Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Software development tools”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

2016 Research Outreach Program report

This paper is the research activity report for 4 weeks in LANL. Under the guidance of Dr. Lee, who performs nuclear physics research at LANSCE, LANL, I studied the Low Energy NZ (LENZ) setup and how to use the LENZ. First, I studied the LENZ chamber and Si detectors, and worked on detector calibrations, using the computer software, ROOT (CERN developed data analysis tool) and EXCEL (Microsoft office software). I also performed the calibration experiments that measure alpha particles emitted from a Th-229 source by using a S1-type detector (Si detector). And with Dr. Lee, we checked the result.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Analysis of Data Fusion Between Waveform Events and Radionuclide Detections Reported in 2021 by the International Data Centre

During this project, we assessed the percentage of events reported by the International Data Centre (IDC) that are candidates for evaluation using data fusion methods. We calculated the percentage of waveform (seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, SHI) events that may be associated with radionuclide (RN) detections and vice versa. For this task, data fusion means identifying RN detections that may be associated with SHI events. The task of producing a fused SHI and RN bulletin is included in the IDC operational manual. As of 2022, the production of a fused event bulletin remains incomplete, largely because methods for producing the bulletin are under development. Nonetheless, simple methods for data fusion have been developed and preliminary software tools are available at the IDC to associate SHI events and RN detections. This report is a first look at the percentage of SHI events that may be candidates for fusion with RN detections or bulletins. One year of IDC bulletin data (2021) is considered in this report. It is important to note that there were no known nuclear explosions during this time period. Hence, we expect that events during this time period would generate SHI and RN signals. If many SHI events are candidates for fusion with RN data, greater priority should be placed on establishing screening procedures before and/or during the fusion process. By contrast, if the number of candidate events is diminishingly small, then data fusion is not a driver for further development of event or detection screening at the IDC. LLNL reviewed the events reported in the Standard Event Bulletin (SEB) and determined which events are candidates for fusion with the Reviewed Radionuclide Reports (RRR). Much of the work involves establishing a metric or metrics for determining whether a Reviewed Event Bulletin (REB) event is a candidate for data fusion.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2014

OTEC Cold Water Pipe-Platform Subsystem Dynamic Interaction Validation

A commercial floating 100-megawatt (MW) ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) power plant will require a cold water pipe (CWP) with a diameter of 10-meter (m) and length of up to 1,000 m. The mass of the cold water pipe, including entrained water, can exceed the mass of the platform supporting it. The offshore industry uses software-modeling tools to develop platform and riser (pipe) designs to survive the offshore environment. These tools are typically validated by scale model tests in facilities able to replicate real at-sea meteorological and ocean (metocean) conditions to provide the understanding and confidence to proceed to final design and full-scale fabrication. However, today’s offshore platforms (similar to and usually larger than those needed for OTEC applications) incorporate risers (or pipes) with diameters well under one meter. Secondly, the preferred construction method for large diameter OTEC CWPs is the use of composite materials, primarily a form of fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP). The use of these material results in relatively low pipe stiffness and large strains compared to steel construction. These factors suggest the need for further validation of offshore industry software tools. The purpose of this project was to validate the ability to model numerically the dynamic interaction between a large cold water-filled fiberglass pipe and a floating OTEC platform excited by metocean weather conditions using measurements from a scale model tested in an ocean basin test facility.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Informed-Proteomics: open-source software package for top-down proteomics

Top-down proteomics involves the analysis of intact proteins. This approach is very attractive as it allows for analyzing proteins in their endogenous form without proteolysis, preserving valuable information about post-translation modifications, isoforms, proteolytic processing or their combinations collectively called proteoforms. Moreover, the quality of the top-down LC-MS/MS datasets is rapidly increasing due to advances in the liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry instrumentation and sample processing protocols. However, the top-down mass spectra are substantially more complex compare to the more conventional bottom-up data. To take full advantage of the increasing quality of the top-down LC-MS/MS datasets there is an urgent need to develop algorithms and software tools for confident proteoform identification and quantification. In this study we present a new open source software suite for top-down proteomics analysis consisting of an LC-MS feature finding algorithm, a database search algorithm, and an interactive results viewer. The presented tool along with several other popular tools were evaluated using human-in-mouse xenograft luminal and basal breast tumor samples that are known to have significant differences in protein abundance based on bottom-up analysis.

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory↗
DOE OSTI2022

Guiding the choice of informatics software and tools for lipidomics research applications

Progress in mass spectrometry lipidomics has led to a rapid proliferation of studies across biology and biomedicine. These generate extremely large raw datasets requiring sophisticated solutions to support automated data processing. To address this, numerous software tools have been developed and tailored for specific tasks. However, for researchers, deciding which approach best suits their application relies on ad hoc testing, which is inefficient and time consuming. Here we first review the data processing pipeline, summarizing the scope of available tools. Next, to support researchers, LIPID MAPS provides an interactive online portal listing open-access tools with a graphical user interface. This guides users towards appropriate solutions within major areas in data processing, including (1) lipid-oriented databases, (2) mass spectrometry data repositories, (3) analysis of targeted lipidomics datasets, (4) lipid identification and (5) quantification from untargeted lipidomics datasets, (6) statistical analysis and visualization, and (7) data integration solutions. Detailed descriptions of functions and requirements are provided to guide customized data analysis workflows.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Data mining for better material synthesis: The case of pulsed laser deposition of complex oxides

The pursuit of more advanced electronics, and finding solutions to energy needs often hinges upon the discovery and optimization of new functional materials. However, the discovery rate of these materials is alarmingly low. Much of the information that could drive this rate higher is scattered across tens of thousands of papers in the extant literature published over several decades but is not in an indexed form, and cannot be used in entirety without substantial effort. Many of these limitations can be circumvented if the experimentalist has access to systematized collections of prior experimental procedures and results. Here, we investigate the property-processing relationship during growth of oxide films by pulsed laser deposition. To do so, we develop an enabling software tool to (1) mine the literature of relevant papers for synthesis parameters and functional properties of previously studied materials, (2) enhance the accuracy of this mining through crowd sourcing approaches, (3) create a searchable repository that will be a community-wide resource enabling material scientists to leverage this information, and (4) provide through the Jupyter notebook platform, simple machine-learning-based analysis to learn the complex interactions between growth parameters and functional properties. Here, the results allow visualization of growth windows, trends and outliers, which can serve as a template for analyzing the distribution of growth conditions, provide starting points for related compounds and act as a feedback for first-principles calculations. Such tools will comprise an integral part of the materials design schema in the coming decade.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Infrared imaging systems for wall protection in the W7-X stellarator (invited)

Here, Wendelstein 7-X aims at quasi-steady state operation with up to 10 MW of heating power for 30 min. Power exhaust will be handled predominantly via 10 actively water cooled CFC (carbon-fiber-reinforced carbon) based divertor units designed to withstand power loads of 10 MW/m 2 locally in steady state. If local loads exceed this value, a risk of local delamination of the CFC and failure of entire divertor modules arises. Infrared endoscopes to monitor all main plasma facing components are being prepared, and near real time software tools are under development to identify areas of excessive temperature rise, to distinguish them from non-critical events, and to trigger alarms. Tests with different cameras were made in the recent campaign. Long pulse operation enforces additional diagnostic design constraints: for example, the optics need to be thermally decoupled from the endoscope housing. In the upcoming experimental campaign, a graphite scraper element, in front of the island divertor throat, will be tested as a possible means to protect the divertor pumping gap edges during the transient discharge evolution.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2017

Application Modernization at LLNL and the Sierra Center of Excellence

We repport that in 2014, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory began acquisition of Sierra, a pre-exascale system from IBM and Nvidia. It marks a significant shift in direction for LLNL by introducing the concept of heterogeneous computing via GPUs. LLNL’s mission requires application teams to prepare for this paradigm shift. Thus, the Sierra procurement required a proposed Center of Excellence that would align the expertise of the chosen vendors with laboratory personnel that represent the application developers, system software, and tool providers in a concentrated effort to prepare the laboratory’s codes in advance of the system transitioning to production in 2018. Finally, this article presents LLNL’s overall application strategy, with a focus on how LLNL is collaborating with IBM and Nvidia to ensure a successful transition of its mission-oriented applications into the exascale era.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Reliability-Informed Economic and Energy Evaluation for Bi-Level Design for Remanufacturing: A Case Study of Transmission and Hydraulic Manifold

Abstract Design for remanufacturing (DfRem) is one attractive strategy that encourages the reuse of a product and extends the product's life cycle. Traditional design processes often only consider product reliability at an early design stage. However, from the perspective of environmental sustainability, it is becoming increasingly important to evaluate the long-term economic and environmental impacts of design decisions during early-stage design. We propose a bi-level DfRem framework consisting of system-level reusability allocation and component-level design tradeoff analysis, considering reliability and product warranty policy. First, a system-level reusability allocation problem aims at a theoretical exploration of the design space where all the components comprising the system are allocated certain reuse rates to achieve target energy savings with minimum cost. Following the theoretical exploration at the system level, a component-level analysis looks at practical design options for each component and trades-off between the overall cost and energy consumption for multiple remanufacturing cycles. Both levels of the framework require modeling component reuse for multiple remanufacturing cycles, which we achieve by using a branched power-law model that provides probabilistic scenarios of reusing the component or replacing it with a new part. We demonstrate the utility of this framework with the case study of an infinitely variable transmission (IVT) used by some agricultural machines manufactured by John Deere and show snapshots of a prototype software tool that we developed for easy use by designers.

Engineering↗
DOE OSTI2018

BESTEST-GSR (Building Energy Simulation Test - Generation Simulation and Reporting) [SWR 18-23]

Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) is an NREL-developed method to validate the qualitative performance of different whole building simulations engines relative to each other. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/6231.pdf For EnergyPlus® and OpenStudio®, generation of test cases, simulation, and reporting has been a manual or partially automated process that typically took a number of months after a new version of EnergyPlus came out. Building Energy Simulation Test - Generation Simulation and Reporting (BESTEST-GSR) was developed to fully automate this process so it is less error-prone, less time-consuming, and can be quickly run on request for any development branch of EnergyPlus and OpenStudio. The initial use case is to directly support OpenStudio and EnergyPlus development, but the software is configured to support use by external software developers that build tools on top of EnergyPlus and/or OpenStudio. Tools built on top of OpenStudio can leverage the test generation, simulation, and reporting, while tools built on EnergyPlus can leverage the test simulation and reporting. The model generation is accomplished by running OpenStudio measures for envelope, heating, or cooling test cases. At this stage the specified weather file required for a specific test case is assigned to the model. Simulation is enabled using the OpenStudio Command Line Interface (CLI) to run a series of OpenStudio and Reporting measures to a specified seed model. The specified workflow is defined with an OpenStudio OSW file. The first measure generates the test case model, while the second measure is a reporting measure that runs after the simulation to collect necessary simulation results from the EnergyPlus SQL file. The Reporting stage gathers data from individual OpenStudio OSW files and populates a series of BESTEST Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. BESTEST-GSR also gathers zip files from individual simulations for diagnostic purposes.

Goldwasser, David↗
DOE OSTI2025

Computational epidemiological tools for pandemic analysis, understanding, and response

This suite of software tools is being developed to enhance and analyze computational epidemiological models that incorporate realistic disease dynamics and human behavior, with the goal of supporting epidemic and pandemic response. Specifically, the tools enable data analysis, feature extraction, data synthesis, machine learning model development, and prediction of key public health outcomes, such as cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and behavioral responses, for airborne infectious diseases like COVID-19 and influenza.

Butts, David↗
DOE OSTI2024

Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program: Use of Time Distributions to Predict Operator Procedure Performance in Dynamic Human Reliability Analysis

The Human Unimodel for Nuclear Technology to Enhance Reliability (HUNTER) framework affords software capable of conducting human reliability analysis (HRA) using a dynamic approach built around operating procedures (OPs) from nuclear power plants (NPPs). Previous HUNTER reports document the development of this software tool, the coupling of HUNTER to the simulator code, the collection of operator performance data by using simulators to calibrate HUNTER models, and linking HUNTER to probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) software. The present report largely addresses two topics. The first is a new function in HUNTER called the HUNTER Procedure Performance Predictor (P3). HUNTER P3 uses HUNTER’s built in Monte Carlo tools featuring human performance variability to identify potential error traps in procedures. The second topic is time distribution analysis to generate time inputs for dynamic HRA. The current analysis was performed to investigate time distributions for task primitives, which are the minimum task unit of analysis used in dynamic HRA modeling. Using the time distribution data, the elapsed time for human actions in an extended loss of AC power (ELAP) scenario is then investigated. Time data and prediction are essential for modeling procedure performance.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hydropower Biological Evaluation Toolset (HBET) Version 3.0: User Guide

The Hydropower Biological Evaluation Tools (HBET) software package, developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), is designed to assemble, organize, and process data collected by Sensor Fish and live fish. HBET enable users to characterize the hydraulic conditions of hydropower structures and estimate fish injury and mortality rates from various stressors. Future updates of the software may support other technologies, such as bead tracking in physical models and computational fluid dynamics. The HBET program can be customized to analyze different hydraulic applications, including turbines, spillways, weirs, pumped storage, and other user-defined functions, and therefore, help researchers, turbine designers, hydropower operators, and regulators better evaluate hydropower structures regarding their environmental sustainability and cost-effectiveness. Added content to the user guide about the new feature for predicting absolute injury rates.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Total System Performance Ratio—A Systems Based Approach for Evaluating HVAC System Efficiency

The prescriptive path is the most widely used approach for commercial code compliance in the United States. Though easy to implement, prescriptive approaches do not typically discriminate between minimally compliant, high-performing and poorly performing HVAC system configurations. Hence, to meet aggressive energy and carbon reduction goals, it is clear that energy codes will need to transition from prescriptive to performance-based approaches, a transition that is riddled with several challenges. This paper discusses a new HVAC system-based performance approach (HVAC System Performance) which provides a simpler solution to HVAV system evaluation compared to whole building performance, while keeping tradeoffs limited to specific building systems. The Total System Performance Ratio (TSPR) is a metric for evaluation of overall system efficiency instead of individual component efficiency, a solution which could also eventually facilitate the transition to a 100% performance-based code structure. TSPR is a ratio that compares the annual heating and cooling load of a building to the annual energy consumed by the building’s HVAC system. A calculation software tool has been developed for determining a building’s TSPR. Already incorporated into the 2018 Washington State Energy Code, this approach is also being evaluated by ASHRAE Standard 90.l Project Committee and has the potential to provide a comprehensive performance-based approach for HVAC system evaluation and analysis.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

PeakQC: A Software Tool for Omics-Agnostic Automated Quality Control of Mass Spectrometry Data

Mass spectrometry is broadly employed to study complex molecular mechanisms in various biological and environmental fields, enabling 'omics' research such as proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics. As study cohorts grow larger and more complex with dozens to hundreds of samples, the need for robust quality control (QC) measures through automated software tools becomes paramount to ensure the integrity, high quality, and validity of scientific conclusions from downstream analyses and minimize the waste of resources. Since existing QC tools are mostly dedicated to proteomics, automated solutions supporting metabolomics are needed. To address this need, we developed the software PeakQC, a tool for automated QC of MS data that is independent of omics molecular types (i.e., omics-agnostic). It allows automated extraction and inspection of peak metrics of precursor ions (e.g., errors in mass, retention time, arrival time) and supports various instrumentations and acquisition types, from infusion experiments or using liquid chromatography and/or ion mobility spectrometry front-end separations and with/without fragmentation spectra from data-dependent or independent acquisition analyses. Diagnostic plots for fragmentation spectra are also generated. Here, in this paper, we describe and illustrate PeakQC’s functionalities using different representative data sets, demonstrating its utility as a valuable tool for enhancing the quality and reliability of omics mass spectrometry analyses.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-T-27: A Tool for Routine Quality Assurance of Radiotherapy Dose Calculation Software

Purpose: Dose calculation software is thoroughly evaluated when it is commissioned; however, evaluation of periodic software updates is typically limited in scope due to staffing constraints and the need to quickly return the treatment planning system to clinical service. We developed a tool for quickly and comprehensively testing and documenting dose calculation software against measured data. Methods: A tool was developed using MatLab (The MathWorks, Natick, MA) for evaluation of dose calculation algorithms against measured data. Inputs to the tool are measured data, reference DICOM RT PLAN files describing the measurements, and dose calculations in DICOM format. The tool consists of a collection of extensible modules that can perform analysis of point dose, depth dose curves, and profiles using dose difference, distance-to-agreement, and the gamma-index. Each module generates a report subsection that is incorporated into a master template, which is converted to final form in portable document format (PDF). Results: After each change to the treatment planning system, a report can be generated in approximately 90 minutes. The tool has been in use for more than 5 years, spanning 5 versions of the eMC and 4 versions of the AAA. We have detected changes to the algorithms that affected clinical practice once during this period. Conclusion: Our tool provides an efficient method for quality assurance of dose calculation software, providing a complete set of tests for an update. Future work includes the addition of plan level tests, allowing incorporation of, for example, the TG-119 test suite for IMRT, and integration with the treatment planning system via an application programming interface. Integration with the planning system will permit fully-automated testing and reporting at scheduled intervals.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Nucleus++ : a new tool bridging AME and NUBASE for advancing nuclear data analysis

The newly developed software, Nucleus++ , is an advanced tool for displaying basic nuclear physics properties from NUBASE and integrating comprehensive mass information for each nuclide from Atomic Mass Evaluation. Additionally, it allows users to compare experimental nuclear masses with predictions from different mass models. Building on the success and learning experiences of its predecessor, Nucleus , this enhanced tool introduces improved functionality and compatibility. With its user-friendly interface, Nucleus++ was designed as a valuable tool for scholars and practitioners in the field of nuclear science. Finally, this article offers an in-depth description of Nucleus++ , highlighting its main features and anticipated impacts on nuclear science research.

AME↗
DOE OSTI2015

Guidance for the Design and Adoption of Analytic Tools.

The goal is to make software developers aware of common issues that can impede the adoption of analytic tools. This paper provides a summary of guidelines, lessons learned and existing research to explain what is currently known about what analysts want and how to better understand what tools they do and don't need.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗