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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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This is a presentation about the modeling receiver flux of commercial power tower concentrating solar power plants by using ray tracing. This comparison study is ongoing, and this presentation shares about the journey in this process so far.
Assessing and optimizing polarization performance in the context of ray-based optical design can be challenging. We describe an approach to this problem that decouples polarization effects from optical system geometry for reflective systems. Each surface's polarization properties are parameterized in terms of their impact on retardance and diattenuation in the small angle-of-incidence limit, separating polarization assessment from the task of coating design. A low-resolution ray trace of the system is adequate to determine ray geometry at each interface, which can then be interpolated to rapidly evaluate net Jones Matrix pupil functions. Coating behavior can be easily varied using the ellipsometric parameters to investigate impacts and compensation. Desired values of these parameters can then be specified as constraints in coating design. Investigation with candidate telescope optical designs for LUVOIR show baseline root-mean-square wavefront errors in the nm range for the on-diagonal Jones matrix component, and throughputs of tens of parts per million. Promising possibilities for compensation using a purpose-designed coating on the secondary mirror are discussed, which reduce the on-diagonal wavefront error by a factor 20, with accompanying but more modest reductions in coupling into off-diagonal terms.
Line-of-sight deviations and ray trace analyses of Apollo side window for optical experiments
Ocean surface gravity waves are an important component of air-sea interaction, influencing energy, momentum, and gas exchanges across the ocean-atmosphere interface. In specific applications such as refraction by ocean currents or bathymetry, ray tracing provides a computationally efficient way to gain insight into wave propagation. In this paper, we introduce Mantaray, an open-source software package implemented in Rust, with a Python interface, that solves the ray equations for ocean surface gravity waves. Mantaray is designed for performance, robustness, and ease of use. The package is modular to facilitate further development and can currently be applied to both idealized and realistic wave propagation problems (Fig. 1).
We developed a novel approach for fast and accurate ray-tracing of galaxies using procedural noise fields. Our method allows for efficient and realistic rendering of synthetic galaxy morphologies, where individual components such as the bulge, disk, stars, and dust can be synthesized in different wavelengths. These components follow empirically motivated overall intensity profiles but contain an additional procedural noise component that gives rise to complex natural patterns that mimic interstellar dust and star-forming regions. These patterns produce more realistic-looking galaxy images than using analytical expressions alone. The method is fully parallelized and creates accurate high- and low- resolution images that can be used, for example, in codes simulating strong and weak gravitational lensing. In addition to having a user-friendly graphical user interface, the C++ software package GAMER is easy to implement into an existing code.
Vertical Fixed Field Accelerators (vFFAs) feature complex and highly non-linear magnetic fields, which require simulation codes allowing step-wise particle tracking. Methods to model the 3D magnetic field of scaling vFFAs have been developed in the ray-tracing code Zgoubi. The field modeling and particle tracking methods include the field non-linearities, the fringe fields, and the field superposition of neighboring magnets. The procedure implements the vFFA analytical field expressions, allowing design studies and parameter optimizations using the Zgoubi built-in fit method. The vFFA procedure has been applied to a ten-fold symmetry ring with a triplet focusing structure designed to accelerate protons from 3 MeV to 12 MeV and studied under the ISIS-II proton driver prototype project. Results from particle tracking in externally generated 3D semi-analytical field maps and the developed vFFA analytical model are shown to be in excellent agreement.
Purpose: To analyze and evaluate dose distribution between Ray Tracing (RT) and Monte Carlo (MC) algorithms of 0.5% uncertainty on a critical structure of spinal cord and gross target volume and planning target volume. Methods: Twenty four spinal tumor patients were treated with stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) by CyberKnife in 2013 and 2014. The MC algorithm with 0.5% of uncertainty is used to recalculate the dose distribution for the treatment plan of the patients using the same beams, beam directions, and monitor units (MUs). Results: The prescription doses are uniformly larger for MC plans than RT except one case. Up to a factor of 1.19 for 0.25cc threshold volume and 1.14 for 1.2cc threshold volume of dose differences are observed for the spinal cord. Conclusion: The MC recalculated dose distributions are larger than the original MC calculations for the spinal tumor cases. Based on the accuracy of the MC calculations, more radiation dose might be delivered to the tumor targets and spinal cords with the increase prescription dose.
High frequency radio wave propagation research using Alouette 2 topside sounder data and digital ray tracing techniques
The ray tracing computer program described by Menietti and Lin (1985) was used to investigate the propagation of Z mode emissions from sources in the auroral zone. The calculation results indicate that the propagation is primarily perpendicular to the magnetic field line (horizontal propagation) for almost all sources considered, except when the wave source is assumed to be unrestricted by the cyclotron maser mechanism. While the propagation is initially downward, refraction rapidly increases the wave normal angle, and only propagation at near-constant altitude occurs. The frequency bandwidth estimated from the ray paths was found to be less than that observed by the DE 1 satellite. Large horizontal magnetic field gradients associated with field-aligned currents produce downward propagation but are still not sufficient to produce the observed bandwidths. The results suggest that wave growth may be due to mechanisms in addition to cyclotron maser resonance.
We introduce Mahakala, a Python-based, modular, radiative ray-tracing code for curved spacetimes. We employ Google's JAX framework for accelerated automatic differentiation, which can efficiently compute Christoffel symbols directly from the metric, allowing the user to easily and quickly simulate photon trajectories through non-Kerr spacetimes. JAX also enables Mahakala to run in parallel on both CPUs and GPUs. Mahakala natively uses the Cartesian Kerr–Schild coordinate system, which avoids numerical issues caused by the pole in spherical coordinate systems. We demonstrate Mahakala's capabilities by simulating 1.3 mm wavelength images (the wavelength of Event Horizon Telescope observations) of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of low-accretion rate supermassive black holes. The modular nature of Mahakala allows us to quantitatively explore how different regions of the flow influence different image features. We show that most of the emission seen in 1.3 mm images originates close to the black hole and peaks near the photon orbit. We also quantify the relative contribution of the disk, forward jet, and counterjet to 1.3 mm images.
Nonvertical propagation effects on high altitude topside ionosphere sounder data reduction, using ray tracing
Two-dimensional ray tracing of Z-mode radiation from sources in the auroral zone has been performed. The Z-mode waves are assumed to be excited by the cyclotron maser mechanism at frequencies near the electron gyrofrequency and at wave normal angles near 90 deg. The emission is found to propagate primarily perpendicular to the magnetic field line (horizontal propagation) for all sources considered, and thus not to substantially lower altitudes. The frequency bandwidth estimated from the ray paths is much less than that observed by DE-1. It is suggested that the wave source needs to be in the region of field-aligned current in order for the cyclotron maser mechanism to explain the broad frequency bandwidth of Z-mode emissions.
Using a model of Jupiter's magnetized plasma environment, radiation raypaths were calculated with a three-dimension ray tracing program. It is assumed that energetic particles produce the emission in the planet's auroral zone at frequencies just above the electron gyrofrequencies. This radiation is generated in narrow sheets defined by the angle of a ray with respect to the magnetic field line. By specifying the source position: latitude, longitude, and radial distance from the planet, signatures in the spectrum of frequency versus time seen by Voyager 1 and 2 were duplicated. The frequency range and the curvature of the decametric arcs in these dynamic spectra are the result of the geometry of the radiation sheets (imposed by the plasma and by the B-field) and illumination of Voyager 1 and 2 as the rotating magnetosphere mimics a pulsar.
In this note, the laser focal plane intensity pro le for a beam modeled using the 3D ray trace package in HYDRA is determined. First, the analytical model is developed followed by a practical numerical model for evaluating the resulting computationally intensive normalization factor for all possible input parameters.
Around 90% of current photovoltaic (PV) modules are less than ten years old. New PV technologies and materials are deployed without documented durability and performance histories. Accelerated testing attempts to capture degradation modes but can produce false results with such rapid deployment of new materials. Current testing assumes UV dosage on the rear of a module to be 10% of that incident on the front. We present a method to quantify degradation on PV backsheets in the field. We aim to evaluate if current acceleration factors for UV damage in chambers are properly estimating degradation for different PV site installations. The method leverages bifacial_radiance to ray-trace and evaluate irradiance on the front and the rear of the modules. Then an equation to estimate the relative degradation is proposed.
Laser melting is a core component of the ongoing industrial revolution, dubbed Industry 4.0, as lasers facilitate fast and precise melting and fusion in advanced manufacturing. There is a strong need to optimize the laser process using simulations. However, this has proven challenging as high fidelity simulations are needed for predictive modeling and this is currently prohibitively expensive even when run on hundreds of processors on high performance computers. The challenge is capturing complex physics of laser material interaction, fluid dynamics, thermal physics and material phase transformations at various length and time scales. To close this technological gap, we modified a squeeze U-net to accelerate the laser ray tracing component of such high fidelity models by ~4x–40x while preserving the core physics principle of conservation of energy with 97% accuracy. This approach enables the accurate modeling of global laser energy absorption as a function of local surface temperatures and complex surface topologies, which govern the reflection directions and energy losses of laser rays upon interacting with the material surface.
Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is a key technology for large-scale simulations that allows for adaptively changing the simulation mesh resolution, resulting in significant computational and storage savings. However, visualizing such AMR data poses a significant challenge due to the difficulties introduced by the hierarchical representation when reconstructing continuous field values. Here, we detail a comprehensive solution for interactive isosurface rendering of block-structured AMR data. We contribute a novel reconstruction strategy—the octant method—which is continuous, adaptive and simple to implement. Furthermore, we present a generally applicable hybrid implicit isosurface ray-tracing method, which provides better rendering quality and performance than the built-in sampling-based approach in OSPRay. Finally, we integrate our octant method and hybrid isosurface geometry into OSPRay as a module, providing the ability to create high-quality interactive visualizations combining volume and isosurface representations of BS-AMR data. Lastly, we evaluate the rendering performance, memory consumption and quality of our method on two gigascale block-structured AMR datasets.
We use an analytical fit to an emission lobe profile together with three-dimensional ray tracing to model the broad-banded smooth Uranian kilometric radiation (UKR). We assume the radiation is gyroemission from sources along magnetic field lines. Using an iterative technique that modifies the lobe function and source region, the results are compared to observations at a frequency of 481 kHz. The best-fit calculations are compared to previously published models and to recent ultraviolet (UV) observations.