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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 1,261 records · Page 70
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Species Separation and Other Kinetic Effects at Shock Wave Fronts in Plasma Mixtures Assessed using Molecular Dynamics

The propagation of a shock through a binary plasma mixture of hydrogen isotopes is simulated with molecular dynamics (MD) and a multispecies continuum hydrodynamics model. Separation of the two species due to their mass difference is observed at the shock front in both simulations. We analyze the shock structure in detail to determine which aspects of the wave propagation and shock profile obey single-fluid hydrodynamics and which require multi-component hydrodynamics with Fickian and barodiffusion. In order to reduce possible sources of uncertainty due to transport models used in the continuum simulations, we have performed separate, equilibrium MD simulations which verify the accuracy of the recently proposed Kinetic Molecular Dynamics (KMD) viscosity model, even at the relatively cold pre-shock temperature of 1 eV. We find the post-shock temperature and density are generally consistent between continuum and atomic-scale calculations, but the MD simulations predict a significantly larger thickness of the leading light-ion shock front, with some associated differences in the species separation. We analyze the shape and anisotropy of the MD velocity distributions in detail and compute the electric field at the shock interface from both the MD and continuum simulations. We find that the continuum hydrodynamics calculation captures the major features of the electric fi eld through the electron pressure term in the barodiffusion model and conclude that the differences observed in the shock structures from the two simulations arise largely from non-Maxwellian effects in the longitudinal velocities (the velocities in the direction that the shock propagates) that are not captured in the hydrodynamic simulations.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Application of an Embedded Fracture and Borehole Modeling Approach to the Understanding of EGS Collab Experiment 1

EGS Collab is a series of meso-scale experiments and associated numerical simulation activities being funded by the United States Department of Energy, Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) to investigate enhanced geothermal system processes under in-situ stress and slightly elevated temperature conditions. This project is designed to provide scientists and engineers with immediate access to impermeable rock at scales larger than possible in the laboratory, but generally smaller than those for commercial production. Immediate access to rock is provided via the existing drifts of the former Homestake Gold Mine, now operated as the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. The objectives of the EGS Collab project are to develop well controlled fracture networks between injector and producer boreholes using normal and shear stimulation for permeability enhancement. The first experimental site was located off the West Access drift on the 4850 Level (4850 feet below ground surface) in phyllite of the Precambrian Poorman formation, and involved the creation of a fracture network comprising a combination of hydraulic and natural fractures. A second experimental site is now being considered near the battery alcove on the 4100 Level in amphibolite and rhyolite of the Yates Unit. Data generated during these experiments will be compared against predictions of a suite of computer codes specifically designed to solve problems involving coupled thermal, hydrological, geomechanical, and geochemical processes. Comparisons between experimental and numerical simulation results will provide code developers with direction for improvements and verification of process models, build confidence in the suite of available numerical tools, and ultimately identify critical future development needs for the geothermal modeling community. Moreover, conducting thorough comparisons of models, modelling approaches, measurement approaches and measured data, via the EGS Collab project, will serve to identify techniques that are most likely to succeed at the Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), the GTO’s flagship EGS research effort. Experiment 1 has comprised a series of successful tests, including a long-term chilled-water circulation test, but the testbed has two atypical EGS elements. Active ventilation in the adjacent drift over a 50-year period cooled the testbed rock mass and hydraulic fracturing intersected monitoring boreholes making them conduits for fluid flow. Numerical simulations executed in support of the design of the EGS Collab Experiment 1, computed a radial temperature distribution and stress gradient orthogonal to the drift axis, resulting in the forecast of an oblong hydraulic fracture geometry, extended in the direction of the drift from the stimulation borehole. This paper describes the numerical simulation of long-term chilled-water circulation test with an embedded fracture and borehole modeling approach. The principal objective of the simulation work is show agreement between experimental observations in terms of production fluid temperatures, monitoring borehole temperatures, injection and production pressures, and tracer recoveries using a single conceptual model for the fracture network, using characterization and monitoring data generally available for EGS. A secondary objective is to improve the numerical simulation result comparisons with additional data available from the broader monitoring equipment within the testbed versus deeper, hotter, and more remote EGS. One complicating factor for comparisons between the numerical simulation results and experimental observations, is the Joule-Thomson heating associated with large pressure drops across the fracture network.

numerical simulation, embedded fractures and boreh↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Hybrid Reinforcement Learning-MPC Approach for Distribution System Critical Load Restoration

This paper proposes a hybrid control approach for distribution system critical load restoration, combining deep reinforcement learning (RL) and model predictive control (MPC) aiming at maximizing total restored load following an extreme event. RL determines a policy for quantifying operating reserve requirements, thereby hedging against uncertainty, while MPC models grid operations incorporating RL policy actions (i.e., reserve requirements), renewable (wind and solar) power predictions, and load demand forecasts. We formulate the reserve requirement determination problem as a sequential decision-making problem based on the Markov Decision Process (MDP) and design an RL learning environment based on the OpenAI Gym framework and MPC simulation. The RL agent reward and MPC objective function aim to maximize and monotonically increase total restored load and minimize load shedding and renewable power curtailment. The RL algorithm is trained offline using a historical forecast of renewable generation and load demand. The method is tested using a modified IEEE 13-bus distribution test feeder containing wind turbine, photovoltaic, microturbine, and battery. Case studies demonstrated that the proposed method outperforms other policies with static operating reserves.

distribution system↗
DOE OSTI2023

Nuclear-Integrated Energy Units: Advancing Cybersecurity for Resilient Energy Systems

Rapidly increasing usage of nuclear-integrated energy units has created new challenges in terms of cybersecurity. This paper discusses the potential cyberthreat challenges and cyber risks associated with the widespread adoption of these units, and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques in enhancing the security and resilience of these systems.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cybersecurity Guidance for Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS)

As part of the Securing Solar for the Grid (S2G): Cybersecurity for Solar Systems workshop at RE + in Las Vegas, Nevada, NREL researchers discuss an ongoing effort to develop cybersecurity guidance for vendors and operators of distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS). This guide will prioritize cybersecurity best practices that can be testing and developed for a potential future standard. This presentation will highlight NREL's ongoing work in this area and future areas of research.

cyber↗
DOE OSTI2018

First assessment of the new atomic data used in ENDF/B-VIII - 25420

This conference paper summarizes an initial assessment of the evaluated atomic data libraries released in ENDF/BVIII. 0 and in EPICS2017 in early 2018. The new versions supersede the data libraries currently used by Monte Carlo particle transport codes to handle electron and photon interactions with matter, which date back to the 1990's. Several features of the data are evaluated: their consistency, the content available in the different formats of the data libraries and from different distribution sources, and the computational performance associated with their use. Additionally, an overview of the validation status of the data is given, including some preliminary results concerning new cross section data released in 2018. These evaluations contribute to estimate the impact of the new data libraries in Monte Carlo simulations and highlight areas where future versions would benefit from improvements. (authors)

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advancing Cybersecurity Through Technical Assistance

Electric grids around the world are undergoing rapid structural and operational change, making it more important than ever to understand evolving risks and improve grid resilience and security against natural and human disruptions. Through tailored technical assistance, NREL is working with partners to support the secure and resilient deployment of energy systems and address grid integration challenges.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Sensitivity analysis of design parameters in RowWise borehole layout for ground heat exchangers

Ground source heat pump systems offer a promising pathway toward energy-efficient building heating and cooling. The performance and cost-effectiveness of these systems heavily depend on the design of the ground heat exchanger (GHE), particularly the spatial placement of boreholes used in large commercial buildings. Among various borefield layout strategies, the RowWise approach generates and optimizes borehole configurations within irregular polygonal land boundaries, providing land-use efficiency and installation flexibility. While multiple geometric design parameters constrain the RowWise layout, their influence on the system thermal performance and total drilling requirements remains unclear. Thus, this study presents a sensitivity analysis of key design parameters influencing the RowWise layout of vertical borehole GHEs, including the perimeter spacing ratio, borehole spacing, borehole field rotation angle, and borehole length. GHEDesigner and Ray Tune are employed to generate and assess different RowWise configurations. A series of parametric simulations was conducted to quantify the impact of each parameter on geometric distribution, economic cost, and computational speed. The results provide critical insights into the sensitivity and relative importance of different design parameters of RowWise method, offering practical guidance for designers aiming to optimize GHE layouts by balancing thermal efficiency, land constraints, and economic feasibility.

Xu, Dikai [Purdue University]↗
DOE OSTI2015

Application of parallel distributed Lagrange multiplier technique to simulate coupled Fluid-Granular flows in pipes with varying Cross-Sectional area

Fluid-granular flows are common phenomena in nature and industry. Here, an efficient computational technique based on the distributed Lagrange multiplier method is utilized to simulate complex fluid-granular flows. Each particle is explicitly resolved on an Eulerian grid as a separate domain, using solid volume fractions. The fluid equations are solved through the entire computational domain, however, Lagrange multiplier constrains are applied inside the particle domain such that the fluid within any volume associated with a solid particle moves as an incompressible rigid body. The particle–particle interactions are implemented using explicit force-displacement interactions for frictional inelastic particles similar to the DEM method with some modifications using the volume of an overlapping region as an input to the contact forces. Here, a parallel implementation of the method is based on the SAMRAI (Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement Application Infrastructure) library.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Final Technical Report: Integrated Distribution-Transmission Analysis for Very High Penetration Solar PV

Transmission and distribution simulations have historically been conducted separately, echoing their division in grid operations and planning while avoiding inherent computational challenges. Today, however, rapid growth in distributed energy resources (DERs)--including distributed generation from solar photovoltaics (DGPV)--requires understanding the unprecedented interactions between distribution and transmission. To capture these interactions, especially for high-penetration DGPV scenarios, this research project developed a first-of-its-kind, high performance computer (HPC) based, integrated transmission-distribution tool, the Integrated Grid Modeling System (IGMS). The tool was then used in initial explorations of system-wide operational interactions of high-penetration DGPV.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Finite Element Simulation of the Acoustic Pressure Inside a Beverage Container for Non-Thermal, Ultrasound-based Pasteurization

The purpose of this effort is to investigate whether large acoustic pressure waves can be transmitted inside beverage containers to enable pasteurization. Acoustic waves are known to induce large nonlinear compressive forces and shock waves in fluids, suggesting that compression waves may be capable of damaging bacteria inside beverage containers without appreciably increasingly the temperature or altering the freshness and flavor of the beverage contents. Although a combined process such as thermosonication (e.g., sonication with heating) is likely more efficient, it is instructive to compute the acoustic pressure field distribution inside the beverage container. The COMSOL simulations used two and three-dimensional models of beverage containers placed in a water bath to compute the acoustic pressure field. A limitation of these COMSOL models is that they cannot determine the bacterial lysis efficiency, rather the models provide an indirect metric of bacterial lysis based on the magnitude of the pressure field and its distribution.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2012

Characterization and use of a 2D-array of ion chambers for brachytherapy dosimetric quality assurance

The two-dimensional (2D) ionization chamber array MatriXX Evolution is one of the 2D ionization chamber arrays developed by IBA Dosimetry (IBA Dosimetry, Germany) for megavoltage real-time absolute 2D dosimetry and verification of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The purpose of this study was to (1) evaluate the performance of ion chamber array for submegavoltage range brachytherapy beam dose verification and quality assurance (QA) and (2) use the end-to-end dosimetric evaluation that mimics a patient treatment procedure and confirm the primary source strength calibration agrees in both the treatment planning system (TPS) and treatment delivery console computers. The dose linearity and energy dependence of the 2D ion chamber array was studied using kilovoltage X-ray beams (100, 180 and 300 kVp). The detector calibration factor was determined using 300 kVp X-ray beams so that we can use the same calibration factor for dosimetric verification of high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy. The phantom used for this measurement consists of multiple catheters, the IBA MatriXX detector, and water-equivalent slab of RW3 to provide full scattering conditions. The treatment planning system (TPS) (Oncentra brachy version 3.3, Nucletron BV, Veenendaal, the Netherlands) dose distribution was calculated on the computed tomography (CT) scan of this phantom. The measured and TPS calculated distributions were compared in IBA Dosimetry OmniPro-I'mRT software. The quality of agreement was quantified by the gamma ({gamma}) index (with 3% delta dose and distance criterion of 2 mm) for 9 sets of plans. Using a dedicated phantom capable of receiving 5 brachytherapy intralumenal catheters a QA procedure was developed for end-to-end dosimetric evaluation for routine QA checks. The 2D ion chamber array dose dependence was found to be linear for 100-300 kVp and the detector response (k{sub user}) showed strong energy dependence for 100-300 kVp energy range. For the Ir-192 brachytherapy HDR source, dosimetric evaluation k{sub user} factor determined by photon beam of energy of 300 kVp was used. The maximum mean difference between ion chamber array measured and TPS calculated was 3.7%. Comparisons of dose distribution for different test plans have shown agreement with >94.5% for {gamma} {<=}1. Dosimetric QA can be performed with the 2D ion chamber array to confirm primary source strength calibration is properly updated in both the TPS and treatment delivery console computers. The MatriXX Evolution ionization chamber array has been found to be reliable for measurement of both absolute dose and relative dose distributions for the Ir-192 brachytherapy HDR source.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2014

TH-E-BRE-08: GPU-Monte Carlo Based Fast IMRT Plan Optimization

Purpose: Intensity-modulated radiation treatment (IMRT) plan optimization needs pre-calculated beamlet dose distribution. Pencil-beam or superposition/convolution type algorithms are typically used because of high computation speed. However, inaccurate beamlet dose distributions, particularly in cases with high levels of inhomogeneity, may mislead optimization, hindering the resulting plan quality. It is desire to use Monte Carlo (MC) methods for beamlet dose calculations. Yet, the long computational time from repeated dose calculations for a number of beamlets prevents this application. It is our objective to integrate a GPU-based MC dose engine in lung IMRT optimization using a novel two-steps workflow. Methods: A GPU-based MC code gDPM is used. Each particle is tagged with an index of a beamlet where the source particle is from. Deposit dose are stored separately for beamlets based on the index. Due to limited GPU memory size, a pyramid space is allocated for each beamlet, and dose outside the space is neglected. A two-steps optimization workflow is proposed for fast MC-based optimization. At first step, rough beamlet dose calculations is conducted with only a small number of particles per beamlet. Plan optimization is followed to get an approximated fluence map. In the second step, more accurate beamlet doses are calculated, where sampled number of particles for a beamlet is proportional to the intensity determined previously. A second-round optimization is conducted, yielding the final Result. Results: For a lung case with 5317 beamlets, 10{sup 5} particles per beamlet in the first round, and 10{sup 8} particles per beam in the second round are enough to get a good plan quality. The total simulation time is 96.4 sec. Conclusion: A fast GPU-based MC dose calculation method along with a novel two-step optimization workflow are developed. The high efficiency allows the use of MC for IMRT optimizations.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2013

Spatial frequency spectrum of the x-ray scatter distribution in CBCT projections

Purpose: X-ray scatter is a source of significant image quality loss in cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). The use of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations separating primary and scattered photons has allowed the structure and nature of the scatter distribution in CBCT to become better elucidated. This work seeks to quantify the structure and determine a suitable basis function for the scatter distribution by examining its spectral components using Fourier analysis.Methods: The scatter distribution projection data were simulated using a CBCT MC model based on the EGSnrc code. CBCT projection data, with separated primary and scatter signal, were generated for a 30.6 cm diameter water cylinder [single angle projection with varying axis-to-detector distance (ADD) and bowtie filters] and two anthropomorphic phantoms (head and pelvis, 360 projections sampled every 1°, with and without a compensator). The Fourier transform of the resulting scatter distributions was computed and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. A novel metric called the scatter frequency width (SFW) is introduced to determine the scatter distribution's frequency content. The frequency content results are used to determine a set basis functions, consisting of low-frequency sine and cosine functions, to fit and denoise the scatter distribution generated from MC simulations using a reduced number of photons and projections. The signal recovery is implemented using Fourier filtering (low-pass Butterworth filter) and interpolation. Estimates of the scatter distribution are used to correct and reconstruct simulated projections.Results: The spatial and angular frequencies are contained within a maximum frequency of 0.1 cm{sup −1} and 7/(2π) rad{sup −1} for the imaging scenarios examined, with these values varying depending on the object and imaging setup (e.g., ADD and compensator). These data indicate spatial and angular sampling every 5 cm and π/7 rad (∼25°) can be used to properly capture the scatter distribution, with reduced sampling possible depending on the imaging scenario. Using a low-pass Butterworth filter, tuned with the SFW values, to denoise the scatter projection data generated from MC simulations using 10{sup 6} photons resulted in an error reduction of greater than 85% for the estimating scatter in single and multiple projections. Analysis showed that the use of a compensator helped reduce the error in estimating the scatter distribution from limited photon simulations by more than 37% when compared to the case without a compensator for the head and pelvis phantoms. Reconstructions of simulated head phantom projections corrected by the filtered and interpolated scatter estimates showed improvements in overall image quality.Conclusions: The spatial frequency content of the scatter distribution in CBCT is found to be contained within the low frequency domain. The frequency content is modulated both by object and imaging parameters (ADD and compensator). The low-frequency nature of the scatter distribution allows for a limited set of sine and cosine basis functions to be used to accurately represent the scatter signal in the presence of noise and reduced data sampling decreasing MC based scatter estimation time. Compensator induced modulation of the scatter distribution reduces the frequency content and improves the fitting results.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2012

CRAB3: Establishing a new generation of services for distributed analysis at CMS

In CMS Computing the highest priorities for analysis tools are the improvement of the end users ability to produce and publish reliable samples and analysis results as well as a transition to a sustainable development and operations model. To achieve these goals CMS decided to incorporate analysis processing into the same framework as data and simulation processing. This strategy foresees that all workload tools (TierO, Tier1, production, analysis) share a common core with long term maintainability as well as the standardization of the operator interfaces. The re-engineered analysis workload manager, called CRAB3, makes use of newer technologies, such as RESTFul based web services and NoSQL Databases, aiming to increase the scalability and reliability of the system. As opposed to CRAB2, in CRAB3 all work is centrally injected and managed in a global queue. A pool of agents, which can be geographically distributed, consumes work from the central services serving the user tasks. The new architecture of CRAB substantially changes the deployment model and operations activities. In this paper we present the implementation of CRAB3, emphasizing how the new architecture improves the workflow automation and simplifies maintainability. In particular, we will highlight the impact of the new design on daily operations.

Cinquilli, M.↗
DOE OSTI2015

R&D100: Lightweight Distributed Metric Service

On today's High Performance Computing platforms, the complexity of applications and configurations makes efficient use of resources difficult. The Lightweight Distributed Metric Service (LDMS) is monitoring software developed by Sandia National Laboratories to provide detailed metrics of system performance. LDMS provides collection, transport, and storage of data from extreme-scale systems at fidelities and timescales to provide understanding of application and system performance with no statistically significant impact on application performance.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2013

Multi-fault Tolerance for Cartesian Data Distributions

Faults are expected to play an increasingly important role in how algorithms and applications are designed to run on future extreme-scale sys- tems. Algorithm-based fault tolerance (ABFT) is a promising approach that involves modications to the algorithm to recover from faults with lower over- heads than replicated storage and a signicant reduction in lost work compared to checkpoint-restart techniques. Fault-tolerant linear algebra (FTLA) algo- rithms employ additional processors that store parities along the dimensions of a matrix to tolerate multiple, simultaneous faults. Existing approaches as- sume regular data distributions (blocked or block-cyclic) with the failures of each data block being independent. To match the characteristics of failures on parallel computers, we extend these approaches to mapping parity blocks in several important ways. First, we handle parity computation for generalized Cartesian data distributions with each processor holding arbitrary subsets of blocks in a Cartesian-distributed array. Second, techniques to handle corre- lated failures, i.e., multiple processors that can be expected to fail together, are presented. Third, we handle the colocation of parity blocks with the data blocks and do not require them to be on additional processors. Several al- ternative approaches, based on graph matching, are presented that attempt to balance the memory overhead on processors while guaranteeing the same fault tolerance properties as existing approaches that assume independent fail- ures on regular blocked data distributions. The evaluation of these algorithms demonstrates that the additional desirable properties are provided by the pro- posed approach with minimal overhead.

Ali, Nawab↗
DOE OSTI2021

Modified equilibrium distributions for Cooper-Frye particlization

We introduce a positive-definite single-particle distribution that is suitable for describing the transition from a macroscopic hydrodynamic to a microscopic kinetic description during the late stages of heavy-ion collisions in the presence of moderately large viscous corrections. The modified equilibrium distribution function can be constructed with hydrodynamic input from either relativistic viscous fluid dynamics or anisotropic fluid dynamics. We test the modified equilibrium distribution's hydrodynamic output for a stationary hadron resonance gas subject to either shear stress, bulk pressure, or baryon diffusion current at a given freeze-out temperature and baryon chemical potential. While it does not reproduce all components of the net baryon current and energy-momentum tensor exactly, it significantly improves upon the customary linearized approximations for the nonequilibrium correction δf n which typically lead to unphysical negative distribution functions at large particle momenta. A comparison of particle spectra and p T –differential elliptic flow coefficients from the Cooper–Frye formula computed with the modified equilibrium distribution and with linearized δf n corrections is presented, for two different (2 + 1)–dimensional hypersurfaces corresponding to central and noncentral Pb + Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗