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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 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

CSP Plant Construction, Start-Up, and O&M Best Practices Study

There are currently 90 operational CSP plants of 10 MW or larger located throughout the world, primarily in Spain, U.S., MENA region, South Africa, and China. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded Solar Dynamics, under subcontract to NREL, to investigate and document lessons learned and best practices associated with the construction, start-up, and operations phases of a majority of these plants. DOE funding for the effort was leveraged by additional funds provided through SolarPACES and the World Bank. This information was obtained by interviewing key stakeholders representing CSP plant owners, operators, construction companies, vendors, technical advisors and financers of these systems, and will be published as an NREL Technical Report at the completion of the project. This paper provides an overview of key challenges facing today's CSP parabolic trough and power tower technologies during all the phases mentioned above.

41 EE - Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)↗
DOE OSTI2025

Best Practices for Nuclear Experiment Data Preservation at Idaho National Laboratory: A Guide for Researchers and Reactor Operators

Preserving experimental data is essential for supporting advancements in nuclear science and ensuring the longevity of Idaho National Laboratory's contributions to reactor technology and safety. This report provides a comprehensive guide to best practices for experimental data management and preservation, focusing on standardized data formats, redundancy in storage, metadata documentation, and alignment with international standards. By following these recommendations, experimentalists and reactor operators can enhance the accessibility, reproducibility, and utility of critical datasets for regulatory review, validation computational methods, and future research.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Spacecraft Line-Of-Sight Jitter Mitigation and Management Lessons Learned and Engineering Best Practices

Predicting, managing, controlling, and testing spacecraft line-of-sight (LoS) jitter caused by micro-vibrations due to onboard internal disturbance sources is a formidable multidisciplinary engineering task. It is especially challenging for those missions hosting high-performance, vibration-sensitive optical sensor payloads with stringent pointing stability requirements. Both NASA and ESA are planning technically aggressive spaceflight missions that include ultra-high-performance optical payloads with delicate, highly vibration-sensitive scientific and observational instruments. The GN&C community of practice will need to leverage and build upon their collective experiences and lessons learned to better address future micro-vibration challenges. To identify lessons learned and best engineering practices the NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC) sponsored a two-day Spacecraft LoS Jitter Workshop in late 2019. The workshop’s goal was to provide a multidisciplinary forum to elicit deeper understanding of the issues related to solving the spacecraft LoS jitter/micro-vibration problem. A primary objective was to identify and share best practices, rules of thumb, and options for jitter-related activities. Representatives from NASA, JPL, ESA, along with NASA’s industrial partners, independent consultant subject matter experts, and members of academia participated in the workshop. This paper will describe the motivation for the NASA Spacecraft LoS Jitter Workshop and summarize the identified findings, observations, and recommendations.

Lessons Learned;↗
DOE OSTI2024

Building and Sustaining a Community Resource for Best Practices in Scientific Software: The Story of BSSw.io

The development of scientific software—a cornerstone of long-term collaboration and scientific progress—parallels the development of other types of software but still poses distinct challenges, especially in high-performance computing. Although web searches yield numerous resources on software engineering, there is still a scarcity specifically for scientific software development. Here, this article introduces the Better Scientific Software site (https://bssw.io), a platform that hosts a community of researchers, developers, and practitioners who share their experiences and insights on scientific software development. Since 2017, this collaborative hub has gained traction within the scientific computing community, attracting a growing number of readers and contributors eager to share ideas and elevate their software development practices. In sharing the BSSw.io site’s story, we hope to encourage further growth of the BSSw.io community through both readership and contributors, with a long-term goal of fostering culture change by increasing emphasis on best practices in scientific software.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Best Practices for Timing Attack Mitigation

GPS signals play essential roles in the electric subsector by providing precision timing used to synchronize and record measurements from a range of equipment. However, previous research has demonstrated that GPS signals can be spoofed or jammed relatively easily in order to interfere with timing-reliant equipment. This document outlines utility best practices for mitigating against timing attacks in the electric subsector based on an assessment of the difficulty and impact of realistic timing attacks and testing of the effectiveness of technologies capable of mitigating them. This analysis builds on research establishing the vulnerability of GPS-reliant timing equipment to jamming and spoofing by elaborating the difficulty, consequences, and mitigations for timing attacks that adversaries might realistically attempt. While timing attacks are relatively low-cost, low-sophistication, and capable of systemic consequences in the electric subsector, they can be effectively mitigated through well-targeted and diverse mitigations.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Electric Propulsion Qualification Guidelines and Best Practices for NASA Small Spacecraft Missions

Electric propulsion being developed for CubeSats and other small satellites with the taught expectation that high risk is generally acceptable are resulting in devices that do not meet a minimum expectation of engineering rigor for many missions, including appropriate qualification testing. This paper proffers a preliminary set of recommended guidelines and best practices in dialogue with the smallsat community to strike a better balance between engineering rigor and cost effectiveness for the qualification of EP technologies under consideration for NASA small spacecraft.

Thomas M. Liu↗
DOE OSTI2025

Building a Clean Energy Workforce: Best Practices for State Energy Offices

As federal investments into the clean energy economy are underway, State Energy Offices (SEOs) are engaging in efforts to grow the workforce through the creation and/or funding of workforce initiatives that recruit, train and support pathways into energy efficiency and clean energy jobs. This report provides a summary of clean energy workforce development best practices, supplemented by case studies and lessons learned from several SEOs that showcase these strategies in practice. SEOs can reference this resource as they implement, manage, oversee, and/or evaluate efforts their offices are undertaking through various federally funded programs.

clean energy↗
NASA NTRS2017

Best Practices for Unstructured Grid Shock Fitting

Unstructured grid solvers have well-known issues predicting surface heat fluxes when strong shocks are present. Various efforts have been made to address the underlying numerical issues that cause the erroneous predictions. The present work addresses some of the shortcomings of unstructured grid solvers, not by addressing the numerics, but by applying structured grid best practices to unstructured grids. A methodology for robust shock detection and shock fitting is outlined and applied to production relevant cases. Results achieved by using the Loci-CHEM Computational Fluid Dynamics solver are provided.

McCloud, Peter L.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Best Practices for Unstructured Grid Shock-Fitting

Unstructured grid solvers have well-known issues predicting surface heat fluxes when strong shocks are present. Various efforts have been made to address the underlying numerical issues that cause the erroneous predictions. The present work addresses some of the shortcomings of unstructured grid solvers, not by addressing the numerics, but by applying structured grid best practices to unstructured grids. A methodology for robust shock detection and shock-fitting is outlined and applied to production-relevant cases. Results

McCoud, Peter L.↗
NASA NTRS1997

A Study of Business Incubators: Models, Best Practices, and Recommendations for NASA and Florida

This study was conducted to provide NASA-Kennedy Space Center with information and recommendations to support establishing one or more technology-based business incubators In Florida. The study involved assembling information about incubators: why they succeed, why they fail, how they are organized, and what services they provide. Consequently, this study focuses on widely-recognized "best practices," needed to establish successful technology- based business incubators. The findings are used to optimize the design and implementation of one or more technology-based business incubators to be established in Florida. Recommendations reflect both the essential characteristics of successful incubators and the optimal business demographics in Florida. Appendix A provides a fuller description of the objectives of the study. Technology-based business incubators are an increasing catalyst of new business development across the USi Incubators focus on providing entrepreneurs and small start-up firms with a wide array of support services necessary to bring forth new products and processes based on technologies developed in the nation's federal and private laboratories and universities. Appendix B provides extensive discussion of findings relative to technology- based business incubators.

Source record↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Best Practices from NASA's Open Science Response to the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) Process

The Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) in the U.S. Group on Earth Observations (USGEO) provides dedicated analysis and advice to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and is charged with identifying satellite data needs across the U.S. Government agencies to which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) responds with solutions aligning with its missions and goals. The SNWG puts out a biennial survey to the U.S. Government agencies asking a variety of questions aimed at gleaning their current needs for satellite data. NASA’s response to the SNWG since 2016 has been to serve the community at large with open science and open data products derived through the SNWG process. With the next SNWG cycle set to kick off in 2022, the NASA SNWG team has been actively working to incorporate lessons learned from the past three cycles into the NASA-side process and tools. We will discuss the best practices and tools NASA has developed in response to the SNWG survey assessment process. These assist NASA’s decisions on how best to utilize existing, and proposing new, products and services to address the needs of other U.S. agencies.

Cerese Albers↗
DOE OSTI2021

Monte Carlo simulations for water adsorption in porous materials: Best practices and new insights

Technologies based on water adsorption such as water harvesting from air have tremendous potential in mitigating important global crises such as water scarcity. An important challenge to the deployment of such technologies is finding optimal adsorbent materials. Given the large materials space of available adsorbents, large-scale computational screening can be extremely helpful for this task. This work explores the methods and details associated with such screening procedures and recommends best practices. We also shed light on the limitations of traditionally used and inexpensive to compute prescreening approaches involving geometric and energetic features to predict water adsorption behavior of porous materials. Such approaches can provide general trends to predict adsorption behavior but may lead to the overlook of potentially important structures due to the complex nature of water adsorption. Finally, this study offers insights for future water adsorption simulations to facilitate the development of optimal water adsorbents.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Rotating Disk Electrode Standardization and Best Practices in Acidic Oxygen Evolution for Low-Temperature Electrolysis

Efforts in oxygen evolution catalyst development have significantly increased and often use rotating disk electrode half-cells to evaluate intrinsic kinetics and screen materials for short-term durability. Standardizing rotating disk electrode test protocols is critical to experimental accuracy, to realistically assess their potential impact at a device level and to assess how different catalyst approaches and concepts are prioritized. The goal of this study is to provide standardized test protocols and suggest best practices to help reduce variability in ex situ materials characterization in the broader community. Specifically, these protocols focus on test cleanliness and materials choices, including how electrodes are prepared and tested, and the impact on activity observations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS2017

How to Address a Global Problem with Earth Observations? Developing Best Practices to Monitor Forests Around the World

Forests represent a key natural resource, for which degradation or disturbance is directly associated to economic implications, particularly in the context of the United Nations program REDD+ in supporting national policies to fight illegal deforestation. SERVIR, a joint NASA-USAID initiative that brings Earth observations (EO) for improved environmental decision making in developing countries, works with established institutions, called SERVIR hubs, in four regions around the world. SERVIR is partnering with global programs with great experience in providing best practices in forest monitoring systems, such as SilvaCarbon and the Global Forest Observation Initiative (GFOI), to develop a capacity building plan that prioritizes user needs. Representatives from the SERVIR global network met in February 2017 with experts in the field of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for forest applications to envisage this capacity building plan that aims to leverage the state-of-the-art knowledge on remote sensing to enhance forest monitoring for user agencies in SERVIR regions.

remote sensing↗
DOE OSTI2022

Toward designing effective exascale scientific computing workflows: experiences and best practices

Many fields within scientific computing have embraced advances in big-data analysis and machine learning, which often requires the deployment of large, distributed and complicated workflows that may combine training neural networks, performing simulations, running inference, and performing database queries and data analysis in asynchronous, parallel and pipelined execution frameworks. Such a shift has brought into focus the need for scalable, efficient workflow management solutions with reproducibility, error and provenance handling, traceability, and checkpoint-restart capabilities, among other needs. Here, we discuss challenges and best-practices for deploying exascale-generation computational science workflows on resources at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). We present our experiences with large-scale deployment of distributed workflows on the Summit supercomputer, including for bioinformatics and computational biophysics, materials science, and deep learning model optimization. We also present problems and solutions created by working within a Python-centric software base on traditional HPC systems, and discuss steps that will be required before the convergence of HPC, AI, and data science can be fully realized. Our results point to a wealth of exciting new possibilities for harnessing this convergence to tackle new scientific challenges.

Coletti, Mark↗
NASA NTRS2022

Identification of Best Practices for Predicting Inlet Performance Using FUN3D Part 2: Installed Inlets.

A series of studies were performed to assess the impacts of boundary condition type and placement, grid refinement, and modeling parameters such as turbulence model and flux limiter on the predicted inlet performance for installed inlet configurations using the FUN3D flow solver. Two configurations were considered for the study; a wall-mounted Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI) inlet and the C607 propulsion model tested in the 8x6 Supersonic Wind Tunnel at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The results of the studies were to be used to recommend best practices, as well as to assess the accuracy of FUN3D for inlet predictions. The results of BLI inlet stud-ies showed a minimal impact of grid refinement on the predicted inlet performance for a constant mass flow rate through the inlet. For the C607 propulsion model, the results showed that while the FUN3D predictions at the Aerodynamic Inter-face Plane (AIP) qualitatively agree with the experimental data, FUN3D showed a tendency to overpredict the circumferential distortion metric (IDCmax) and un-derpredict both the radial distortion metric (IDRmax) and the pressure recovery at the AIP (PRAIP ), with the differences between FUN3D and the experimental data increasing with increasing grid refinement and Mach number. Additionally, the outflow boundary location studies performed for both geometries showed that the solution at the AIP was not significantly impacted by the outflow boundary location as long as it was not placed at the location of the AIP. The modeling parameter studies did not indicate a path forward for improved predictions for either inlet con-figuration. Finally, comparisons between the mass flow plug and outflow geometry versions of the C607 propulsion model illustrated favorable agreement, which indi-cates that the differences observed are not caused by the outflow boundary model for this problem. This problem poses significant challenges to Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solvers due to the presence of shocks and flow separation in the inlet.

FUN3D↗