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At least 1,297 records · Page 72

Web-Based Computational Model Builder For Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (Final Report)

According to the World Nuclear Association, the U.S. is the largest producer of nuclear power worldwide. In fact, the U.S. provides over 30 percent of the world's nuclear generation of electricity. Although few new reactors have been built in the past 30 years, the association anticipates that four to six reactors may be built by 2020. The first of the reactors will be built in response to 16 license applications, which have been completed since 2007, to build 24 additional nuclear reactors. Currently, both government and industry are working to accelerate approval for the construction and design of new nuclear energy plants. The U.S. nuclear industry has already achieved significant developments in the implementation of nuclear power plants due to advancements in refueling, maintenance, and safety systems at current power plants. Meanwhile, changes in government policy, which have occurred since the late 1990s, have provided for noteworthy expansion in nuclear capacity. For example, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 evoked investment in electricity infrastructure such as nuclear power. To design future systems and continue operational improvements at existing U.S. plants, advanced modeling and simulation of nuclear reactors are crucial. We developed a Cloud/Web-based tool, HPCCloud, that enables nuclear energy firms, or other manufacturing and engineering companies, to innovate using advanced modeling and simulation. Through the Web-Based Computational Model Builder for Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation grant, we develop HPCCloud to simplify and democratize advanced modeling and simulation in the nuclear energy industry on a range of nuclear engineering applications. It leverages millions of investment dollars from the Department of Energy's Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) and the Office of Nuclear Energy's research and development in Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS). Our approach simplifies the workflow, alleviates the need for in-house computational science and engineering experts, and lowers the capital investments required for advanced modeling and simulation. The Cloud/Web-based simulation environment guides end-users and developers through the advanced modeling and simulation lifecycle. In addition to providing significantly improved, intuitive software, the environment offers reproducible workflows where one can save, share, and even publish the full path of data from input to final analyzed results. HPCCloud addresses identified challenges to the nuclear energy industry's use of advanced modeling and simulation. With this unique Cloud/Web-based environment, we enable an ecosystem of synergistic activities, fueling new research and development for nuclear energy. HPCCloud lays the groundwork for commercialization, through customization, technology integration, and advanced research and development services.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Real-Time Protocol Engineering with the B Language

It is an invariant that critical cyberphysical systems should not fail. Mission assurance requires systems to behave with predictability, especially in their ability to satisfy real-time constraints. The NIST standard for Engineering Trustworthy Secure Systems, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-160v1r1 states that formal methods are the highest level for meeting assurance requirements. There is a tension between the formal method software development process (Figure 1), which does not introduce time specificity until the latter stages of the development process (concrete model), and the need to gain confidence that time constraints will be satisfied. This paper formalizes the practical application of temporal entities e.g. Propositional Temporal Logic (PTL), Temporal Logic of Actions Plus (TLA+), etc. to critical systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Yearly report for the period Jan. 2018 – Jan. 2019 IC Project: w17_unedetection - “Simulation of underground nuclear explosions using the combined finite discrete element method” and “Fracture Formation and Permeability Evolution at in situ Pressure, Temperature and Stress Conditions”

Understanding the underlying physical processes associated with an underground nuclear explosion (UNE) can help with detection and identification of a suspected event. The Underground Nuclear Explosion Signatures Experiment (UNESE) is a collaborative effort between national laboratories aimed towards improving our understanding of physical and radiochemical signatures associated with a UNE. One primary objective of this effort is to perform hydrodynamic modeling of a UNE, with the purpose of estimating the extent of damage caused by such an event. Estimating the damage associated with an event is important for: a) detection of possible physical signatures at the surface of the earth such as fractures, spallation, and cratering and (b) damage to subsurface structures such as tunnels. Additionally, the damage produced by the hydrodynamic models play can be used to inform subsurface flow and transport models. The Combined Finite-Discrete Element Method (FDEM), implemented as an in-house code known as HOSS (Hybrid Optimization Software Suite), is used to model the damage associated with a UNE in various geological settings.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Decrease time-to-solution through improved linear-system setup and solve (Milestone Report)

The goal of the ExaWind project is to enable predictive simulations of wind farms composed of many MW-scale turbines situated in complex terrain. Predictive simulations will require computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for which the mesh resolves the geometry of the turbines, and captures the rotation and large deflections of blades. Whereas such simulations for a single turbine are arguably petascale class, multi-turbine wind farm simulations will require exascale-class resources. We describe in this report our efforts to decrease the setup and solution time for the mass-continuity Poisson system with respect to the benchmark timing results reported in FY18 Q1. In particular, we investigate improving and evaluating two types of algebraic multigrid (AMG) preconditioners: Classical Ruge-Stfiben AMG (C-AMG) and smoothed-aggregation AMG (SA-AMG), which are implemented in the Hypre and Trilinos/MueLu software stacks, respectively.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

GridPACK: Library Architecture and Usability Assessment

The LLNL team has carried out extensive analysis of GridPACK code, including two major code reviews (each being a 2-day event) and a vendor emulation exercise, where the team integrated GridPACK library within a third-party application. The code analysis identified a number of areas for improvement of GridPACK code architecture, but it did not find fundamental flaws in the GridPACK design. The team found the GridPACK strategy of developing a software development kit (SDK) for power systems application development to be sound and well aligned with Office of Electricity long term objectives. The SDK aims to provide power systems software vendors an easy access to high performance computing (HPC) libraries.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Genome-Scale 13 C Fluxomics Modeling for Metabolic Engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae .

Synthetic biology is a rapidly developing field that pursues the application of engineering principles and development approaches to biological engineering. Synthetic biology is poised to change the way biology is practiced, and has important practical applications: for example, building genetically engineered organisms to produce biofuels, medicines, and other chemicals. Traditionally, synthetic biology has focused on manipulating a few genes (e.g., in a single pathway or genetic circuit), but its combination with systems biology holds the promise of creating new cellular architectures and constructing complex biological systems from the ground up. Enabling this merge of synthetic and systems biology will require greater predictive capability for modeling the behavior of cellular systems, and more comprehensive data sets for building and calibrating these models. The so-called "-omics" data sets can now be generated via high throughput techniques in the form of genomic, proteomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic information on the engineered biological system. Of particular interest with respect to the engineering of microbes capable of producing biofuels and other chemicals economically and at scale are metabolomic datasets, and their insights into intracellular metabolic fluxes. Metabolic fluxes provide a rapid and easy to understand picture of how carbon and energy flow throughout the cell. Furthermore, we present a detailed guide to performing metabolic flux analysis and modeling using the open source JBEI Quantitative Metabolic Modeling (jQMM) library. This library allows the user to transform metabolomics data in the form of isotope labeling data from a 13 C labeling experiment into a determination of cellular fluxes that can be used to develop genetic engineering strategies for metabolic engineering.The jQMM library presents a complete toolbox for performing a range of different tasks of interest in metabolic engineering. Various different types of flux analysis and modeling can be performed such as flux balance analysis, 13 C metabolic flux analysis, and two-scale 13 C metabolic flux analysis (2S- 13 C MFA). 2S- 13 C MFA is a novel method that determines genome-scale fluxes without the need of every single carbon transition in the metabolic network. In addition to several other capabilities, the jQMM library can make model based predictions for how various genetic engineering strategies can be incorporated toward bioengineering goals: it can predict the effects of reaction knockouts on metabolism using both the MoMA and ROOM methodologies. In this chapter, we will illustrate the use of the jQMM library through a step-by-step demonstration of flux determination and knockout prediction in a complex eukaryotic model organism: Saccharomyces cerevisiae ( S. cerevisiae ). Included with this chapter is a digital Jupyter Notebook file that provides a computable appendix showing a self-contained example of jQMM usage, which can be changed to fit the user's specific needs. As an open source software project, users can modify and extend the code base to make improvements at will, allowing them to share their development work and contribute back to the jQMM modeling community.

-Omics data↗

Involving the new generations in Fermilab endeavors

Since 1984 the Italian groups of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and Italian Universities, collaborating with the DOE laboratory of Fermilab (US) have been running a two-month summer training program for Italian university students. While in the first year the program involved only four physics students of the University of Pisa, in the following years it was extended to engineering students. This extension was very successful and the engineering students have been since then extremely well accepted by the Fermilab Technical, Accelerator, and Scientific Computing Division groups. Over the many years of its existence, this program has proven to be the most effective way to engage new students in Fermilab endeavors. Many students have extended their collaboration with Fermilab with their Master’s Thesis and PhD. Since 2004 the program has been supported in part by DOE in the frame of an exchange agreement with INFN. Over its almost 40 years of history, the program has grown in scope and size and has involved more than 550 Italian students from more than 20 Italian Universities, Several Institutes of Research, including ASI and INAF in Italy, and the ISSNAF Foundation in the US, have provided additional financial support. Since the program does not exclude appropriately selected non-Italian students, a handful of students from European and non-European Universities were also accepted over the years. Each intern is supervised by a Fermilab Mentor responsible for performing the training program. Training programs spanned from Tevatron, CMS, Muon (g-2), Mu2e, and Short Baseline Neutrino Experiments and DUNE design and experimental data analysis, development of particle detectors (silicon trackers, calorimeters, drift chambers, neutrino and dark matter detectors), design of electronic and accelerator components, development of infrastructures and software for exascale data handling, research on superconductive elements and on accelerating cavities, and theory of particle accelerators. Since 2010, within an extended program supported by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, a total of 30 students in physics, astrophysics, and engineering have been hosted for two months in the summer at US space science Research Institutes and laboratories. In 2015 the University of Pisa included these programs within its educational programs. Accordingly, Summer School students are enrolled at the University of Pisa for the duration of the internship and are identified and ensured as such. At the end of the internship, the students are required to write summary reports on their achievements. After positive evaluation by a University Examining Board, interns are acknowledged credits for their Diploma Supplement. The program was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic but restarted successfully in 2022. We believe this program can be taken as a model and easily adopted by interested institutions.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS AND CASE STUDIES: Addressing the Public Outreach Responsibilities of the National Historic Preservation Act: Argonne National Laboratory’s Box Digital Display Platform

Federal agencies are made responsible for managing the historic properties under their jurisdiction by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended. A component of this responsibility is to mitigate the effect of a federal undertaking on historic properties through mitigation often through documentation. Providing public access to this documentation has always been a challenge. To address the issue of public access to mitigation information, personnel from Argonne National Laboratory created the Box Digital Display Platform, a system for communicating information about historic properties to the public. The platform, developed for the US Army Dugway Proving Ground, uses short introductory videos to present a topic but can also incorporate photos, drawings, GIS information, and documents. The system operates from a small, self-contained computer that can be attached to any digital monitor via an HDMI cable. The system relies on web-based software that allows the information to be republished as a touch-screen device application or as a website. The system does not connect to the Internet, and this increases security and eliminates the software maintenance fees associated with websites. The platform is designed to incorporate the products of past documentation to make this information more accessible to the public; specifically those documentations developed using the Historic American Building Survey/ Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) standards. Argonne National Laboratory’s Box Digital Display Platform can assist federal agencies in complying with the requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act. Environmental Practice 18: 209–213 (2016)

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

HAERO: High-performance aerosols

SAND2021-15059 O Haero is a software library for representing aerosol size distributions, chemical species, and parameterized processes to use with a coupled atmospheric dynamics model or as a standalone tool. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Bosler, Peter↗

Graph Neural Networks and Applied Linear Algebra v.1.0

SAND2024-01365O The Graph Neural Networks and Applied Linear Algebra is companion software for the educational article with the same title. The software provides illustrative examples of graph neural networks in Matlab and Python. These stand-alone algorithms are for educational purposes. The software also includes graph neural network-based algorithms for a trainable Jacobi iteration as well as diffusion coefficient estimation. The software provides human-interpretable implementations of Graph Neural Networks in Matlab and Python. These implementations are not optimized for performance and instead emphasize readability. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

SciDAC↗

Desal.jl

SAND2026-22942O Desal.jl is a Julia software package for lightweight reverse-osmosis desalination simulation. It supports static and dynamic operation of power-limited desalination systems without requiring optimization dependencies. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Michelen Strofer, Carlos [Sandia National Lab. (SN↗

hifem_transport

SAND2022-14657 O The hifem-transport software is used to simulate transport processes in large geologic environments characterized by complex fractures and man-made infrastructure at an affordable computational cost. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Beskardes, Gungor↗

Systems Engineering and Analysis in Support of a US Federal Staging Facility for UNF

The US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Office of Spent Fuel and High-Level Waste Disposition is examining a set of system options and conducting supporting analyses to inform the development of an integrated waste management system, which may include one or more federal staging facilities (FSFs) for used nuclear fuel (UNF ) sited using a collaborative siting process. This paper focuses on the ongoing activities in two systems engineering and analysis work areas: (1) data and tools development, validation, and maintenance and (2) systems engineering execution. Within the first work area, the STANDARDS 5.0 UNF data and analysis tool, formerly known as UNF-ST&DARDS, is being developed as a foundational resource to assist in the management of UNF data. It has the key capability to model UNF throughout the entire back end of the fuel cycle. STANDARDS also includes several compatible analysis tools for the time-dependent characterization of UNF and related systems by interfacing with the SCALE code system for nuclear analysis and COBRA-SFS for thermal analysis. Also, within the data and tools area is the Next Generation System Analysis Model (NGSAM), which is an agent-based simulation software tool expressly designed to be capable of modeling the waste management system, including the transportation of UNF to and from a FSF. NGSAM has been developed to enable informed decision-making by providing the capability to analyze various potential system options for the management of UNF and high-level radioactive waste. Finally, in the systems engineering execution area, the team has begun to apply a disciplined systems engineering approach at the system level along with supporting analysis to guide the development of the FSF project requirements (including associated transportation infrastructure). Systems engineering principles and practices and their adaptation/application to design and development activities will ensure that the waste management system is effectively implemented as work proceeds. Other activities include investigating the implications of changes in various assumptions and parameters related to waste management systems, such as UNF acceptance rates, receipt logic, facility capacities and capabilities, use of standardized canisters, and different assumed facility operation start dates. Keywords: federal staging facility (FSF), used nuclear fuel (UNF), integrated waste management (IWM) system, Next Generation System Analysis Model (NGSAM), STANDARDS, systems engineering

Joseph, Robert↗

Measuring residual stress in Ti-6Al-4V with HR-EBSD, using reference patterns from annealed material

In this study, elastic strain and residual stress values in an engineering material were determined by high-resolution EBSD (HR-EBSD) using reference patterns from annealed, recrystallized material. Specifically, rolled Ti-6Al-4V sheet was analyzed using HR EBSD in both an as-annealed and a strained state, the latter established via a static two-point bend fixture. The commercial software CrossCourt4 (CC4) was used to evaluate the relative intragranular strain tensor components of the alpha grains mapped by HR-EBSD. The intragranular reference patterns identified in each grain by the software were then replaced with similarly-oriented patterns from scans of the as-annealed, recrystallized material. The CC4 analysis was then repeated to provide calibrated strain and residual stress values. Elastic strains on the order of 10–3 were detected, with corresponding residual stress values on the order of 1 GPa. Subsequent analyses using high energy synchrotron x-ray diffraction showed good correlation with the elastic strains measured by HR-EBSD using the annealed reference patterns. Additionally, the maximum macroscopic stress analytically predicted for two-point bending was in agreement with the residual stress observed. Good repeatability of the methodology and insight into the state of individual grains were also observed. The findings provide encouraging evidence that accurate intragranular and long-range residual stress measurements of engineering significance can be made with HR-EBSD using a physical reference pattern library.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

TH-CD-207A-02: Implementation of Live EPID-Based Inspiration Level Assessment (LEILA) for Deepinspiration Breath-Hold (DIBH) Monitoring Using MV Fluoroscopy

Purpose: As prior work has shown that current DIBH monitoring approaches using surrogate measures (marker block on chest) do not always correspond with the clinical quantity of interest (lung depth, LD), a software tool and workflow are introduced to use MV fluoroscopy during treatment for real-time / Live EPID-based Inspiration Level Assessment (LEILA). Methods: A prototype software tool calculates and displays the LD during the treatment of left sided breast cancer. Calculations are based on MV cine images which are acquired with the treatment beam thereby not incurring any additional imaging dose. Image capture and processing are implemented using a dedicated frame grabber computer. The calculation engine automatically detects image orientation and includes provisions for large treatment fields that exceed the size of the EPID panel. LD is measured along a line profile in the middle of the field. LEILA’s interface displays the current MV image, a reference image (DRR), the current LD, as well as a trace of LD over treatment time. The display includes patient specific LD tolerances. Tolerances are specified for each field and loaded before the treatment. A visual warning is generated when the tolerance is exceeded. LEILA is initially run in parallel with current DIBH techniques. When later run by itself DIBH setup will be done using skin marks and room laser. Results: Offline tests of LEILA confirmed accurate automatic LD measurement for a variety of patient geometries. Deployment of the EPID during all left sided breast treatments was well tolerated by patients and staff during a multi-month pilot. The frame grabber provides 11 frames-per-second; the MATLAB based LEILA prototype software can analyze five frames-per-second standalone on standard desktop hardware. Conclusion: LEILA provides an automated approach to quantitatively monitor LD on MV images during DIBH treatment. Future improvements include a database and further speed optimization.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Switching-Cycle-Based Startup for Grid-tied Inverters

This paper presents a novel switching cycle-based startup approach that eliminates the need for voltage sensors and phase-locked loops. Here, the proposed method surpasses the bandwidth limitations inherent in traditional PLL-based synchronization techniques and attains grid synchronization of the inverter within two switching cycles. Despite the absence of voltage sensors and PLLs, this synchronization is achieved without inrush currents. Furthermore, the startup method does not necessitate the addition of any hardware or an increase in software complexity. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

42 ENGINEERING↗

XPCA -Python Implementation

Principal component analysis (PCA) is arguably the most popular tool in multivariate exploratory data analysis. We consider the question of how to handle heterogeneous variables that include continuous, binary, and ordinal. In the probabilistic interpretation of low-rank PCA, the data has a normal multivariate distribution and, therefore, normal marginal distributions for each column. If some marginals are continuous but not normal, the semiparametric copula-based principal component analysis (COCA) method is an alternative to PCA that combines a Gaussian copula with nonparametric marginals. If some marginals are discrete or semi-continuous, we present a new extended PCA (XPCA) method that also uses a Gaussian copula and nonparametric marginals and accounts for discrete variables in the likelihood calculation by integrating over appropriate intervals. Like PCA, the factors produced by XPCA can be used to find latent structure in data, build predictive models, and perform dimensionality reduction. We implement the new model, XPCA, and its ancestors PCA and COCA in both R and Python. This software provides implementations of XPCA, COCA, and probabilistic PCA in both R and Python. XPCA is written in arXiv report https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.07510. SAND2019-10591 M Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Kincher-Winoto, Kina↗

spot_bt_ros v.0.1.0

SAND2024-08478O The spot_bt_ros tool allows users to easily construct complex autonomous behaviors for Boston Dynamic's Spot robot without having to overly rely on the Spot software development kit (SDK). This package specifically allows a user to run the Robot Operating System 2 alongside the SDK. Using a form-of-state machine called a "behavior tree,” the software develops different "leaves" or actions that the robot undergoes. Attaching multiple actions in sequence creates a "branch" and several of these make up the "tree." Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Kakish, Zahi↗