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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 1,369 records · Page 76
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

DiTour

it is common for facilities to have a lobby with a display loop while also requiring an option for guided tours. Existing solutions have required expensive hardware and awkward software. Our solution is relative low cost as it runs on an iPad connected to an external monitor, and our software provides an intuitive touch interface. The media files are downloaded from a web server onto the device allowing a mobile option (e.g. displays at conferences). Media may include arbitrary sequences of images, movies or PDF documents. Tour guides can select different tracks of slides to display and the presentation will return to the default loop after a timeout.

Pelaia, II, Thomas A.↗
DOE OSTI2016

Use of X-Ray Tomography to Elucidate Cold Cap Structure in Waste Glass Melter

In a waste glass melter, the cold cap plays a vital role in establishing the melt rate for a particular melter feed. Data from x-ray tomography of laboratory-scale cold caps provide insight into the topology of bubble distribution within the cold cap for various feed compositions at temperatures from 600°C to 1040°C. The images were thresholded to capture features of interest, then processed by software to obtain statistics that can be used to characterize bubble topology. Statistics obtained include total pellet volume, porosity, bubble size distribution and morphology as a function of temperature. These statistics will be used to compare the melting behavior of the different glass formulations as a function of temperature. Information on bubble topology at various temperatures will be used to synthetically generate a cold cap structure that can be used to model heat transfer through the cold cap layer.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2018

Fairchilde Puppet Environment

The software creates a minimal directory organization structure and data isolation methods so that groups and projects are differentiated and isolated by levels in the hierarchy naming schemes. It also allows various versions of Puppet server and client to be used by different groups and projects so that groups can maintain their own upgrade and patching schedules without introducing breaking changes and unnecessary service outages to other groups using the framework.

Campfield, Michael P↗
DOE OSTI2015

Improving public communication through environmental data transparency at Los Alamos National Laboratory - 15306

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) environmental data span a wide range of media, including air, soil, sediment, water, foodstuff, and biota as well as over 1000 analytes and time periods extending over 4 decades, resulting in over 14 million records to manage and analyze. At a time of budget cuts and rapid social and technological change, the public, regulatory and compliance agencies, and stakeholders demand accelerated data delivery and efficiency, information sharing, and transparency in the dissemination and handling of samples collected in and around LANL. Meeting these requirements, while constraining the associated costs can be challenging; however, LANL has achieved this by adopting a cloud-based database called the Environmental Information Management (EIM) system and its public database counterpart, IntellusNM (Intellus) (www.intellusnm.com). To be consistent with federal initiatives to move government computing into cloud-based services, LANL chose to partner with an existing cloud-based vendor, Locus Technologies, to implement a software-as-a-service model. As an additional cost-saving measure, local regulatory and compliance agencies collaborated with LANL to incorporate their data into EIM and Intellus database. By adopting a single platform cloud-based solution to replace 12 different pre-existing environmental data systems, LANL has streamlined environmental data processes, resulting in over $15 million cost savings through 2015. EIM, LANL's internal cloud database, provides a cradle-to-grave process for data handling. EIM supports LANL's entire data process from detailed sample planning, mobile data collection using iOS mobile devices, to automated bottle labeling, generation of chain of custody, analytical lab electronic data deliverable upload, auto data validation, sample tracking, and custom regulatory and compliance reports. EIM has functionality to assess data in various ways such as the ability to design new formatted reports, a free-form structured query language tool of the entire database, exceedance reports, calculation engine, charting, trends, and statistics. EIM also has interactive geographic information system layers and analyte concentration color contour mapping capabilities. Additionally, and of greater importance to LANL, EIM supports the ability for third-party landowners to review data before release to the public, thus ensuring transparency and confidence in LANL's stewardship of human health and the environment. Intellus, the database counterpart of EIM, is the publicly available view of the entire LANL database and requires no data feeds or transformations. Intellus allows user-friendly access to LANL's environmental data as it is collected, providing the public, scientists, remediation teams, regulators, and stakeholders within hours of receipt. Full transparency in giving the public access to environmental data information provides LANL's overall solution to environmental data management for the public. By making the data easy to obtain, search, and query for interested stakeholders, the system enables confidence in LANL's stewardship of the environment. Working together identifies key topics of improvements, develop strategies and help support innovation and substantial advances within LANL's environmental data management system. (authors)

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Comparison of sleep parameters from wrist-worn ActiGraph and Actiwatch devices

Abstract Sleep and physical activity, two important health behaviors, are often studied independently using different accelerometer types and body locations. Understanding whether accelerometers designed for monitoring each behavior can provide similar sleep parameter estimates may help determine whether one device can be used to measure both behaviors. Three hundred and thirty one adults (70.7 ± 13.7 years) from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging wore the ActiGraph GT9X Link and the Actiwatch 2 simultaneously on the non-dominant wrist for 7.0 ± 1.6 nights. Total sleep time (TST), wake after sleep onset (WASO), sleep efficiency, number of wake bouts, mean wake bout length, and sleep fragmentation index (SFI) were extracted from ActiGraph using the Cole–Kripke algorithm and from Actiwatch using the software default algorithm. These parameters were compared using paired t-tests, Bland–Altman plots, and Deming regression models. Stratified analyses were performed by age, sex, and body mass index (BMI). Compared to the Actiwatch, the ActiGraph estimated comparable TST and sleep efficiency, but fewer wake bouts, longer WASO, longer wake bout length, and higher SFI (all p < .001). Both devices estimated similar 1-min and 1% differences between participants for TST and SFI (β = 0.99, 95% CI: 0.95, 1.03, and 0.91, 1.13, respectively), but not for other parameters. These differences varied by age, sex, and/or BMI. The ActiGraph and the Actiwatch provide comparable absolute and relative estimates of TST, but not other parameters. The discrepancies could result from device differences in movement collection and/or sleep scoring algorithms. Further comparison and calibration is required before these devices can be used interchangeably.

Liu, Fangyu (ORCID:0000000315541478)↗
DOE OSTI2023

Performance portable ice-sheet modeling with MALI

High-resolution simulations of polar ice sheets play a crucial role in the ongoing effort to develop more accurate and reliable Earth system models for probabilistic sea-level projections. These simulations often require a massive amount of memory and computation from large supercomputing clusters to provide sufficient accuracy and resolution; therefore, it has become essential to ensure performance on these platforms. Many of today’s supercomputers contain a diverse set of computing architectures and require specific programming interfaces in order to obtain optimal efficiency. In an effort to avoid architecture-specific programming and maintain productivity across platforms, the ice-sheet modeling code known as MPAS-Albany Land Ice (MALI) uses high-level abstractions to integrate Trilinos libraries and the Kokkos programming model for performance portable code across a variety of different architectures. In this article, we analyze the performance portable features of MALI via a performance analysis on current CPU-based and GPU-based supercomputers. The analysis highlights not only the performance portable improvements made in finite element assembly and multigrid preconditioning within MALI with speedups between 1.26 and 1.82x across CPU and GPU architectures but also identifies the need to further improve performance in software coupling and preconditioning on GPUs. We perform a weak scalability study and show that simulations on GPU-based machines perform 1.24–1.92x faster when utilizing the GPUs. The best performance is found in finite element assembly, which achieved a speedup of up to 8.65x and a weak scaling efficiency of 82.6% with GPUs. We additionally describe an automated performance testing framework developed for this code base using a changepoint detection method. The framework is used to make actionable decisions about performance within MALI. We provide several concrete examples of scenarios in which the framework has identified performance regressions, improvements, and algorithm differences over the course of 2 years of development.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Assessment of shallow aquifer remediation capacity under different groundwater management conditions in CGS field

Because of unknown faults and fractures in the overlying rock, CO 2 stored deep underground may move upward, and the intrusion may impact shallow groundwater quality. After leakage of CO 2 has ceased, the affected aquifer may show remediation capacity under natural conditions and injections and extractions. Here, the reactive transport modeling software TOUGHREACT was used to simulate the remediation capacity of a study aquifer. The simulation results show that the intrusion of leaked CO 2 would decrease the pH of the target aquifer and trigger the dissolution of calcite minerals. After CO 2 leakage has ceased, the pH would increase as would the concentration of Ca because of the dissolution of calcite along the flow path. Scenario simulation results of amelioration of groundwater quality by water injection and extraction show that single injection is the best option and a combination approach of injection and extraction could control the range of the affected area. The pH value should not be regarded as the single indicator for remediation capacity assessment. Parameter sensitive analysis results show that the rates of injection and extraction affect the repair results significantly.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

Tumor control probability and the utility of 4D vs 3D dose calculations for stereotactic body radiotherapy for lung cancer

Four-dimensional (4D) dose calculations for lung cancer radiotherapy have been technically feasible for a number of years but have not become standard clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to determine if clinically significant differences in tumor control probability (TCP) exist between 3D and 4D dose calculations so as to inform the decision whether 4D dose calculations should be used routinely for treatment planning. Radiotherapy plans for Stage I-II lung cancer were created for 8 patients. Clinically acceptable treatment plans were created with dose calculated on the end-exhale 4D computed tomography (CT) phase using a Monte Carlo algorithm. Dose was then projected onto the remaining 9 phases of 4D-CT using the Monte Carlo algorithm and accumulated onto the end-exhale phase using commercially available deformable registration software. The resulting dose-volume histograms (DVH) of the gross tumor volume (GTV), planning tumor volume (PTV), and PTV{sub setup} were compared according to target coverage and dose. The PTV{sub setup} was defined as a volume including the GTV and a margin for setup uncertainties but not for respiratory motion. TCPs resulting from these DVHs were estimated using a wide range of alphas, betas, and tumor cell densities. Differences of up to 5 Gy were observed between 3D and 4D calculations for a PTV with highly irregular shape. When the TCP was calculated using the resulting DVHs for fractionation schedules typically used in stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), the TCP differed at most by 5% between 4D and 3D cases, and in most cases, it was by less than 1%. We conclude that 4D dose calculations are not necessary for most cases treated with SBRT, but they might be valuable for irregularly shaped target volumes. If 4D calculations are used, 4D DVHs should be evaluated on volumes that include margin for setup uncertainty but not respiratory motion.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2016

TU-FG-209-07: Medical Physics 1.0 Versus Medical Physics 2.0: A Case Study

Purpose: To illustrate how performance analytics can identify performance decrement in digital radiography systems. Methods: Subsequent to a radiologist’s image quality complaint, four different advanced methods contributed to root cause analysis. Our system was a GE Revolution XQi digital radiography unit. Initially, we reviewed weekly GE Quality Assurance Procedures (QAP) results in a database dating from 2001. Next, we evaluated objective image quality metrics of individual PA Chest radiographs acquired. These images were anonymized, securely transferred, and analyzed by the Duke University Clinical Imaging Physics Group with software previously described{sup 1} and validated{sup 2}. Third, we compared the exposure-dependent SNR{sup 2} (NEQ) of the unit with previously established confidence limits{sup 3}. Finally, we explored our service database to reveal events that might affect detector performance. Results: QAP reported a decrease in CNR reflected in a significant increase in lung noise(Ln), mediastinum noise(Mn), and subdiaphragm-lung contrast(Slc) with a significant decrease in lung grey level(Lgl) after detector replacement. Most change occurred during week 1, before the QAP indicated one-half the ultimate decrease in CNR. After detector recalibration, QAP CNR improved, but was not restored to previous levels. Lgl and Slc were no longer significantly different from before, however Ln and Mn remained significantly different. Exposure-dependent SNR2 show the detector to be operating within limits in October 2006 but subsequently became miscalibrated sometime before acquisition of the 2011–2014 data. Service records revealed catastrophic failure of the Image Detection Controller that contained the 2007 calibration. Traditional metrics did not indicate that the system was performing outside of normal limits. Conclusion: Performance analytics are powerful tools whose proper application could allow early intervention in degraded system performance. The image-quality metrics appear to be highly sensitive to system performance and are reported with every acquisition rather than at arbitrary intervals. Confidence intervals may require customization for individual systems or detectors.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

SU-F-J-223: Patterns of Failure for Laryngeal Cancer Patients Treated with Definitive IMRT: Comparing Two Different Methods for Determining the Origin of Recurrence From Follow-Up PET/CT Scans

Purpose: To determine patterns of failure in laryngeal cancer treated with definitive IMRT by comparing two different methods for identifying the recurrence epicenter on follow-up PET/CT. Methods: We identified 20 patients treated for laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma with definitive IMRT who had loco-regional recurrence diagnosed on PET/CT. Recurrence PET/CT scans were co-registered with the original treatment planning CT using deformable image registration with the VoxAlign deformation engine in MIM Software. Recurrence volumes were delineated on co-registered follow-up scans using a semi-automatic PETedge tool and two separate methods were used to identify the recurrence point of origin: a) Finding the point within the recurrence volume for which the maximum distance to the surface of the surrounding recurrence volume is smaller than for any other point. b) Finding the point within the recurrence volume with the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), without geometric restrictions.For each method the failure pattern was determined as whether the recurrence origin fell within the original high-dose target volumes GTV70, CTV70, PTV70 (receiving 70Gy), intermediate-risk PTV59 (receiving 59.4Gy) or low-risk PTV54 (receiving 54.1Gy), in the original treatment planning CT. Results: 23 primary/nodal recurrences from the 20 patients were analyzed. The three-dimensional distance between the two different origins was on average 10.5mm (std.dev. 10mm). Most recurrences originated in the high-dose target volumes for both methods with 13 (57%) and 11 (48%) in the GTV70 and 20 (87%) and 20 (87%) in the PTV70 for method a) and b), respectively. There was good agreement between the two methods in classifying the origin target volumes with 69% concordance for GTV70, 89% for CTV70 and 100% for PTV70. Conclusion: With strong agreement in patterns of failure between two separate methods for determining recurrence origin, we conclude that most recurrences occurred within the high-dose treatment region, which influences potential risk-adaptive treatment strategies.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Component based development of computer-aided tools for different applications

Computer-aided methods and tools are used at different stages of chemical process development. However new tools are needed to meet the current and future challenges through innovative and more sustainable solutions that the currently available tools may not be able to provide. This work focuses on component-based software architecture for development of tailor-made computer-aided tools for specific application objectives. The architecture is based on “components”, which can be model-objects that are stored in a library; collection of property models; databases; numerical solvers; design-algorithms (work-flows) etc. Furthermore, the main idea of these components is to incorporate a plug & play framework, where for a specific purpose, after the work-flow and associated data-flow are established, a specific computer-aided tool can be configured through a library of software components. Also, through the use of software components that are based on predictive model-based solution techniques, the final software can be reliably used to provide innovative and more sustainable solutions over a wide range of problems.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Extending the distributed computing infrastructure of the CMS experiment with HPC resources

Particle accelerators are an important tool to study the fundamental properties of elementary particles. Currently the highest energy accelerator is the LHC at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. Each of its four major detectors, such as the CMS detector, produces dozens of Petabytes of data per year to be analyzed by a large international collaboration. The processing is carried out on the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, that spans over more than 170 compute centers around the world and is used by a number of particle physics experiments. Recently the LHC experiments were encouraged to make increasing use of HPC resources. While Grid resources are homogeneous with respect to the used Grid middleware, HPC installations can be very different in their setup. In order to integrate HPC resources into the highly automatized processing setups of the CMS experiment a number of challenges need to be addressed. For processing, access to primary data and metadata as well as access to the software is required. At Grid sites all this is achieved via a number of services that are provided by each center. However at HPC sites many of these capabilities cannot be easily provided and have to be enabled in the user space or enabled by other means. At HPC centers there are often restrictions regarding network access to remote services, which is again a severe limitation. The paper discusses a number of solutions and recent experiences by the CMS experiment to include HPC resources in processing campaigns.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2018

SHAD: the Scalable High-performance Algorithms and Data-structures Library

The unprecedented amount of data that needs to be processed in emerging data analytics applications poses novel challenges to industry and academia. Scalability and high performance become more than a desirable feature because, due to the scale and the nature of the problems, they draw the line between what is achievable and what is unfeasible. In this paper, we propose SHAD, the Scalable High-performance Algorithms and Data-structures library. SHAD adopts a modular design that confines low level details and promotes reuse. SHAD's core is built on an Abstract Runtime Interface which enhances portability and identifies the minimal set of features of the underlying system required by the framework. The core library includes common data-structures such as: Array, Vector, Map and Set. These are designed to accommodate significant amount of data which can be accessed in massively parallel environments, and used as building blocks for SHAD extensions, i.e. higher level software libraries. We have validated and evaluated our design with a performance and scalability study of the core components of the library. We have validated the design flexibility by proposing a Graph Library as an example of SHAD extension, which implements two different graph data-structures; we evaluate their performance with a set of graph applications. Experimental results show that the approach is promising in terms of both performance and scalability. On a distributed system with 320 cores, SHAD Arrays are able to sustain a throughput of 65 billion operations per second, while SHAD Maps sustain 1 billion of operations per second. Algorithms implemented using the Graph Library exhibit performance and scalability comparable to a custom solution, but with smaller development effort.

Castellana, Vito G.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Thermal Analysis of a Polypropylene Capacitor for Resonant Tuning Networks in WPT Applications

This study presents the thermal analysis of polypropylene capacitors operating at high frequencies and high currents used in the resonant tuning networks for electric vehicle (EV) wireless charging systems. The thermal analysis and performance results of the CELEM polypropylene capacitors are presented at different currents for a polyphase wireless power transfer (WPT) system while the study can be expanded to other capacitors by different manufacturers. Thermal equivalent circuit of the capacitor is derived and required cold plate size and design calculations are conducted by modeling the polypropene capacitor in MATLAB. The polypropene capacitor's finite element analysis (FEA) model is developed using COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software, and the thermal characteristics and analysis of the capacitor are presented in this paper.

Aktas, Ahmet↗
DOE OSTI2023

HamLib: A Library of Hamiltonians for Benchmarking Quantum Algorithms and Hardware

For a considerable time, large datasets containing problem instances have proven valuable for analyzing computer hardware, software, and algorithms. One notable example of the value of large datasets is ImageNet [1], a vast repository of images that has been instrumental in testing numerous deep learning packages. Similarly, in the domain of computational chemistry and materials science, the availability of extensive datasets such as the Protein Data Bank [2], the Materials Project [3], and QM9 [4] has greatly facilitated the evaluation of new algorithms and software approaches, while also promoting standardization within the field. These well-defined datasets and problem instances, in turn, serve as the foundation for creating benchmarking suites like MLPerf [5] and LINPACK [6], [7]. These suites enable fair and rigorous comparisons of different methodologies and solutions, fostering continuous advancements in various areas of computer science and beyond.

Sawaya, Nicolas PD↗
DOE OSTI2022

Designing a Magnetic Measurement Data Acquisition and Control System With Reuse in Mind: A Rotating Coil System Example

Accelerator magnet test facilities frequently need to measure different magnets on differently equipped test stands and with different instrumentation. Designing a modular and highly reusable system that combines flexibility built-in at the architectural level as well as on the component level addresses this need. Specification of the backbone of the system, with the interfaces and dataflow for software components and core hardware modules, serves as a basis for building such a system. The design process and implementation of an extensible magnetic measurement data acquisition and control system are described, including techniques for maximizing the reuse of software. The discussion is supported by showing the application of this methodology to constructing two dissimilar systems for rotating coil measurements, both based on the same architecture and sharing core hardware modules and many software components. The first system is for production testing 10 m long cryo-assemblies containing two MQXFA quadrupole magnets for the high-luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider and the second for testing IQC conventional quadrupole magnets in support of the accelerator system at Fermilab.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Provision for Guaranteed Inertial Response in Diesel-Wind Systems via Model Reference Control

Frequency performance has been a crucial issue for islanded microgrids. On one hand, most distributed energy resources (DER) are converter-interfaced and do not inherently respond to frequency variations. On the other hand, current inertia emulation approach cannot provide guaranteed response. In this paper, a model reference control based inertia emulation strategy is proposed for the diesel-wind systems. Desired inertia can be precisely emulated through the proposed strategy. A typical frequency response model with parametric inertia is set to be the reference model. A measurement at a specific location delivers the information about the disturbance acting on the diesel-wind system to the reference model. The objective is for the speed of the diesel generator to track the reference so that the desired inertial response is realized. In addition, polytopic parameter uncertainty will be considered. The control strategy is configured in different ways according to different operating points. The parameters of the reference model are scheduled to ensure adequate frequency response under a pre-defined worst case. The controller is implemented in a nonlinear three-phase diesel-wind system fed microgrid using the Simulink software platform. Lastly, the results show exact synthetic inertia is emulated and adequate frequency response is achieved.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-J-117: Verification Method for the Detection Accuracy of Automatic Winston Lutz Test

Purpose: Winston Lutz test (WLT) has been a standard QA procedure performed prior to SRS treatment, to verify the mechanical iso-center setup accuracy upon different Gantry/Couch movements. Several detection algorithms exist,for analyzing the ball-radiation field alignment automatically. However, the accuracy of these algorithms have not been fully addressed. Here, we reveal the possible errors arise from each step in WLT, and verify the software detection accuracy with the Rectilinear Phantom Pointer (RLPP), a tool commonly used for aligning treatment plan coordinate with mechanical iso-center. Methods: WLT was performed with the radio-opaque ball mounted on a MIS and irradiated onto EDR2 films. The films were scanned and processed with an in-house Matlab program for automatic iso-center detection. Tests were also performed to identify the errors arise from setup, film development and scanning process. The radioopaque ball was then mounted onto the RLPP, and offset laterally and longitudinally in 7 known positions ( 0, ±0.2, ±0.5, ±0.8 mm) manually for irradiations. The gantry and couch was set to zero degree for all irradiation. The same scanned images were processed repeatedly to check the repeatability of the software. Results: Miminal discrepancies (mean=0.05mm) were detected with 2 films overlapped and irradiated but developed separately. This reveals the error arise from film processor and scanner alone. Maximum setup errors were found to be around 0.2mm, by analyzing data collected from 10 irradiations over 2 months. For the known shift introduced using the RLPP, the results agree with the manual offset, and fit linearly (R{sup 2}>0.99) when plotted relative to the first ball with zero shift. Conclusion: We systematically reveal the possible errors arise from each step in WLT, and introduce a simple method to verify the detection accuracy of our in-house software using a clinically available tool.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗