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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

The Screening Tool for Industrial Resilience: Risk-Informed Decision Making to Support Resilience Planning

The Screening Tool for Industrial Resilience (STIR) helps small and medium-sized manufacturing plants manage risk to their production. Developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory under direction and funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, the STIR helps manufacturers enhance their resilience to a variety of disruptive events, both natural and human-caused, that could interrupt normal operations. This report provides an overview of the STIR’s risk-informed, high-level approach to resilience planning, which identifies potential solutions that could enhance site resilience based on calculated major risk drivers.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Towards AI Based Data Classification for Decision Making During Testing

During the development of high-consequence items, test systems should be capable of differentiating between test failures resulting from narrowly missing requirements versus those indicating potentially catastrophic faults. In many instances, classifying the data corresponds to simply identifying whether measured waveforms have approximately the anticipated shape. Cast in this light, the problem reduces to converting raw data into a form optimal for use with neural network classifiers. This manuscript investigates different means of representing raw data for image classification. Raw data plots and Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) spectrograms are classified by both custom built, small-scale, Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) and open-source, multi-million parameter, pre-trained deep CNNs. In the case of time varying frequency content, the STFTs provide images with greater detail and can be accurately classified with simpler networks. This requires less memory and runs faster than classifying the raw data using the more sophisticated options—making STFTs optimal for applications with memory constraints. STFTs are not a panacea. In some cases the time-domain signal contains useful information that should not be discarded. Rather than using raw data or STFTs, the images can be constructed from both by using red and green channels of an RGB image to visualize the real and imaginary components of the transform, with the raw data occupying the blue channel.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Decision and Control of Complex Systems – A Data-Drive Framework

During the project period, we have collaborated with other team members and developed novel algorithms for novelty detection, continual learning, and graph learning algorithms for dynamic systems. The results are documented in publications and meeting notes. Moreover, we leverage virtual collaboration tools (such as Basecamp, Microsoft Teams and Zoom) for technical exchanges. Our research on novelty detection was published at AAAI 2022 and Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer Nature. The newly developed algorithms were successfully applied to realistic cases, including thermal data from buildings at Pacific Northwest National Lab and microelectronic data provided by GlobalFoundries. Multiple publications have been produced from this project, in collaboration with other team members. Three PhD students were supported in this project to conduct their research.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Decision-Model Supported Algal Cultivation Process Enhancement (DMSACPE) (Final Technical Report)

This project was proposed in response to the FY19 Bioenergy Technologies Office Multi-Topic Funding Opportunity Announcement DE-FOA-0002029, Area of Interest Subtopic 1 (AOI1): Cultivation Intensification Processes for Algae. The main challenge identified by the FOA was “in translating results between laboratory research systems and larger-scale outdoor (or mass culture) systems. These difficulties limit reliable experimental durations, adequate and representative experimental volumes of material, and results that can be reproduced reliably. By overcoming the challenge in translating results between laboratory and mass cultures, the objective of AOI 1 is to increase the harvest yield, robustness, and quality of algae cultivation for biofuels and bioproducts”. This report marks the final technical deliverable of this project and reviews all the major findings of the research program.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Stepping into the Midwest Bioeconomy: Stakeholder Engagement and Geospatial Tools to Assist in Perennial Bioenergy Crop Decision Making and Entrepreneurship

This project, “Ecosystem Services and Farm Entrepreneurship Technical Assistance,” was a three-year project originally planned for FY22–FY24. Due to a late start and a few extensions, it is being completed in early FY25. This project explored opportunities to support the deployment of a bioeconomy with a circular, more sustainable supply chain. Using a tool developed by Argonne to identify agricultural areas suitable for use in the bioeconomy, we sought to create opportunities in the bioeconomy as biomass producers, bioenergy users, and environmental entrepreneurs. We proposed to focus at the beginning on enhancing the tool’s capabilities, while engaging with key stakeholders to improve and expand the tool’s functionality for all potential stakeholders in the bioeconomy. We believe that expanding our tools and technologies, coupled with conversations in agricultural spaces, will be needed as we continue to explore how best to offer farmers whole-of supply-chain opportunities to participate in the bioeconomy. Through this project we have continued to gain a better understanding of the ways in which farmers, landowners, bioenergy users, and environmental entrepreneurs may approach the bioeconomy. In addition, as we improve our analytic toolkit, we can continue to refine our communication and the ways in which we can valuate the bioeconomy. Refining these tools allows us to dive deeper into conversations around plausible policies and drivers for future bioeconomy investment and engagement by stakeholders. By working with farmers and agricultural landowners to enable a sustainable bioeconomy business model, enhance their energy options, and recover resources from their waste streams, this project directly responds to the Bioenergy Technology Office’s (BETO) priorities of building a resilient energy economy. It addresses BETO’s focus on fostering the development and adoption of energy technologies that enable the conversion of waste to energy, efficient land use, and robust job creation. By establishing a technical assistance program that develops capabilities and practices in agricultural areas to implement a bioeconomy future, this program will develop an important linkage between technology being developed at U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and the agricultural communities of the Midwest. This project focuses on farmers with lower productivity farmland. Because less productive lands create a more difficult revenue stream for conventional crops, these farmers may therefore be more open to alternative agricultural land management regimes. Consequently, the technical assistance program and the methodologies for targeting perennial bioenergy crop application on marginal land provide a distinct opportunity to engage with and invest in the bioeconomy in these economically stressed areas. Stakeholders in this project include farmers and landowners, local conservation organizations (NRCS, SWCS, etc.), universities, non-profit environmental and agricultural entities, farm consultants, environmental regulators, and industry, including the industries working on conversion technologies, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, and biochar generation, and the companies interested in trading or purchasing/supporting the valuation of ecosystem services (ES).

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

InterGraph-CPS: A Graph-Theoretic Approach to Characterize Cross-Domain Cyber-Physical Interdependencies and Uncertainties in Electric Grid Systems for Improved Decision-Making in Operation and Response

Critical infrastructure systems such as the electric grid are increasingly cyber-physical; yet, despite the cyber-physical characteristics of critical infrastructure systems, the physical process system and communication/control network system are traditionally analyzed in siloes. As these systems become more cyber-physical, it is crucial that models and methods are available to assess the cyber physical system (CPS) interdependencies, characteristics, and event propagation for improved planning, operation, and response. Thus, we proposed an integrated structural and temporal CPS interdependency analysis framework, InterGraph-CPS, that provides insight into the CPS function during normal operation as well as disturbances. This integrated structural and temporal interdependency framework is uniquely designed for assessing CPSs by account for the challenges of analyzing cyber and physical data streams together due to data availability, data type, and time scale differences. By leveraging both structural (e.g., graph analysis) and temporal (e.g., data analytics) techniques, different CPS behaviors and configurations can be accounted for.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy and Differential Phase Contrast Imaging with Active Decision in Multimodal Electron Microscopy: Isotopic detection at the atomic scale

Isotopic engineering provides a powerful route to control phonon behavior in crystalline solids, enabling fundamental studies of lattice dynamics and heat transport at the atomic scale. Here, we directly visualize isotope-dependent phonon propagation in epitaxial Cr 2 O 3 using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) combined with monochromated, high-energy-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). Guided by ab initio phonon calculations, we demonstrate that optical phonon modes above 70 meV are predominantly oxygen-derived and exhibit measurable redshifts upon substitution of natural 16 O by enriched 18 O. Spatially resolved vibrational spectrum imaging reveals isotope-enriched tracer layers within Cr 2 O 3 thin films, correlating isotope concentration with phonon intensity variations and vibrational energy shifts. At the nanometer and atomic scales, vibrational EELS mapping uncovers coherent phonon propagation across isotopic interfaces, consistent with theoretical phonon density of states and dispersion relations. These results establish vibrational EELS as a quantitative probe for isotope-dependent phonon transport in materials, opening new possibilities for studying energy dissipation and lattice dynamics.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Guidance for Grid Resilience Decisions in Rural Minnesota

This report assesses the hazard landscape of the state of Minnesota, identifies weather hazards that are most impactful to the distribution system, includes a statewide assessment of household access to services dependent on reliable power, reviews resilience planning activities of electric utilities in Minnesota, and presents analysis of distribution grid performance in the face of extreme weather events with data from seven electric cooperatives dispersed throughout outstate Minnesota. This information is synthesized to provide considerations for resilience investment prioritization.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

REopt: Energy Decision Analysis Overview for NCSP+ States Collaborative [Slides]

This presentation offers an overview of NREL's REopt(R) web tool for the National Community Solar Partnership+ States Collaborative. REopt is a techno-economic modeling tool for evaluating distributed energy resources toward a site's cost savings and resilience goals. The presentation includes an overview of the REopt platform, a REopt web tool demonstration, and resources to learn more about REopt.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Record of Decision: MEBT Energy Change

The LAMP Conceptual Design (LCD), as described in the LAMP Conceptual Design Report incorporates a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) with an output beam energy of 3.0-MeV; the medium energy beam transport line (MEBT) transports beam from the end of the RFQ into the first LAMP drift tube linac (DTL) tank. The MEBT contains components, such as rebunchers and beam choppers, designed for the specific output energy of the RFQ, and the DTL tank is designed to accept this beam energy.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Record of Decision: LEBT Energy Change

The LAMP Conceptual Design (LCD), as described in the LAMP Conceptual Design Report incorporates multiple 100-keV low-energy beam transport (LEBT) lines between the ion sources and the radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ). The LEBT lines transport H + and H - beams from their respective ion sources to the RFQ entrance, and provide the required manipulations (focusing, steering, chopping, etc.) to the ion beams to prepare them for injection into the RFQ and further acceleration.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Record of Decision: H - LEBT Design Modifications

The LAMP Conceptual Design (LCD) is described in the LAMP Conceptual Design Report. The proposed new configuration of the LAMP H - LEBT encompasses multiple changes to the LCD. The new configuration makes use of a single H - source to supply beam to all LANSCE user stations except IPF; this eliminates one of the H - sources in the LCD, and the associated pulsed merger magnet the use of two such sources required. The source current from the sole H - source is gated on a macropulse-by-macropulse basis using techniques demonstrated at SNS (Spallation Neutron Source), specifically, changes to the RF plasma drive power. A pulsed electrode system is used to match the beam into the LEBT transport line, variable on a macropulse-by-macropulse basis to match the source beam current.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗