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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 937 records · Page 52

Vermont Wildland Fires: Investigating the Role of Antecedent Conditions and Recent Environmental Trends in Exacerbating Fire Risk and Potential in Vermont

Under a changing climate, increases in dry conditions and extreme heat events are projected to exacerbate wildfire risk in the northeastern U.S. In recent years, Vermont has observed higher annual temperatures, more frequent heatwaves, increased annual precipitation, extreme flood events, and decreased snowfall. The mechanisms through which environmental factors contribute to increased fire risk in humid environments, such as Vermont, are poorly understood. The team partnered with the National Weather Service, the Vermont Division of Forests, and the University of Vermont to investigate phenological trends and antecedent conditions influencing wildland fire risk. For the phenological analysis, from 2001 to 2023, vegetation data, phenological dates, and snow water equivalent (SWE) values were accessed from Landsat 5Thematic Mapper (TM), Landsat 7Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Landsat 8Operational Land Imager (OLI), Landsat 9OLI-2, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the Snow Data Assimilation System (SNODAS), respectively. For the antecedent condition analysis, from 2008 to 2023, soil moisture, Environmental Stress Index, wind speed, minimum relative humidity, and daily precipitation data were obtained from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), SERVIR, gridMET Wind, gridMET Humidity, and NClimGrid, respectively. The study found that green-up dates over the study period remain relatively stable, while snowmelt dates appear increasingly variable. Minimum relative humidity was the most significant environmental variable correlated with wildfire risk in Vermont. Results from this study will inform the National Weather Service's preparation of fire forecasts before prescribed burns and support community outreach by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.

Wildland Fire↗

Parameterized Study of Heat Load Trends in a Subscale Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine

NASA has developed a subscale rotating detonation rocket engine platform, enabling rapid parameterization of components and their associated performances. A major performance metric of interest for RDREs is the total heat absorbed at a given operating condition and wave mode operation. To investigate this, several sets of hardware were produced to have variation of the contraction ratio, injector geometry, and length. A wide range of total mass flow rates and mixture ratios were also explored using gaseous methane/oxygen. All hardware was produced using laser powder bed fusion GRCop-42, GRX-810, or C-103 alloys depending on the component cooling requirements. Outer and inner body hardware were made from GRCop-42 where heat fluxes were expected to be high and were water cooled through integrated coolant channels. Nozzles were made from C-103 which are radiatively cooled. Finally, the injectors were produced using GRCop-42 or GRX-810 as passive cooling via propellant injection has previously found to be sufficient given the small gap width of exposed injection surface. Total heat load and bulk heat flux measurements to the hot walls are reported. Trends in heat load and heat flux are shown with relation to parameters such as chamber pressure, area ratio, and wave mode. Heat loads between the inner and outer bodies and the chamber and shroud section are compared.

Heat Flux↗

Calorimeter Heat Flux Trends in NASA’s Subscale Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine

A calorimeter-style rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) outer chamber body was designed, additively manufactured in GRCop-42, and hot-fire tested in test cell 105 at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, AL in August 2024. Steady-state, spatially resolved heat flux and chamber pressure were measured at 13 and 9 locations from the injector face, respectively, for a variety of test conditions and hardware configurations with gaseous methane and oxygen propellants. The 2-in. diameter highly instrumented design, enabled by metal additive manufacturing (AM), allowed for simultaneous measurement of heat flux and chamber pressure through 44 long duration hot-fire tests without failure. Of the 44 tests, only 3 of the tests featured chamber pressures below 100 psia and are discussed in this work. Heat flux trends for this subscale hardware are explored with respect to local propellant mass flux for several different injectors, chamber lengths, and chamber “subsonic” area ratios (contraction ratios). Results show that for increasing chamber pressure, a reduced amount of energy per kilogram of propellant is transferred to the wall. Switching injectors affects the near-face heat flux and chamber pressure profiles. Chamber length does not noticeably affect the heat flux profile but increases bulk heat load. A subsonic area ratio greater than 1 reduces heat losses to the wall compared to a straight annulus case. Equivalence ratio shift did not significantly affect heat flux. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and conjugate heat transfer (CHT) analyses were performed to delineate 3-D heat transfer and coolant mass flow maldistribution effects and create a calorimeter transfer function to transform heat flux data and mitigate the profile distortions. Additional CFD/CHT simulations were performed using experimental data as boundary conditions to assess local nucleate boiling propensity during testing and to assess projected hot wall temperatures for future fatigue assessment. Vapor fractions were observed locally for several cases. It is anticipated that this effort will provide a common framework for coolant system design/analysis in calorimeter systems for rocket-based and air-breathing combustors, ensuring greater repeatability in calorimetry measurements across the research community.

Joseph Hernandez-McCloskey↗

Parameterized Study of Heat Load Trends in a Subscale Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine

NASA has developed a subscale rotating detonation rocket engine platform, enabling rapid parameterization of components and their associated performances. A major performance metric of interest for RDREs is the total heat absorbed at a given operating condition and wave mode operation. To investigate this, several sets of hardware were produced to have variation of the contraction ratio, injector geometry, and length. A wide range of total mass flow rates and mixture ratios were also explored using gaseous methane/oxygen. All hardware was produced using laser powder bed fusion GRCop-42, GRX-810, or C-103 alloys depending on the component cooling requirements. Outer and inner body hardware were made from GRCop-42 where heat fluxes were expected to be high and were water cooled through integrated coolant channels. Nozzles were made from C-103 which are radiatively cooled. Finally, the injectors were produced using GRCop-42 or GRX-810 as passive cooling via propellant injection has previously found to be sufficient given the small gap width of exposed injection surface. Total heat load and bulk heat flux measurements to the hot walls are reported. Trends in heat load and heat flux are shown with relation to parameters such as chamber pressure, area ratio, and wave mode. Heat loads between the inner and outer bodies and the chamber and shroud section are compared.

Heat Loads↗

An Analysis of System Balance and Architectural Trends Based on Top500 Supercomputers

Supercomputer design is a complex, multi-dimensional optimization process, wherein several subsystems need to be reconciled to meet a desired figure of merit performance for a portfolio of applications and a budget constraint. However, overall, the HPC community has been gravitating towards ever more Flops, at the expense of many other subsystems. To draw attention to overall system balance, in this paper, we analyze balance ratios and architectural trends in the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Specifically, we have collected the performance characteristics of systems between 1993 and 2019 based on the Top500 lists and then analyzed their architectures from diverse system design perspectives. Notably, our analysis studies the performance balance of the machines, across a variety of subsystems such as compute, memory, I/O, interconnect, intra-node connectivity and power. Our analysis reveals that balance ratios of the various subsystems need to be considered carefully alongside the application workload portfolio to provision the subsystem capacity and bandwidth specifications, which can help achieve optimal performance.

Khan, Awais↗

Status and Trends in the Voluntary Market (2020 Data)

Green power refers to renewable electricity voluntarily purchased by retail electricity customers. Renewable energy sources for green power include solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and small-scale hydropower. This report summarizes data on the various ways in which voluntary purchasers - including residential, commercial, and institutional customers - purchase green power. We summarize key historic trends in U.S. voluntary green power markets and the current status of green power sales through seven products: utility green pricing programs, utility renewable contracts, competitive suppliers, unbundled renewable energy certificates, community choice aggregations, and power purchase agreements. It includes discussion of how the voluntary market may impact the grid.

community choice aggregation↗

Long-term trends in connected thermostat performance

Internet-connected thermostats (CTs) control heating and cooling systems in about 30% of North American homes, and capture half of annual thermostat sales. In 2017 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created a program to certify the performance of ENERGY STAR® Connected Thermostats. To demonstrate compliance with energy-saving criteria, thermostat vendors must submit performance summaries for a representative sample of up to 1250 homes. Vendors must then re-submit results from a new, representative sample every six months in order to maintain their ENERGY STAR certification. This procedure has created a unique record of each thermostat’s long-term performance in response to changes in weather, customer demographics, building stock, and algorithms. Our analysis covers submissions from 13 different vendors, who submitted data up to 7 times over four years. We found that these semi-annual samples generated relatively stable trends for comfort temperatures and Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) runtimes over the study period. However, some vendors achieved consistently more energy-conserving comfort temperatures and shorter HVAC runtimes than others. The most recent submission runtimes averaged 700 hours for heating and 1,300 hours for cooling, but some vendors achieved runtimes as much as 17% below the mean. This implies lower energy consumption is due in large part to more successful algorithms and control strategies used by those vendors.

Meier, Alan↗

Status and Trends in the Voluntary Market (2021 Data)

Green power refers to renewable electricity voluntarily purchased by retail electricity customers. Renewable energy sources for green power include solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and small-scale hydropower. This report summarizes data on the various ways in which voluntary purchasers including residential, commercial, and institutional customers purchase green power. We summarize key historic trends in U.S. voluntary green power markets and the current status of green power sales through seven products: utility green pricing programs, utility renewable contracts, competitive suppliers, unbundled renewable energy certificates, community choice aggregations, and power purchase agreements. It includes discussion of how the voluntary market may impact the grid.

ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Energy Sector Threat Brief: Trends and Incidents

This is a threat brief of cyber incidents and trends affecting the global energy sector over the last 12 months and resources for threat sharing, targeting an audience of utility cyber and physical security stakeholders.

24 - POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Time trend analysis of rare cancer incidence 2011–2018: Nationwide population-based cancer registries in Japan

Rare cancers collectively account for a significant proportion of the overall cancer burden in Japan. We aimed to describe and examine the incidence of each rare cancer and the temporal changes using the internationally agreed rare cancer classification. Cancer cases registered in regional population-based cancer registries from 2011 to 2015 and the National Cancer Registry (NCR) from 2016 to 2018 were classified into 18 families, 68 Tier-1 cancer groupings, and 216 single cancer entities based on the RARECAREnet list. Crude incidence rates and age-standardized incidence rates (ASR) were calculated for Tier-1 and Tier-2 cancers. The annual percent change and the 95% and 99% confidence limits for annual ASR for each of the 68 Tier-1 cancers were estimated using the log-linear regression of the weighted least squares method. The differences in ASRs between 2011 and 2018 were evaluated as an absolute change. A total of 5,640,879 cases were classified into Tier-1 and Tier-2 cancers. The ASRs of 18 out of 52 Tier-1 cancers in the rare cancer families increased, whereas the ASR for epithelial tumors of gallbladder decreased. The ASRs of 6 out of the 16 Tier-1 cancers in the common cancer families increased, whereas those of epithelial tumors of stomach and liver decreased. There was no significant change in the incidence of the other 40 Tier-1 cancers. The incidence of several cancers increased due to the dissemination of diagnostic concepts, improved diagnostic techniques, changes in coding practice, and the initiation of the NCR.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Single-Event Upset and Scaling Trends in New Generation of the Commercial SOI PowerPC Microprocessors

Single-event upset effects from heavy ions are measured for Motorola silicon-on-insulator (SOI) microprocessor with 90 nm feature sizes. The results are compared with previous results for SOI microprocessors with feature sizes of 130 and 180 nm. The cross section of the 90 nm SOI processors is smaller than results for 130 and 180 nm counterparts, but the threshold is about the same. The scaling of the cross section with reduction of feature size and core voltage for SOI microprocessors is discussed.

silicon on insulator↗

Ozone Trends in the Lower Stratosphere from Ozone Sondes

Chemistry-Climate-Model simulations indicate that ozone in the mid-latitude lower troposphere should have generally been increasing since about 2000. Satellite data, however, have not confirmed such an increase. Instead, they seem to indicate that the pre-2000 decline of lower stratospheric ozone may have continued at mid-latitudes over the last 20 years as well [1,2]. Altitude resolution and information content of satellite observations on ozone in the lowermost stratosphere are, however, limited. Ozone sondes, on the other hand, provide the most detailed information on ozone in troposphere and lower stratosphere, but are limited to just a few soundings per month at maybe 40 stations world-wide [3].

lower stratospheric ozone trends↗