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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) Doppler Lidar & Derived Products

This repository contains all processed Doppler‐lidar outputs from the PSU lidar deployed for the Baltimore Social‐Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) project. Vertical Stare Scans (fixed‐beam, vertical profiling): 1 Hz backscatter intensity (m⁻¹ sr⁻¹), signal‐to‐noise ratio (unitless), and Doppler vertical‐velocity (m s⁻¹) on 30 m range gates (and 3 m range gates), stored as CF-compliant NetCDF. Wind Profiles (horizontal‐wind retrieval): daily NetCDF outputs of retrieved horizontal wind speed (m s⁻¹) and direction (degrees), computed from the angled‐scan returns. Profile Statistics (summary statistics on the vertical velocity): 15 min windows (default) of mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, high-frequency variance, etc., as a function of height; saved as CF-compliant NetCDF files. Boundary Layer Height (BLH) (fuzzy-logic output): 15 min BLH estimates (m), with lower/upper fuzzy bounds (m) and a quality flag (0–4) indicating data status (e.g., no data, good, ran out of signal, below range, cloud-topped). Cloud Base Height (Haar-gradient detection): 10 min estimates of cloud-base height (m). All five product streams are organized by year and date under their own top-level folders (01_Vertical_Stare_Scans/ through 05_Cloud_Height/). Each folder contains a data_ /YYYY/ subdirectory with daily CF-compliant NetCDF outputs (96 windows per day at 15 min intervals). Global attributes in each file include creation history, version (3.0.1), institution, and source. Instrument & MeasurementsThe PSU Doppler Lidar samples aerosol backscatter (m⁻¹ sr⁻¹), signal-to-noise ratio, and radial velocity at ~1 Hz. Vertical stare scans point the beam straight up; after collecting angled scans through multiple elevation angles, the "Wind Profiles" product contains the fully retrieved horizontal wind speed and direction. Data were collected continuously at ~30 m range resolution (and 3 m for the year of 2025), with a typical height ceiling of ~12 km. How to Use Open any NetCDF with Python's xarray, MATLAB, or similar CF-compliant tools. Stare scans and angled-scan retrievals (Wind Profiles) are CF-compliant daily NetCDF files. Profile-Statistics, BLH, and Cloud Height files are daily 15 min (10 min for Cloud Heights) summaries (96 time steps per file). Inspect the included variables (e.g., vertical_velocity_variance, wind_speed, BLH, cloud_base_height) for your analyses. Use the quality flags (BLH_flag, cloud_flag) to filter out poor-quality retrievals. For more information or questions about processing methods, please contact:Nicholas E. Prince ⟨nec5299@psu.edu⟩Penn State Department of Meteorology & Atmospheric Science

Air Quality↗
DOE OSTI2026

ResStock Measure Documentation: Residential Two-Stage Geothermal Heat Pump (4.0 COP, 20.5 EER) With Envelope Improvements and Advanced Air Sealing

The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and other retrofit end-use load shapes (electricity, gas, propane, or fuel oil) that cover a majority of the high-impact, market-ready (or nearly market-ready) measures. "Measures" refers to retrofits that can be applied to buildings during modeling. An "end-use savings shape" is the difference in energy consumption between a baseline building and a building with an energy efficiency, demand flexibility, or other retrofit measure applied. It results in a time-series profile that is broken down by end use and fuel (electricity or on-site gas, propane, or fuel oil use) at each time step. ResStock is a highly granular, physics-based, bottom-up model that uses multiple data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual subhourly energy consumption of the residential building stock across the United States. The baseline model intends to represent the U.S. residential building stock as it existed in 2018. Technical documentation for the inputs and assumptions in the baseline building stock model is available in Reyna et al. (2025). Calibration and validation of the baseline model results are available in the final technical report of the End-Use Load Profiles project (Wilson, et al. 2022). This document focuses on a single end-use savings shape measure: Residential Two-Stage Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP) (4.0 COP, 20.5 EER) With Envelope Improvements. This measure combines a two-stage GHP with envelope improvements as a single package. As this package is a combination of two other measures, this document focused on documenting the results associated with this combination of technologies, with individual measure documents for two-stage GHPs and envelope improvements providing the information on the details of these measures. When the two technologies are combined, envelope improvements can modestly reduce energy consumption by a further 10%-15%, but also reduce the required size of the ground heat exchanger and heat pump by approximately 33% on average across all sites. The cost of installing envelope improvements in these homes is likely to be more than paid for by the reduction in equipment and drilling costs in these buildings for the majority of the stock.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

ResStock Measure Documentation: Residential Single-Stage Geothermal Heat Pump (3.8 COP, 18.6 EER)

The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and other retrofit end-use load shapes (electricity, gas, propane, or fuel oil) that cover a majority of the high-impact, market-ready (or nearly market-ready) measures. "Measures" refers to retrofits that can be applied to buildings during modeling. An "end-use savings shape" is the difference in energy consumption between a baseline building and a building with an energy efficiency, demand flexibility, or other retrofit measure applied. It results in a time-series profile that is broken down by end use and fuel (electricity or on-site gas, propane, or fuel oil use) at each time step. ResStock is a highly granular, physics-based, bottom-up model that uses multiple data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual subhourly energy consumption of the residential building stock across the United States. The baseline model intends to represent the U.S. residential building stock as it existed in 2018. Technical documentation for the inputs and assumptions in the baseline building stock model is available in Reyna et al. (2025). Calibration and validation of the baseline model results are available in the final technical report of the End-Use Load Profiles project (Wilson et al. 2022). This documentation focuses on a single end-use savings shape measure: Residential Single-Stage Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP).?Single-stage GHPs are able to reduce energy consumption by 31% for the entire stock. Additional results provided below detail how savings changes for sections of the housing stock with different base heating fuel and in different climate zones, as well as the savings potential by state for both heating and cooling. Utility bills and electric panel impacts are also shown and discussed.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

ResStock Measure Documentation: Residential Variable-Speed Geothermal Heat Pump (4.4 COP, 30.9 EER)

The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and other retrofit end-use load shapes (electricity, gas, propane, or fuel oil) that cover a majority of the high-impact, market-ready (or nearly market-ready) measures. "Measures" refers to retrofits that can be applied to buildings during modeling. An "end-use savings shape" is the difference in energy consumption between a baseline building and a building with an energy efficiency, demand flexibility, or other retrofit measure applied. It results in a time-series profile that is broken down by end use and fuel (electricity or on-site gas, propane, or fuel oil use) at each time step. ResStock (TM) is a highly granular, physics-based, bottom-up model that uses multiple data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual subhourly energy consumption of the residential building stock across the United States. The baseline model intends to represent the U.S. residential building stock as it existed in 2018. Technical documentation for the inputs and assumptions in the baseline building stock model is available in Reyna et al. (2025). Calibration and validation of the baseline model results are available in the final technical report of the End-Use Load Profiles project (Wilson et al. 2022). This documentation focuses on a single end-use savings shape measure: Residential Variable-Speed Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP). This document provides the relevant new modeling information for variable-speed systems not previously covered in either the single-stage or two-stage documents. Variable-speed GHPs represent the most efficient option available for this technology: They provide the most savings, with up to 46% for the applicable portion of the housing stock, compared to 31% for less efficient single-stage GHPs. Additional results shown here detail how the savings change for sections of the housing stock with different base heating fuels and in different climate zones, and they show the savings potential by state for both heating and cooling. Utility bills and electric panel impacts are also shown and discussed.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

ResStock Measure Documentation: Residential Two-Stage Geothermal Heat Pump (4.0 COP, 20.5 EER)

The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and other retrofit end-use load shapes (electricity, gas, propane, or fuel oil) that cover a majority of the high-impact, market-ready (or nearly market-ready) measures. "Measures" refers to retrofits that can be applied to buildings during modeling. An "end-use savings shape" is the difference in energy consumption between a baseline building and a building with an energy efficiency, demand flexibility, or other retrofit measure applied. It results in a time-series profile that is broken down by end use and fuel (electricity or on-site gas, propane, or fuel oil use) at each time step. ResStock is a highly granular, physics-based, bottom-up model that uses multiple data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual subhourly energy consumption of the residential building stock across the United States. The baseline model intends to represent the U.S. residential building stock as it existed in 2018. Technical documentation for the inputs and assumptions in the baseline building stock model is available in Reyna et al. (2025). Calibration and validation of the baseline model results are available in the final technical report of the End-Use Load Profiles project (Wilson et al. 2022). This document focuses on a single end-use savings shape measure: Residential Two-Stage Geothermal Heat Pump (4.0 COP, 20.5 EER). This document builds on details established in the single-stage document (Maguire et al. 2025) to detail differences in the approach to modeling this higher efficiency, but more commonly deployed, type of geothermal heat pump. Specific EnergyPlus objects and product specific curves used are highlighted along with showing the results of this measure compared to the baseline and single-speed geothermal heat pumps. Two-speed geothermal heat pumps are able to save even more energy and on utility bills than single-speed products, albeit at the expense of a higher first cost.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1967

Thermal and bias cycling stabilizes planar silicon devices

Terminal burn-in or baking step time in the processing of planar silicon devices is extended to reduce their inversion tendencies. The collector-base junction of the device is also cyclically biased during the burn-in.

Harris, R. E.↗
NASA NTRS1966

Sensory, Decision and Control Systems: April to July 1966

The quarter reported here for the NASA contract, and the longer period reported for the Air Force contract, saw the development of two system concepts for the transmission of video data from a remote location to Earth. In the simpler system, a stereoscopic outline together with other data such as reflectance and possibly the texture of objects will be transmitted to Earth. The objects considered are those larger than a predetermined size and within a predetermined range. From the stereoscopic outlines presented to the operator on Earth he will decide what objects he would like pictured in full TV frames and order these transmitted. In the more elaborate system, TV cameras will be carried on a vehicle and the direction in which the vehicle moves will be chosen by an onboard decision computer. Perceptual decisions may also be made to identify objects whose characteristics have been reported to Earth and whose value to the Earth observer has been communicated back to the perceptual computer. The assembly of cameras, perceptual computer, decision computer and vehicle is called a robot. Photosensors for this robot are television cameras, the first models of which have been tested under computer control. A model of both the perceptual computer and the decision computer has been simulated. It consists of 12 modules, each of which makes an initial guess as to what the response to incoming data should be. Each takes the data from all other modules and combines it in a nonlinear fashion with the data coming directly into it to arrive at a mixed guess as to what act should be performed. When 60% of the modules vote 0. 5 probability for one act, that act is performed. Convergence to a satisfactory decision took from 5 to 25 time steps. The model of the frog's retina previously reported is here extended to that part of the brain, called the tectum, where the frog begins to respond to objects detected by the retina.

Control system↗
NASA NTRS1972

Computation of the wind by forced adjustment to the height field.

Experimental study of the problem of the forced adjustment of the wind field to the height field with the Mintz-Arakawa two-level atmospheric general circulation model. In all but one of the experiments, the height field was assumed to be perfectly observed at 6-hr intervals, over a time period of one day or less, and from these height data the vector wind field was computed by forced dynamical adjustment. In one experiment, the temperature alone was prescribed. The winds computed in these experiments were compared with the 'control' winds of the general circulation simulation. The best agreement between the computed and the control winds was obtained when the time-differencing scheme in the governing finite-difference equations of motion had a large rate of damping of high-frequency motions. This damping rate also determined the optimum fraction and frequency of restoration of the height (or temperature) fields. With strong damping, total restoration at every time step gave the most rapid rate of wind error reduction and the smallest asymptotic limit of the wind error.

Mesinger, F.↗
NASA NTRS1972

Optimization of thermal protection systems for the space shuttle vehicle. Volume 1: Final report

A study performed to continue development of computational techniques for the Space Shuttle Thermal Protection System is reported. The resulting computer code was used to perform some additional optimization studies on several TPS configurations. The program was developed in Fortran 4 for the CDC 6400, and it was converted to Fortran 5 to be used for the Univac 1108. The computational methodology is developed in modular fashion to facilitate changes and updating of the techniques and to allow overlaying the computer code to fit into approximately 131,000 octal words of core storage. The program logic involves subroutines which handle input and output of information between computer and user, thermodynamic stress, dynamic, and weight/estimate analyses of a variety of panel configurations. These include metallic, ablative, RSI (with and without an underlying phase change material), and a thermodynamic analysis only of carbon-carbon systems applied to the leading edge and flat cover panels. Two different thermodynamic analyses are used. The first is a two-dimensional, explicit precedure with variable time steps which is used to describe the behavior of metallic and carbon-carbon leading edges. The second is a one-dimensional implicity technique used to predict temperature in the charring ablator and the noncharring RSI. The latter analysis is performed simply by suppressing the chemical reactions and pyrolysis of the TPS material.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1974

Reinterpretation of Mariner 9 IRIS data on the basis of a simulation of radiative-conductive convective transfer in the dust laden Martian atmosphere

Time dependent vertical distributions of atmospheric temperature and static stability were determined by a radiative-convective-conductive heat transfer model attuned to Mariner 9 IRIS radiance data. Of particular interest were conditions of both the dust-laden and dust-free atmosphere in the middle latitudes on Mars during the late S.H. summer season. The numerical model simulates at high spatial and temporal resolution (52 atmospheric and 30 subsurface levels; with a time-step of 7.5 min.) the heat transports in the ground-atmosphere system. The algorithm is based on the solution of the appropriate heating rate equation which includes radiative, molecular-conductive and convective heat transfer terms. Ground and atmosphere are coupled by an internal thermal boundary condition.

Pallman, A. J.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Three-dimensional time dependent computation of turbulent flow

The three-dimensional, primitive equations of motion are solved numerically for the case of isotropic box turbulence and the distortion of homogeneous turbulence by irrotational plane strain at large Reynolds numbers. A Gaussian filter is applied to governing equations to define the large scale field. This gives rise to additional second order computed scale stresses (Leonard stresses). The residual stresses are simulated through an eddy viscosity. Uniform grids are used, with a fourth order differencing scheme in space and a second order Adams-Bashforth predictor for explicit time stepping. The results are compared to the experiments and statistical information extracted from the computer generated data.

Kwak, D.↗
NASA NTRS1975

A coupled fluid-structure dynamic analysis for water impact loads

In this paper a nonlinear transient, hydroelastic method is developed for response analysis of the Space Shuttle recoverable booster on water impact. At each time step, coupled equations of fluid flow and structure dynamics are solved with an iterative, self-correcting process. Rigid body motions are represented by large angle equations. Local deformations are represented by a NASTRAN-generated model of the three-dimensional structure. The fluid is represented by series solutions of the potential flow equation which include the effects of the local structure motions. The resulting water loads and structural stresses obtained will aid in qualification of the final structural design. Comparisons are made to experimental impact data to validate the method.

Herting, D. N.↗
NASA NTRS1975

A rigorous solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for unsteady viscous flow at high Reynolds numbers around oscillating airfoils

A method based on the Navier-Stokes equations was developed for analyzing the unsteady incompressible viscous flow around oscillating airfoils at high Reynolds numbers. The Navier-Stokes equations have been integrated in their classical Helmholtz vorticity transport equation form, and the instantaneous velocity field at each time step was determined by the solution of Poisson's equation. A refined finite element was utilized to allow for a conformable solution of the stream function and its first space derivatives at the element interfaces. A corresponding set of accurate boundary conditions was applied; thus obtaining a rigorous solution for the velocity field. The details of the computational procedure and examples of computed results describing the unsteady flow characteristics around the airfoil are presented.

Bratanow, T.↗
NASA NTRS1976

DYNGEN

Steady-state and transient performance of turbofan and turbojet engines are analyzed. Program uses large time steps, gives analyst freedom in selecting equations needed to describe system, and eliminates discrepancies in answers often generated by transient and steady-state simulations.

Sellers, J. F.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Transient airload computer analysis for simulating wind induced impulsive noise conditions of a hovering helicopter rotor

A numerical analysis was developed to determine the airloads on helicopter rotors operating under near-hovering flight conditions capable of producing impulsive noise. A computer program was written in which the solutions for the rotor tip vortex geometry, inflow, aeroelastic response, and airloads are solved in a coupled manner at sequential time steps, with or without the influence of an imposed steady ambient wind or transient gust. The program was developed for future applications in which predicted airloads would be incorporated in an acoustics analysis to attempt to predict and analyze impulsive noise (blade slap). The analysis was applied to a hovering full-scale rotor for which impulsive noise was recorded in the presence of ambient wind. The predicted tip vortex coordinates are in reasonable agreement with the test data, and the blade airload solutions converged to a periodic behavior for an imposed steady ambient wind conditions.

Hall, G. F.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Development of a three dimensional numerical water quality model for continental shelf applications

A model to predict the distribution of water quality parameters in three dimensions was developed. The mass transport equation was solved using a non-dimensional vertical axis and an alternating-direction-implicit finite difference technique. The reaction kinetics of the constituents were incorporated into a matrix method which permits computation of the interactions of multiple constituents. Methods for the computation of dispersion coefficients and coliform bacteria decay rates were determined. Numerical investigations of dispersive and dissipative effects showed that the three-dimensional model performs as predicted by analysis of simpler cases. The model was then applied to a two dimensional vertically averaged tidal dynamics model for the Providence River. It was also extended to a steady state application by replacing the time step with an iteration sequence. This modification was verified by comparison to analytical solutions and applied to a river confluence situation.

Spaulding, M.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Implicit approximate-factorization schemes for the low-frequency transonic equation

Two- and three-level implicit finite-difference algorithms for the low-frequency transonic small disturbance-equation are constructed using approximate factorization techniques. The schemes are unconditionally stable for the model linear problem. For nonlinear mixed flows, the schemes maintain stability by the use of conservatively switched difference operators for which stability is maintained only if shock propagation is restricted to be less than one spatial grid point per time step. The shock-capturing properties of the schemes were studied for various shock motions that might be encountered in problems of engineering interest. Computed results for a model airfoil problem that produces a flow field similar to that about a helicopter rotor in forward flight show the development of a shock wave and its subsequent propagation upstream off the front of the airfoil.

Ballhaus, W. F.↗
NASA NTRS1974

Effect of gravity on methane-air combustion

Analytical and numerical techniques dealing with the theoretical description of the influence of zero and reduced gravitational acceleration on diffusion flames, with a view to improving understanding of fires in space vehicles, were developed in support of experimental work performed in this area. This was done in order to confirm qualitative understanding of the process, to determine the quantitative accuracy of numerical predictions, and to establish a mathematical model of the process for subsequent use as a predictive and exploratory tool. The following results were accomplished: (1) derivation of differential equations and boundary conditions describing the system, (2) details of the computations, using a FORTRAN computer program, for calculating the flow and heat and mass transfer in two dimensions (both steady and unsteady). It was shown that the experimental behavior can be reproduced with fair accuracy, provided that the time step is sufficiently short.

Elghobashi, S.↗