulating standard waveguide and antenna benchmarks in vacuum and linear dielectrics, but ELK has since been coupled with the MOOSE-based plasma fluid application Zapdos [Lindsay et al 2016 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 49 235204] to perform radio-frequency (rf) capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) system simulation. Plasma validation efforts initially focused on electrostatic benchmarks to demonstrate ELK-Zapdos code coupling and then moved to electromagnetic benchmarks based on interesting geometries and conditions (VHF effects in a CCP reactor, microwave heating, etc.). Results and progress in these efforts will be summarized and discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Towards High-Performance AI4NP Applications on Modern GPU Platforms

The evolution of modern heterogeneous accelerators, such as GPUs, has significantly advanced the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI). There is a notable surge to adopt AI within the nuclear physics domain (AI4NP). While most AI4NP studies focus on feasibility analysis, our attention is directed towards evaluating their performance on contemporary GPUs that integrate tensor cores. We first benchmark the throughput of hyperparameterized multi-layer perceptron (MLP) models. We then examine the performance of an AI4NP application: Hydra. We assess the performance gain and accuracy loss caused by the tensor cores for low-precision floating-point operations. Our experiments encompass the PyTorch and TensorFlow Keras frameworks on NVIDIA’s T4 and A100 GPUs. We explore the behavior of different GPU hardware platforms and AI software tools. This study can be a valuable resource for guiding the performance optimization of larger-scale deployments of AI4NP applications.

Mei, Xinxin↗
DOE OSTI2012

A Benchmark Study on Casting Residual Stress

Stringent regulatory requirements, such as Tier IV norms, have pushed the cast iron for automotive applications to its limit. The castings need to be designed with closer tolerances by incorporating hitherto unknowns, such as residual stresses arising due to thermal gradients, phase and microstructural changes during solidification phenomenon. Residual stresses were earlier neglected in the casting designs by incorporating large factors of safety. Experimental measurement of residual stress in a casting through neutron or X-ray diffraction, sectioning or hole drilling, magnetic, electric or photoelastic measurements is very difficult and time consuming exercise. A detailed multi-physics model, incorporating thermo-mechanical and phase transformation phenomenon, provides an attractive alternative to assess the residual stresses generated during casting. However, before relying on the simulation methodology, it is important to rigorously validate the prediction capability by comparing it to experimental measurements. In the present work, a benchmark study was undertaken for casting residual stress measurements through neutron diffraction, which was subsequently used to validate the accuracy of simulation prediction. The stress lattice specimen geometry was designed such that subsequent castings would generate adequate residual stresses during solidification and cooling, without any cracks. The residual stresses in the cast specimen were measured using neutron diffraction. Considering the difficulty in accessing the neutron diffraction facility, these measurements can be considered as benchmark for casting simulation validations. Simulations were performed using the identical specimen geometry and casting conditions for predictions of residual stresses. The simulation predictions were found to agree well with the experimentally measured residual stresses. The experimentally validated model can be subsequently used to predict residual stresses in different cast components. This enables incorporation of the residual stresses at the design phase along with external loads for accurate predictions of fatigue and fracture performance of the cast components.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Gas Gun Model and Comparison to Experimental Performance of Pipe Guns Operating with Light Propellant Gases and Large Cryogenic Pellets

Injection of multiple large (~10 to 30 mm diameter) shattered pellets into ITER plasmas is presently part of the scheme planned to mitigate the deleterious effects of disruptions on the vessel components. To help in the design and optimize performance of the pellet injectors for this application, a model referred to as “the gas gun simulator” has been developed and benchmarked against experimental data. The computer code simulator is a Java program that models the gas-dynamics characteristics of a single-stage gas gun. Following a stepwise approach, the code utilizes a variety of input parameters to incrementally simulate and analyze the dynamics of the gun as the projectile is launched down the barrel. Using input data, the model can calculate gun performance based on physical characteristics, such as propellant-gas and fast-valve properties, barrel geometry, and pellet mass. Although the model is fundamentally generic, the present version is configured to accommodate cryogenic pellets composed of H2, D2, Ne, Ar, and mixtures of them and light propellant gases (H2, D2, and He). The pellets are solidified in situ in pipe guns that consist of stainless steel tubes and fast-acting valves that provide the propellant gas for pellet acceleration (to speeds ~200 to 700 m/s). The pellet speed is the key parameter in determining the response time of a shattered pellet system to a plasma disruption event. The calculated speeds from the code simulations of experiments were typically in excellent agreement with the measured values. With the gas gun simulator validated for many test shots and over a wide range of physical and operating parameters, it is a valuable tool for optimization of the injector design, including the fast valve design (orifice size and volume) for any operating pressure (~40 bar expected for the ITER application) and barrel length for any pellet size (mass, diameter, and length). Key design parameters and proposed values for the pellet injectors for the ITER disruption mitigation systems are discussed.

Combs, S. K.↗
DOE OSTI2011

Performance Analysis of and Tool Support for Transactional Memory on BG/Q

Martin Schindewolf worked during his internship at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under the guidance of Martin Schulz at the Computer Science Group of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing. We studied the performance of the TM subsystem of BG/Q as well as researched the possibilities for tool support for TM. To study the performance, we run CLOMP-TM. CLOMP-TM is a benchmark designed for the purpose to quantify the overhead of OpenMP and compare different synchronization primitives. To advance CLOMP-TM, we added Message Passing Interface (MPI) routines for a hybrid parallelization. This enables to run multiple MPI tasks, each running OpenMP, on one node. With these enhancements, a beneficial MPI task to OpenMP thread ratio is determined. Further, the synchronization primitives are ranked as a function of the application characteristics. To demonstrate the usefulness of these results, we investigate a real Monte Carlo simulation called Monte Carlo Benchmark (MCB). Applying the lessons learned yields the best task to thread ratio. Further, we were able to tune the synchronization by transactifying the MCB. Further, we develop tools that capture the performance of the TM run time system and present it to the application's developer. The performance of the TM run time system relies on the built-in statistics. These tools use the Blue Gene Performance Monitoring (BGPM) interface to correlate the statistics from the TM run time system with performance counter values. This combination provides detailed insights in the run time behavior of the application and enables to track down the cause of degraded performance. Further, one tool has been implemented that separates the performance counters in three categories: Successful Speculation, Unsuccessful Speculation and No Speculation . All of the tools are crafted around IBM's xlc compiler for C and C++ and have been run and tested on a Q32 early access system.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Asynchronous and Load-Balanced Union-Find for Distributed and Parallel Scientific Data Visualization and Analysis

We present a novel distributed union-find algorithm that features asynchronous parallelism and k-d tree based load balancing for scalable visualization and analysis of scientific data. Applications of union-find include level set extraction and critical point tracking, but distributed union-find can suffer from high synchronization costs and imbalanced workloads across parallel processes. In this study, we prove that global synchronizations in existing distributed union-find can be eliminated without changing final results, allowing overlapped communications and computations for scalable processing. We also use a k-d tree decomposition to redistribute inputs, in order to improve workload balancing. We benchmark the scalability of our algorithm with up to 1,024 processes using both synthetic and application data. Here, we demonstrate the use of our algorithm in critical point tracking and super-level set extraction with high-speed imaging experiments and fusion plasma simulations, respectively.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2018

OECD-NEA Expert Group on Multi-Physics Experimental Data, Benchmarks and Validation

High-fidelity, multi-physics modeling and simulation (M&S) tools are being developed and utilized for a variety of applications in nuclear science and technology and show great promise in their abilities to reproduce observed phenomena for many applications. Even with the increasing fidelity and sophistication of coupled multi-physics M&S tools, the underpinning models and data still need to be validated against experiments that may require a more complex array of validation data because of the great breadth of the time, energy and spatial domains of the physical phenomena that are being simulated. The Expert Group on Multi-Physics Experimental Data, Benchmarks and Validation (MPEBV) of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was formed to address the challenges with the validation of such tools. The work of the MPEBV expert group is shared among three task forces to fulfill its mandate and specific exercises are being developed to demonstrate validation principles for common industrial challenges. This paper describes the overall mission of the group, the specific objectives of the task forces, the linkages among the task forces, and the development of a validation exercise that focuses on a specific reactor challenge problem.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗