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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 1,279 records · Page 71
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

The impact of forest-controlled snow variability on late-season streamflow varies by climatic region and forest structure

Previous studies have documented how forests influence snow at fine spatial scales, but none have documented the influence that existing forest-snow variability has on streamflow. Here to test how much forest-controlled snow variability influences streamflow, a tiling parameterization based on classifications from high-resolution (1–3 m) vegetation maps was incorporated into the Distributed Hydrology and Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM). Within each grid cell (90–150 m), the tiling parameterization simulated forest-snow variability with four independently evolving snowpacks. Each tile had unique radiation conditions to represent conditions underneath the canopy, in exposed areas, and along north- and south-facing forest edges. This tiled parameterization was used to test where and when detailed forest-snow modelling should be considered further and where and when the impacts are too small to be worth the effort. To test this, tiled model simulations of streamflow were compared to non-tiled model simulations in the Sierra Nevada, CA, the Jemez Mountains, NM, and the Eastern Cascades, WA. In Tuolumne, CA, the tiled model simulated little difference in grid cell average SWE, and late-season streamflow decreased by only 3%–4% compared to the non-tiled model. In Jemez, NM, the tiled model decreased late-season streamflow by 18% due to increased sublimation. In Chiwawa, WA, the tiled model increased late-season streamflow by 15% due to high shortwave radiation attenuation and less longwave radiation enhancement from the forest. Furthermore, within the Chiwawa, a substantial silvicultural practice was synthetically implemented to increase the north-facing edge's fractional area. This silvicultural experiment, which used the same fractional forest area in all simulations increased late-season streamflow by 35% compared to tiled model simulations that did not represent forest edges. In conclusion, representing forest-SWE variability had an effect on late-season streamflow in some watersheds but not in others based on the fractional area of the forest edges, forest characteristics, and climate conditions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Sub-5 nm edge-rich 1T'-ReSe 2 as bifunctional materials for hydrogen evolution and sodium-ion storage

The rhenium-based transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), as new members in the TMDs family, have raised great interests recently. Due to the anisotropic structure and unique photoelectric properties, they have potential applications for electrochemical energy conversion and storage. In this work, we performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations on pristine 1T'-ReSe 2 toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The results indicated that the Gibbs free energy of the 1T'-ReSe 2 edge site for HER could be as small as 0.01 eV, superior to other reported TMDs. Experimentally, we developed a strategy to fabricate sub-5 nm sized 1T'-ReSe 2 nanoflakes on carbon nanotubes. Such a small size for the nanoflakes brought abundant edge exposure, which boosted the catalytic activity in the HER. Specifically, the 1T'-ReSe 2 nanoflakes needed only 23 and 60 mV overpotentials to achieve –1 and –10 mA cm –2 current densities, along with a low Tafel slope of 37 mV dec –1 and a high exchange current density of 0.3 mA cm –2 . The edge-rich and layered 1T'-ReSe 2 was also explored as an anode for sodium ion battery. The in operando X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) technique was applied to investigate the TMD behavior in real-time during the sodiation/desodiation process. Furthermore, the in situ results revealed that the nanosized 1T'-ReSe 2 is electrchemically reversible during discharge/charge cycles. The electrochemical test results demonstrated that 1T'-ReSe 2 could be a promising anode material for alkaline batteries.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
NASA NTRS2020

The bioclimatic extent and pattern of the cold edge of the boreal forest: the circumpolar taiga-tundra ecotone

Current configurations of forest structure at the cold edge of the boreal may help understand the future of ecosystem functioning in high northern latitudes. The circumpolar biome boundary at the boreal (taiga) forest and tundra interface is an ecological transition zone (taiga-tundra ecotone; TTE) experiencing changes that affect its forest structure. We accounted for the TTE's horizontal forest structure with an estimate of its extent and pattern as represented by tree canopy cover (TCC). We quantified TCC patterns with an algorithm that describes its spatial gradient, and summarized landscape patterns of structure to represent heterogeneity, capturing abrupt, diffuse, and uniform forest at mesoscales. We used these landscape patterns to constrain the spatial extent of sparse and open canopy forest, and non-forest (forest-adjacent) edge that defines the TTE extent. The resulting map of the TTE extent is based on forest structure spatial patterns resolved at 30 m, highlights structural variability across landscapes, and helps distinguish tundra from boreal domains. We classified 14 594 landscapes as those associated with the TTE within a circumpolar bioclimatic envelope (11.575 million km2), where 44.83% of the area of these landscapes were forest and non-forest edge, yet 36.43% contributed to the TTE extent. We report the overall extent of the TTE (3.032 million km2) across North America and Greenland (53%), and Eurasia (47%), where 0.697 million km2 is non-forest edge, 0.549 million km2 is sparse forest, and 1.787 million km2 is open canopy forest. Diffuse forest landscapes dominate the TTE (79%), and abrupt landscapes (~19%) indicate portions of the TTE where sparse forest and non-forest edge are the prevailing structural patterns. This account of the TTE quantifies the area of the cold edge of the boreal forest where previous global estimates show high discrepancies, and can help target monitoring and prediction of circumpolar dynamics.

Paul M Montesano↗
NASA NTRS2011

Daytime Water Detection Based on Sky Reflections

Robust water detection is a critical perception requirement for unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) autonomous navigation. This is particularly true in wide-open areas where water can collect in naturally occurring terrain depressions during periods of heavy precipitation and form large water bodies. One of the properties of water useful for detecting it is that its surface acts as a horizontal mirror at large incidence angles. Water bodies can be indirectly detected by detecting reflections of the sky below the horizon in color imagery. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has implemented a water detector based on sky reflections that geometrically locates the pixel in the sky that is reflecting on a candidate water pixel on the ground and predicts if the ground pixel is water based on color similarity and local terrain features. This software detects water bodies in wide-open areas on cross-country terrain at mid- to far-range using imagery acquired from a forward-looking stereo pair of color cameras mounted on a terrestrial UGV. In three test sequences approaching a pond under a clear, overcast, and cloudy sky, the true positive detection rate was 100% when the UGV was beyond 7 meters of the water's leading edge and the largest false positive detection rate was 0.58%. The sky reflection based water detector has been integrated on an experimental unmanned vehicle and field tested at Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA, USA.

sky reflections↗
DOE OSTI2016

Metallicity of Ca 2 Cu 6 P 5 with single and double copper-pnictide layers

Here, we report thermodynamic and transport properties, and also theoretical calculations, for Cu-based compound Ca 2 Cu 6 P 5 and compare with CaCu 2 -dP 2 . Both materials have layers of edge-sharing copper pnictide tetrahedral CuP 4 , similar to Fe–As and Fe–Se layers (with FeAs 4 , FeSe 4 ) in the iron-based superconductors. Despite the presence of this similar transition-metal pnictide layer, we find that both Ca 2 Cu 6 P 5 and CaCu 2-δ P 2 have temperature-independent magnetic susceptibility and show metallic behavior with no evidence of either magnetic ordering or superconductivity down to 1.8 K CaCu 2-δ P 2 is slightly off-stoichiometric, with δ = 0.14. Theoretical calculations suggest that unlike Fe 3d-based magnetic materials with a large density of states (DOS) at the Fermi surface, Cu have comparatively low DOS, with the majority of the 3d spectral weight located well below Fermi level. The room-temperature resistivity value of Ca 2 Cu 6 P 5 is only 9 μΩ-cm, due to a substantial plasma frequency and an inferred electron-phonon coupling λ of 0.073 (significantly smaller than that of metallic Cu). Also, microscopy result shows that Cu–Cu distance along the c-axis within the double layers can be very short (2.5 Å), even shorter than metallic elemental copper bond (2.56 Å). The value of dρ/dT for CaCu 2-δ P 2 at 300 K is approximately three times larger than in Ca 2 Cu 6 P 5 , which suggests the likelihood of stronger electron-phonon coupling. This study shows that the details of Cu-P layers and bonding are important for their transport characteristics. In addition, it emphasizes the remarkable character of the DOS of ‘122’ iron-based materials, despite much structural similarities.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Edge States Drive Exciton Dissociation in Ruddlesden–Popper Lead Halide Perovskite Thin Films

Efficient photovoltaic cells based on thin films of solution-processed 2D Ruddlesden–Popper hybrid perovskites (RPPs) represent an exciting breakthrough due to their enhanced tunability and chemical stability relative to those fabricated from 3D phases. However, reports of efficient charge separation and current collection are in apparent contradiction with the well-known enhancement of the exciton binding energy in multilayered halide perovskites, which should lower the device’s internal quantum efficiency and voltage. This controversy has led to various proposals for the electronic and physical structure of RPP thin films, including phase inhomogeneity as the driving force for exciton dissociation and transport. We address this apparent paradox in high-quality hot-cast RPP films by correlating ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy with X-ray scattering measurements. We show that a hot-casting fabrication method produces highly phase pure n = 3 (BA) 2 (MA) n-1 Pb n I 3n+1 RPP structures. The high-phase purity and large grain sizes allow us to observe vertical transport of excitons via a diffusive process and allow us to determine that charge separation is primarily driven by dissociation at surface localized subgap electronic states. Furthermore, we analyze the differential absorption kinetics in films of varying thickness to directly determine that the excitonic diffusion constant is ~0.18 cm 2 s –1 . We propose that a surface localized structural distortion, observed using surface selective grazing incidence X-ray scattering measurements, is responsible for the creation of the surface localized defect states. We find that the density and spatial distribution of these defect states is a function of preparation conditions.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2012

Predictive process simulation of cryogenic implants for leading edge transistor design

Two cryogenic implant TCAD-modules have been developed: (i) A continuum-based compact model targeted towards a TCAD production environment calibrated against an extensive data-set for all common dopants. Ion-specific calibration parameters related to damage generation and dynamic annealing were used and resulted in excellent fits to the calibration data-set. (ii) A Kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) model including the full time dependence of ion-exposure that a particular spot on the wafer experiences, as well as the resulting temperature vs. time profile of this spot. It was calibrated by adjusting damage generation and dynamic annealing parameters. The kMC simulations clearly demonstrate the importance of the time-structure of the beam for the amorphization process: Assuming an average dose-rate does not capture all of the physics and may lead to incorrect conclusions. The model enables optimization of the amorphization process through tool parameters such as scan speed or beam height.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Difference in neoclassical edge flows between strongly negative and positive triangularities in the XGC gyrokinetic simulation

The neoclassical baseline study of a strongly negative triangularity (NT) plasma and the corresponding positive triangularity (PT) plasma is performed using the edge-specialized, total-f gyrokinetic code (X-point Gyrokinetic Code, XGC). A DIII-D-like plasma is used, based on the negative triangularity discharge of DIII-D #193 793. An artificial positive triangularity (PT) equilibrium has been constructed to compare the edge rotation physics at the same triangularity strength but with opposite sign, while keeping the same elongation and other geometric parameters. Carbon(6+) ions are added to the deuterium plasma at an experimentally relevant level. By using the experimental profile of carbon toroidal rotation profile as an input, XGC finds that the deuteron rotation is significantly different from the carbon rotation at the inboard and outboard midplanes, mostly caused by the difference in the Pfirsch–Schlüter rotation. More importantly, a significant difference in the X-point orbit loss physics, thus the rotation source, is found between the positive and negative triangularity equilibrium models. However, it is also found that the agreement between the present neoclassical simulation and the experimental NT data is validated only within the middle of the pedestal slope, indicating the importance of edge turbulence. Finally, this study could establish a baseline for the multiphysics, multiscale studies that include turbulence of negative triangularity plasmas.

Deuterium↗
NASA NTRS1977

Friction and wear of sintered fibermetal abradable seal materials

Three abradable gas-path seal-material systems based on a sintered NiCrAlY fiber metal structure were evaluated under a range of wear conditions representative of those likely to be encountered in various knife-edge seal (labyrinth or shrouded turbine) applications. Conditions leading to undesirable wear of the rotating knife were identified, and a model proposed based on thermal effects arising under different rub conditions. It was found, and predicted by the model, that low incursion (plunge) rates tended to promote smearing of the low-density sintered material with consequent wear to the knife edge. Tradeoff benefits between baseline 19 percent dense material, a similar material of increased density, and a self-lubricating coating applied to the 19 percent dense material were identified on the basis of relative rub tolerance and erosion resistance.

Bill, R. C.↗
DOE OSTI2022

The Latent Dirichlet Allocation model applied to airborne LiDAR data: A case study on mapping forest degradation associated with fragmentation and fire in the Amazon region

1. LiDAR data are being increasingly used to provide a detailed characterization of the vertical profile of forests. This characterization enables the generation of new insights on the influence of environmental drivers and anthropogenic disturbances on forest structure as well as on how forest structure influences important ecosystem functions and services. Unfortunately, extracting information from LiDAR data in a way that enables the spatial visualization of forest structure, as well as its temporal changes, is challenging due to the high dimensionality of these data. 2. In this study, we show how the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model applied to LiDAR data (LidarLDA) can be used to identify forest structural types and how the relative abundance of these forest types changes throughout the landscape. The code to fit this model is made available through the open-source r package LidarLDA in github. We illustrate the use of LidarLDA both with simulated data and data from a large-scale fire experiment in the Brazilian Amazon region. 3. Using simulated data, we demonstrate that LidarLDA accurately identifies the number of forest types as well as their spatial distribution and absorptance probabilities. For the empirical data, we found that LidarLDA detects both landscape-level patterns in forest structure as well as the strong interacting effect of fire and forest fragmentation on forest structure based on the experimental fire plots. More specifically, LidarLDA reveals that proximity to forest edge exacerbates the impact of fires, and that burned forests remain structurally different from unburned areas for at least 7 years, even when burned only once. Importantly, LidarLDA generates insights on the 3D structure of forest that cannot be obtained using more standard approaches that just focus on top-of-the-canopy information (e.g. canopy height models based on LiDAR data). 4. By enabling the mapping of forest structure and its temporal changes, we believe that LidarLDA will be of broad utility to the ecological research community.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Development of a Novel Accelerator for Neutron Transport Solution Using the Galerkin Spectral Element Methods (Final Report)

This report summarizes the results of a three-year research project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) to develop and implement advanced acceleration schemes for the DOE NEAMS neutronics code PROTEUSSN. The project team included the University of Massachusetts Lowell, The Ohio State University, University of Michigan, and Argonne National Laboratory. The PROTEUS code is a high-fidelity capable deterministic neutron transport code based on unstructured finite element meshes, which solves the steady-state and transient neutron transport problem using the 2nd-order discrete ordinate method (SN2ND), the method of characteristics (MOC), and the advanced nodal transport method (NODAL). The DSA scheme has been implemented in PROTEUS to speed up SN transport calculations. The existing DSA scheme employs a consistent finite element formulation on the same fine mesh structure as the SN solution While the use of consistent discretizations makes the DSA method effective, it does not necessarily make it efficient because the numerical solution of a discretized elliptic diffusion problem itself can be costly, particularly when the problem size becomes large. We developed a new discontinuous Galerkin (DG) discretization of the diffusion equation, called DG-DSA, which can effectively and efficiently accelerate the SN transport iterations. As compared with the previous work, the novelty of our method is that the diffusion equation is solved on a coarse-mesh grid using the DG methods, and the DG diffusion discretization incorporates local hp adaptation, i.e., local adaptation of mesh size and/or polynomial degree, based on local total cross section (or optical thickness). Therefore, the resulting number of degrees of freedom (DOF) of the DG discretization is much less than the conventional consistent DSA discretizations, and thus DG-DSA can achieve significant improvement in computational efficiency. We implemented this scheme in PROTEUS-SN. In addition, we developed a new stabilization scheme named linear prolongation CMFD (lpCMFD). A novel feature of this scheme is that the conventional flat flux ratio–based scaling approach is replaced with a linear interpolation of the scalar flux differences at the coarse-mesh cell edges between the neutron transport and CMFD calculations. Fourier convergence analysis and numerical results show that lpCMFD is unconditionally stable and more effective than other CMFD based on acceleration schemes such as pCMFD, odCMFD. We also developed a new nonlinear diffusion acceleration scheme for solving neutron transport equations. This scheme, called LR-NDA, employs a local refinement approach on the framework of CMFD by solving a local boundary value problem of the scalar flux on the coarse-mesh structure to replace the piecewise constant scalar flux obtained by CMFD. The refined flux is then used to update the scalar flux in the neutron transport source iteration. It has been demonstrated that that LR-NDA is much more effective and stable than CMFD for a wide range of optical thicknesses. LR-NDA is a local adaptive method, which means LR-NDA does not necessarily require local refinement for all the coarse-mesh cells on the problem domain, i.e., it can be used only for relatively optically thick regions where the standard CMFD scheme would encounter the convergence problem.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Q2 Report for FY25 Theory and Simulation Performance Target: Development of an integrated modeling framework for fusion reactor design and assessment

This report describes the work and activities carried out towards the completion of each of the following milestones in FY25 Q2: 1. Demonstrate workflow for generating self-consistent CESOL plasma profiles + first wall and divertor loading prediction and generate the CAT plasma and neutron loading needed for further engineering analysis: $\circ$ Run CESOL with BOUT++/Hermes-3 and immersed boundary condition to directly map to wall: • Run BOUT++/Hermes-3 through the IPS workflow to find radial particle and energy diffusivities to match either the Eich or the physics-based scaling of the SOL heat flux width, and • Expand source of first wall heat flux to include charged particles, neutrals, and radiation from the core+edge. 2. Generate medium fidelity parametrized CAD: $\circ$ Develop the TRACER tool to read an existing CAD, regenerate the geometry based on vertex location and connectivity information, define vertex translation and parameters needed for scaling the CAD, and $\circ$ Utilize the FreeGS code to determine CAT PF coil placement, including minimizing the number of coils, coil current, and electromechanical stresses. 3. Utilize plasma loading for engineering analysis: $\circ$ Couple the plasma loading to input for OpenFOAM and demonstrate initial test of thermal analysis of CAT first wall loading with typical DCLL blanket component cooling boundary conditions. 4. Demonstrate nuclear analysis: $\circ$ Apply initial analysis of tritium transport in DCLL blanket by evaluating spatially resolved tritium generation rates, tritium diffusion and convection.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Collective electronic behaviors of laterally heterostructured armchair MoS{sub 2}-NbS{sub 2} nanoribbons

Based on density functional theory, we have investigated the electronic properties of molybdenum disulfide-niobium disulfide hybrid nanoribbons (MoS{sub 2}-NbS{sub 2} NRs). It is found that the MoS{sub 2} edge, MoS{sub 2} center, NbS{sub 2} edge, and NbS{sub 2} center have distinct contributions to the collective electronic behaviors of MoS{sub 2}-NbS{sub 2} NRs. Its behavior, metallic or semiconductor, depends on whether the central area of NR contains NbS{sub 2} chain or not. This dependence has been also revealed in the electronic structures of NbS{sub 2}-MoS{sub 2}-NbS{sub 2} NR and MoS{sub 2}-NbS{sub 2}-MoS{sub 2} NR, of which the former is semiconductor and the latter is metal. In comparison with MoS{sub 2} NR of the same width, the hybrid has a different bandgap that was caused by the coupled effects between NbS{sub 2} edge and MoS{sub 2} edge. This fact makes MoS{sub 2}-NbS{sub 2} NRs a possible candidate for nanoelectronic devices based on heterostructured transition-metal dichalcogenide.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Structure and properties of edge dislocations in BiFe O 3

Edge dislocations are frequently found in epitaxial BiFeO 3 multiferroic thin films and are expected to exhibit distinctive and localized magnetoelectric properties. However, an exhaustive characterization of these dislocations at the atomic level has to date been largely overlooked. Here, we use a combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques, atomistic simulations obtained from classical molecular dynamics calculations, and real-space multiple-scattering theory to explore the chemical properties and the bonding characteristics of the atoms located at and near the dislocation cores. We find that in addition to Bi, small amounts of Fe atoms are present in the BiFeO 3 dislocation cores which result in uncompensated Fe spins along the dislocations and give rise to a magnetic signal. Furthermore, our results suggest that edge dislocations in BiFeO 3 films could be efficiently used for realizing BiFeO 3 -based magnetic devices.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2012

Fueling Studies on the Lithium Tokamak Experiment

Lithium plasma facing components reduce the flux of "recycled" particles en- tering the plasma edge from the plasma facing components. This results in increased external fueling requirements and provides the opportunity to control the magnitude and distribution of the incoming particle flux. It has been pre- dicted that the plasma density profile will then be determined by the deposition profile of the external fueling, rather than dominated by the recycled particle flux. A series of experiments on the Lithium Tokamak Experiment demonstrate that lithium wall coatings facilitate control of the neutral and plasma particle in- ventories. With fresh lithium coatings and careful gas injection programming, over 90% of the injected particle inventory can be absorbed in the lithium wall during a discharge. Furthermore, dramatic changes in the fueling requirements and plasma parameters were observed when lithium coatings were applied. This is largely due to the elimination of water as an impurity on the plasma facing components. A Molecular Cluster Injector (MCI) was developed for the fueling of LTX plas- mas. The MCI uses a supersonic nozzle, cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures, to create the conditions necessary for molecular cluster formation. It has been predicted that molecular clusters will penetrate deeper into plasmas than gas- phase molecules via a reduced ionization cross-section and by improving the collimation of the neutral jet. Using an electron beam diagnostic, the densities of the cryogenic MCI are measured to be an order of magnitude higher than in the room-temperature jets formed with the same valve pressure. This indi- cates increased collimation relative to what would be expected from ideal gas dynamics alone. A systematic study of the fueling efficiencies achieved with the LTX fueling systems is presented. The fueling efficiency of the Supersonic Gas Injector (SGI) is demonstrated to be strongly dependent on the distance between the nozzle and plasma edge. The fueling efficiency of the gas puffer was improved by the addition of a guide tube to keep the gas flow collimated and directed towards the plasma edge. Contrary to results reported on other devices, the MCI yields fueling efficiencies that are at best equal to the SGI. This suggests that any enhanced penetration from cluster formation is nullified by the reduced velocity of the cryogenic gas. Furthermore, at very high neutral fluxes, the fueling efficiency of the MCI dropped off dramatically, suggesting that the build-up of pressure in the scrape-off-layer is producing a self-shielding effect. All of these results are consistent with the idea that the best gas-based fueling source is one that brings highly directed neutrals to the plasma edge, without being scattered or ionized in the scrape-off-layer. The density profiles of LTX plasmas are measured during external fueling with the gas puffer, SGI, and cryogenic MCI. While the density profile amplitude increases with higher fueling rates, the shape of the profile remains constant. This suggests that particle transport is such that differences in the neutral deposition cannot be discerned. The density profiles are consistently hollow, suggesting a region of reduced particle transport in the core of LTX plasmas.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Optimization-Based Deconfliction of Distribution System Applications

Power distribution systems are transitioning towards a future with large numbers of controllable grid-edge devices and distributed generation, as well as more complex operational objectives. This evolution requires a new distribution management approach, and modular applications can play a significant role. Thus, new strategies to coordinate independent applications with diverging operational goals are necessary. In this paper, we propose a novel optimization-based deconflictor to facilitate coordination in future advanced distribution management systems.

application deconfliction, power system optimizati↗
NASA NTRS2016

Changes in Flat Plate Wake Characteristics Obtained With Decreasing Plate Thickness

The near and very near wake of a flat plate with a circular trailing edge is investigated with data from direct numerical simulations. Computations were performed for four different Reynolds numbers based on plate thickness (D) and at constant plate length. The value of θ/D varies by a factor of approximately 20 in the computations (θ being the boundary layer momentum thickness at the trailing edge). The separating boundary layers are turbulent in all the cases. One objective of the study is to understand the changes in wake characteristics as the plate thickness is reduced (increasing θ/D). Vortex shedding is vigorous in the low θ/D cases with a substantial decrease in shedding intensity in the largest θ/D case (for all practical purposes shedding becomes almost intermittent). Other characteristics that are significantly altered with increasing θ/D are the roll-up of the detached shear layers and the magnitude of fluctuations in shedding period. These effects are explored in depth. The effects of changing θ/D on the distributions of the time-averaged, near-wake velocity statistics are discussed.

Wakes↗
DOE OSTI2021

Scalable Pattern Matching in Metadata Graphs via Constraint Checking

Pattern matching is a fundamental tool for answering complex graph queries. Unfortunately, existing solutions have limited capabilities: They do not scale to process large graphs and/or support only a restricted set of search templates or usage scenarios. Moreover, the algorithms at the core of the existing techniques are not suitable for today’s graph processing infrastructures relying on horizontal scalability and shared-nothing clusters, as most of these algorithms are inherently sequential and difficult to parallelize. In this article we present an algorithmic pipeline that bases pattern matching on constraint checking. The key intuition is that each vertex and edge participating in a match has to meet a set of constraints implicitly specified by the search template. These constraints can be verified independently and typically are less expensive to compute than searching the full template. The pipeline we propose generates these constraints and iterates over them to eliminate all the vertices and edges that do not participate in any match, thus reducing the background graph to a subgraph that is the union of all template matches—the complete set of all vertices and edges that participate in at least one match. Additional analysis can be performed on this annotated, reduced graph, such as full match enumeration, match counting, or computing vertex/edge centrality. Furthermore, a vertex-centric formulation for constraint checking algorithms exists, and this makes it possible to harness existing high-performance, vertex-centric graph processing frameworks. This technique (i) enables highly scalable pattern matching in metadata (labeled) graphs; (ii) supports arbitrary patterns with 100% precision; (iii) enables tradeoffs between precision and time-to-solution, while always selects all vertices and edges that participate in matches, thus offering 100% recall; and (iv) supports a set of popular data analytics scenarios. We implement our approach on top of HavoqGT, an open-source asynchronous graph processing framework, and demonstrate its advantages through strong and weak scaling experiments on massive scale real-world (up to 257 billion edges) and synthetic (up to 4.4 trillion edges) labeled graphs, respectively, and at scales (1,024 nodes / 36,864 cores), orders of magnitude larger than used in the past for similar problems. This article serves two purposes: First, it synthesises the knowledge accumulated during a long-term project. Second, it presents new system features, usage scenarios, optimizations, and comparisons with related work that strengthen the confidence that pattern matching based on iterative pruning via constraint checking is an effective and scalable approach in practice. The new contributions include the following: (i) We demonstrate the ability of the constraint checking approach to efficiently support two additional search scenarios that often emerge in practice, interactive incremental search and exploratory search. (ii) We empirically compare our solution with two additional state-of-the-art systems, Arabsque and TriAD. (iii) We show the ability of our solution to accommodate a more diverse range of datasets with varying properties, e.g., scale, skewness, label distribution, and match frequency. (iv) We introduce or extend a number of system features (e.g., work aggregation, load balancing, and the ability to cap the generated traffic) and design optimizations and demonstrate their advantages with respect to improving performance and scalability. (v) We present bottleneck analysis and insights into artifacts that influence performance. (vi) We present a theoretical complexity argument that motivates the performance gains we observe.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗