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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 1,333 records · Page 74

Analysis of a disk-on-rod surface wave element inside a corrugated horn using the mode-matching technique

A disk-on-rod inside a corrugated horn is one of the horn configurations for dual-frequency or wide-band operation. A mode-matching analysis method is described. A disk-on-rod inside a corrugated horn is represented as a series of coaxial waveguide sections and circular waveguide sections connected to each other. Three kinds of junctions need to be considered: coaxial-to-coaxial, coaxial-to-circular, and circular-to-circular. A computer program was developed to calculate the scattering matrix and the radiation pattern of a disk-on-rod inside a corrugated horn. The software as verified by experiment, and good agreement between calculation and measurement was obtained. The disk-on-rod inside a corrugated horn design gives an option to the Deep Space Network dual-frequency operation system, which currently is a two-horn/one-dichroic plate system.

Chen, J. C.↗

Realtime Three-Dimensional Simulation

Real-time three-dimensional simulations are dependent of three areas: databases and models (3D geometric polygon structure, multiple levels of detail, sound sample waveforms, optimized for interactive, real time use); software applications (software program that controls input devices, visual channels, scene objects, interaction, collision detection, special effects, time of day, weather, I/O, and communication); and hardware (computer, sound processor, monitors control sticks, position trackers, head-mounted displays, amplifiers, speakers, and communications.

Ramsdell, Craig↗

Comparison of LEWICE and GlennICE in the SLD Regime

A research project is underway at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) to produce computer software that can accurately predict ice growth under any meteorological conditions for any aircraft surface. This report will present results from two different computer programs. The first program, LEWICE version 3.2.2, has been reported on previously. The second program is GlennICE version 0.1. An extensive comparison of the results in a quantifiable manner against the database of ice shapes that have been generated in the GRC Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) has also been performed, including additional data taken to extend the database in the Super-cooled Large Drop (SLD) regime. This paper will show the differences in ice shape between LEWICE 3.2.2, GlennICE, and experimental data. This report will also provide a description of both programs. Comparisons are then made to recent additions to the SLD database and selected previous cases. Quantitative comparisons are shown for horn height, horn angle, icing limit, area, and leading edge thickness. The results show that the predicted results for both programs are within the accuracy limits of the experimental data for the majority of cases.

Wright, William B.↗

Multiuser Collaboration with Networked Mobile Devices

In this paper we describe a multiuser collaboration infrastructure that enables multiple mission scientists to remotely and collaboratively interact with visualization and planning software, using wireless networked personal digital assistants(PDAs) and other mobile devices. During ground operations of planetary rover and lander missions, scientists need to meet daily to review downlinked data and plan science activities. For example, scientists use the Science Activity Planner (SAP) in the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission to visualize downlinked data and plan rover activities during the science meetings [1]. Computer displays are projected onto large screens in the meeting room to enable the scientists to view and discuss downlinked images and data displayed by SAP and other software applications. However, only one person can interact with the software applications because input to the computer is limited to a single mouse and keyboard. As a result, the scientists have to verbally express their intentions, such as selecting a target at a particular location on the Mars terrain image, to that person in order to interact with the applications. This constrains communication and limits the returns of science planning. Furthermore, ground operations for Mars missions are fundamentally constrained by the short turnaround time for science and engineering teams to process and analyze data, plan the next uplink, generate command sequences, and transmit the uplink to the vehicle [2]. Therefore, improving ground operations is crucial to the success of Mars missions. The multiuser collaboration infrastructure enables users to control software applications remotely and collaboratively using mobile devices. The infrastructure includes (1) human-computer interaction techniques to provide natural, fast, and accurate inputs, (2) a communications protocol to ensure reliable and efficient coordination of the input devices and host computers, (3) an application-independent middleware that maintains the states, sessions, and interactions of individual users of the software applications, (4) an application programming interface to enable tight integration of applications and the middleware. The infrastructure is able to support any software applications running under the Windows or Unix platforms. The resulting technologies not only are applicable to NASA mission operations, but also useful in other situations such as design reviews, brainstorming sessions, and business meetings, as they can benefit from having the participants concurrently interact with the software applications (e.g., presentation applications and CAD design tools) to illustrate their ideas and provide inputs.

ground operations↗

Antiterrorist Software

In light of the escalation of terrorism, the Department of Defense spearheaded the development of new antiterrorist software for all Government agencies by issuing a Broad Agency Announcement to solicit proposals. This Government-wide competition resulted in a team that includes NASA Lewis Research Center's Computer Services Division, who will develop the graphical user interface (GUI) and test it in their usability lab. The team launched a program entitled Joint Sphere of Security (JSOS), crafted a design architecture (see the following figure), and is testing the interface. This software system has a state-ofthe- art, object-oriented architecture, with a main kernel composed of the Dynamic Information Architecture System (DIAS) developed by Argonne National Laboratory. DIAS will be used as the software "breadboard" for assembling the components of explosions, such as blast and collapse simulations.

Clark, David A.↗

Soft Real-Time PID Control on a VME Computer

microPID (uPID) is a computer program for real-time proportional + integral + derivative (PID) control of a translation stage in a Fourier-transform ultraviolet spectrometer. microPID implements a PID control loop over a position profile at sampling rate of 8 kHz (sampling period 125microseconds). The software runs in a strippeddown Linux operating system on a VersaModule Eurocard (VME) computer operating in real-time priority queue using an embedded controller, a 16-bit digital-to-analog converter (D/A) board, and a laser-positioning board (LPB). microPID consists of three main parts: (1) VME device-driver routines, (2) software that administers a custom protocol for serial communication with a control computer, and (3) a loop section that obtains the current position from an LPB-driver routine, calculates the ideal position from the profile, and calculates a new voltage command by use of an embedded PID routine all within each sampling period. The voltage command is sent to the D/A board to control the stage. microPID uses special kernel headers to obtain microsecond timing resolution. Inasmuch as microPID implements a single-threaded process and all other processes are disabled, the Linux operating system acts as a soft real-time system.

Karayan, Vahag↗

ARRISTOTLE Simulation Demo

NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (NASA IV&V) Jon McBride Software Testing and Research (JSTAR) laboratory has developed the Advanced Risk Reduction Integrated Software Test and Operations Tri-program Lightweight Environment (ARRISTOTLE). ARRISTOTLE is a digital twin of NASA’s Artemis mission. ARRISTOLE executes the true SLS and Orion flight binaries integrated on a single laptop computer. This demo will showcase the execution of the full Artemis liftoff. Once airborne, an inflight anomaly will be injected, resulting in Orion detaching from the booster. The Launch Abort System (LAS) will safely bring Orion back to earth. The Unity game engine is used to visualize the flyout as flight software executes.

emulation↗

TURBOMOLE: Modular program suite for ab initio quantum-chemical and condensed-matter simulations

TURBOMOLE is a collaborative, multi-national software development project aiming to provide highly efficient and stable computational tools for quantum chemical simulations of molecules, clusters, periodic systems, and solutions. The TURBOMOLE software suite is optimized for widely available, inexpensive, and resource-efficient hardware such as multi-core workstations and small computer clusters. TURBOMOLE specializes in electronic structure methods with outstanding accuracy–cost ratio, such as density functional theory including local hybrids and the random phase approximation (RPA), GW-Bethe–Salpeter methods, second-order Møller–Plesset theory, and explicitly correlated coupled-cluster methods. TURBOMOLE is based on Gaussian basis sets and has been pivotal for the development of many fast and low-scaling algorithms in the past three decades, such as integral-direct methods, fast multipole methods, the resolution-of-the-identity approximation, imaginary frequency integration, Laplace transform, and pair natural orbital methods. This review focuses on recent additions to TURBOMOLE’s functionality, including excited-state methods, RPA and Green’s function methods, relativistic approaches, high-order molecular properties, solvation effects, and periodic systems. A variety of illustrative applications along with accuracy and timing data are discussed. Moreover, available interfaces to users as well as other software are summarized. TURBOMOLE’s current licensing, distribution, and support model are discussed, and an overview of TURBOMOLE’s development workflow is provided. Challenges such as communication and outreach, software infrastructure, and funding are highlighted.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

The woman behind the curious invention of modern software: Klára Dán von Neumann’s handwritten letters confirm her legacy

The year 1945 marked not only the birth of the atomic age, but also the birth of modern computer programming. The first fully electronic computing machine, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), came online in December 1945. But programming the ENIAC was an excruciatingly difficult task. Klára Dán von Neumann, who joined the Laboratory at Los Alamos after WWII, helped to revolutionize the process, creating the very first modern computer programs.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A research program in advanced information systems

Topics addressed cover: identification of large space structure dynamics; special-purpose architectures for computational fluid dynamics; fault-tolerant processor architectures; data flow techniques; software specification and verification tools; management of software development; software environment for concurrent computing; and parallel algorithms and architectures for the solution of partial differential equations.

Vandervelde, Wallace E.↗

Developing Information Power Grid Based Algorithms and Software

This exploratory study initiated our effort to understand performance modeling on parallel systems. The basic goal of performance modeling is to understand and predict the performance of a computer program or set of programs on a computer system. Performance modeling has numerous applications, including evaluation of algorithms, optimization of code implementations, parallel library development, comparison of system architectures, parallel system design, and procurement of new systems. Our work lays the basis for the construction of parallel libraries that allow for the reconstruction of application codes on several distinct architectures so as to assure performance portability. Following our strategy, once the requirements of applications are well understood, one can then construct a library in a layered fashion. The top level of this library will consist of architecture-independent geometric, numerical, and symbolic algorithms that are needed by the sample of applications. These routines should be written in a language that is portable across the targeted architectures.

Dongarra, Jack↗

NASA's Software Bank (Cassegrain Feed System)

When Scientific-Atlanta had to design a new Cassegrain antenna, they found that the COSMIC program, "Machine Design of Cassegrain Feed System" allowed for computer simulation of the antenna's performance enabling pre-construction changes to be made. Significant cost savings were effected by the program.

Source record↗

The LLNL Program in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Physics: FY20 Annual Laboratory Continuation Progress Report

The LLNL Heavy-Ion Group has research interests in the features and phenomena of nuclear matter at extreme temperatures and densities. It pursues these interests through participation in two experimental collaborations (ATLAS and sPHENIX) and one joint theory/experiment topical collaboration (JETSCAPE). The group is funded through a combination of LDRD, DOE-SC NP and an award from US ATLAS Software and Computing Operations, which is ultimately funded through HEP. The group's activities in FY20 were oriented around beginning a new LDRD project and fi lling two open postdoc positions while contributing to the ATLAS jet and UPC programs as well as participating in sPHENIX. Both postdoc positions were lled, effectively doubling the side of the LLNL Heavy-Ion Group, by Qipeng Hu (starting 6/20) and Dhanush Hangal (starting 8/20).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Free software for performing physical analysis of systems for digital radiography and mammography

Purpose: In this paper, the authors present a free software for assisting users in achieving the physical characterization of x-ray digital systems and image quality checks. Methods: The program was developed as a plugin of a well-known public-domain suite ImageJ. The software can assist users in calculating various physical parameters such as the response curve (also termed signal transfer property), modulation transfer function (MTF), noise power spectra (NPS), and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). It also includes the computation of some image quality checks: defective pixel analysis, uniformity, dark analysis, and lag. Results: The software was made available in 2009 and has been used during the last couple of years by many users who gave us valuable feedback for improving its usability. It was tested for achieving the physical characterization of several clinical systems for digital radiography and mammography. Various published papers made use of the outcomes of the plugin. Conclusions: This software is potentially beneficial to a variety of users: physicists working in hospitals, staff working in radiological departments, such as medical physicists, physicians, engineers. The plugin, together with a brief user manual, are freely available and can be found online ( http://www.medphys.it/downloads.htm ). With our plugin users can estimate all three most important parameters used for physical characterization (MTF, NPS, and also DQE). The plugin can run on any operating system equipped with ImageJ suite. The authors validated the software by comparing MTF and NPS curves on a common set of images with those obtained with other dedicated programs, achieving a very good agreement.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Fault-tolerance experiments with the JPL STAR computer.

Results of fault-tolerance experiments performed using an experimental computer with dynamic (standby) redundancy, including replaceable subsystems and a 'program rollback' provision to eliminate transient-caused errors. After a brief review of the specification of fault-tolerance with respect to transient faults, including a description of the method of injection of transient faults in software and system tests, fault-tolerance experiments carried out with this computer with regard to the determination of fault classes, software verification, system verification, and recovery stability are summarized. A test and repair processor is described which constitutes a special monitor unit of the computer and is used to obtain information for fault detection in the other subsystems of the computer and to ensure that proper recovery occurs when a fault is detected.

Avizienis, A.↗

Vibrational Signatures of Electronic Properties in Renewable-Energy Catalysis

The objective of this research program is to discover and develop new approaches for ab initio computational simulations of molecular motion. Specifically, this program aims to decipher the connection between the underlying electronic structure and the accordant molecular vibrations in reactive ions and radicals for renewable-energy purposes. Recent experimental progress in ion sources and optical spectroscopies has unearthed considerable new inner-sphere detail for these complexes, but the connection between these spectral signatures and mechanistic information often remains elusive, to the continued frustration of experimentalists. For this purpose, new anharmonic vibrational frequency methods, along with a publicly deployed software package, will be developed. Working closely with committed experimental collaborators, this conceptual and computational framework will be used to explain the results of new spectroscopy experiments, focusing specifically on the inner-shell mechanisms of renewable-energy catalysis. The oxidation half of catalytic water-splitting chemistry will be a central focus, along with fundamental studies of the manner in which strong ions and radicals activate solvent as a chemical species. The resulting products of the research program will include openly available software and algorithms for the ab initio simulation of challenging vibrational spectra, as well as critical mechanistic insight into energy-focused catalytic processes that are opaque to other existing analytical techniques.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Domain Specific Language Support for Exascale

A multi-institutional project known as D-TEC (short for “Domain- specific Technology for Exascale Computing”) set out to explore technologies to support the construction of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) to map application programs to exascale architectures. DSLs employ automated code transformation to shift the burden of delivering portable performance from application programmers to compilers. Two chief properties contribute: DSLs permit expression at a high level of abstraction so that a programmer’s intent is clear to a compiler and DSL implementations encapsulate human domain-specific optimization knowledge so that a compiler can be smart enough to achieve good results on specific hardware. Domain specificity is what makes these properties possible in a programming language. If leveraging domain specificity is the key to keep exascale software tractable, a corollary is that many different DSLs will be needed to encompass the full range of exascale computing applications; moreover, a single application may well need to use several different DSLs in conjunction. As a result, developing a general toolkit for building domain-specific languages was a key goal for the D-TEC project. Different aspects of the D-TEC research portfolio were the focus of work at each of the partner institutions in the multi-institutional project. D-TEC research and development work at Rice University focused on on three principal topics: understanding how to automate the tuning of code for complex architectures, research and development of the Rosebud DSL engine, and compiler technology to support complex execution platforms. This report provides a summary of the research and development work on the D-TEC project at Rice University.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Accelerating Science with the NERSC Burst Buffer Early User Program

NVRAM-based Burst Buffers are an important part of the emerging HPC storage landscape. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently installed one of the first Burst Buffer systems as part of its new Cori supercomputer, collaborating with Cray on the development of the DataWarp software. NERSC has a diverse user base comprised of over 6500 users in 700 different projects spanning a wide variety of scientific computing applications. The use-cases of the Burst Buffer at NERSC are therefore also considerable and diverse. We describe here performance measurements and lessons learned from the Burst Buffer Early User Program at NERSC, which selected a number of research projects to gain early access to the Burst Buffer and exercise its capability to enable new scientific advancements. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time a Burst Buffer has been stressed at scale by diverse, real user workloads and therefore these lessons will be of considerable benefit to shaping the developing use of Burst Buffers at HPC centers.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗