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At least 1,477 records · Page 82

ISS Calibration Analysis Support System

The newest generation of JPL imaging experiments, the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem, required calibration analysis effort beyond that of its predecessor instruments. This called for streamlining the data reduction process with automation and flexibility while using software inherited from support of the Galileo Solid State Imaging Instrument.

instrument↗

Space Station Freedom electric power system evolution analysis status

The ability is examined of the SSF baselined EPS to transition to operate at a greater system capacity beyond the SSF Permanent Manned Capability PMC) milestone. Specifically, a status of a current analysis is discussed concerning additions, modifications, changeout, or combination thereof of baseline EPS hardware and/or software needed to accomplish the power generation, distribution, operation, and use needed to meet evolving SSF mission objectives. This discussion results in several EPS architectural options that facilitate the addition or substitution of new technologies.

Zernic, Michael J.↗

Analysis of Phenix end-of-life natural convection test with the MARS-LMR code

The end-of-life test of Phenix reactor performed by the CEA provided an opportunity to have reliable and valuable test data for the validation and verification of a SFR system analysis code. KAERI joined this international program for the analysis of Phenix end-of-life natural circulation test coordinated by the IAEA from 2008. The main objectives of this study were to evaluate the capability of existing SFR system analysis code MARS-LMR and to identify any limitation of the code. The analysis was performed in three stages: pre-test analysis, blind posttest analysis, and final post-test analysis. In the pre-test analysis, the design conditions provided by the CEA were used to obtain a prediction of the test. The blind post-test analysis was based on the test conditions measured during the tests but the test results were not provided from the CEA. The final post-test analysis was performed to predict the test results as accurate as possible by improving the previous modeling of the test. Based on the pre-test analysis and blind test analysis, the modeling for heat structures in the hot pool and cold pool, steel structures in the core, heat loss from roof and vessel, and the flow path at core outlet were reinforced in the final analysis. The results of the final post-test analysis could be characterized into three different phases. In the early phase, the MARS-LMR simulated the heat-up process correctly due to the enhanced heat structure modeling. In the mid phase before the opening of SG casing, the code reproduced the decrease of core outlet temperature successfully. Finally, in the later phase the increase of heat removal by the opening of the SG opening was well predicted with the MARS-LMR code. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

PROS: An IRAF based system for analysis of x ray data

PROS is an IRAF based software package for the reduction and analysis of x-ray data. The use of a standard, portable, integrated environment provides for both multi-frequency and multi-mission analysis. The analysis of x-ray data differs from optical analysis due to the nature of the x-ray data and its acquisition during constantly varying conditions. The scarcity of data, the low signal-to-noise ratio and the large gaps in exposure time make data screening and masking an important part of the analysis. PROS was developed to support the analysis of data from the ROSAT and Einstein missions but many of the tasks have been used on data from other missions. IRAF/PROS provides a complete end-to-end system for x-ray data analysis: (1) a set of tools for importing and exporting data via FITS format -- in particular, IRAF provides a specialized event-list format, QPOE, that is compatible with its IMAGE (2-D array) format; (2) a powerful set of IRAF system capabilities for both temporal and spatial event filtering; (3) full set of imaging and graphics tasks; (4) specialized packages for scientific analysis such as spatial, spectral and timing analysis -- these consist of both general and mission specific tasks; and (5) complete system support including ftp and magnetic tape releases, electronic and conventional mail hotline support, electronic mail distribution of solutions to frequently asked questions and current known bugs. We will discuss the philosophy, architecture and development environment used by PROS to generate a portable, multimission software environment. PROS is available on all platforms that support IRAF, including Sun/Unix, VAX/VMS, HP, and Decstations. It is available on request at no charge.

Conroy, M. A.↗

The SAS4A/SASSYS-1 Safety Analysis Code System, Version 5

The SAS4A/SASSYS-1 computer code is developed by Argonne National Laboratory for thermal, hydraulic, and neutronic analysis of power and flow transients in liquidmetal- cooled nuclear reactors (LMRs). SAS4A was developed to analyze severe core disruption accidents with coolant boiling and fuel melting and relocation, initiated by a very low probability coincidence of an accident precursor and failure of one or more safety systems. SASSYS-1, originally developed to address loss-of-decay-heat-removal accidents, has evolved into a tool for margin assessment in design basis accident (DBA) analysis and for consequence assessment in beyond-design-basis accident (BDBA) analysis. SAS4A contains detailed, mechanistic models of transient thermal, hydraulic, neutronic, and mechanical phenomena to describe the response of the reactor core, its coolant, fuel elements, and structural members to accident conditions. The core channel models in SAS4A provide the capability to analyze the initial phase of core disruptive accidents, through coolant heat-up and boiling, fuel element failure, and fuel melting and relocation. Originally developed to analyze oxide fuel clad with stainless steel, the models in SAS4A have been extended and specialized to metallic fuel with advanced alloy cladding. SASSYS-1 provides the capability to perform a detailed thermal/hydraulic simulation of the primary and secondary sodium coolant circuits and the balance-ofplant steam/water circuit. These sodium and steam circuit models include component models for heat exchangers, pumps, valves, turbines, and condensers, and thermal/hydraulic models of pipes and plena. SASSYS-1 also contains a plant protection and control system modeling capability, which provides digital representations of reactor, pump, and valve controllers and their response to input signal changes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

WeaselBoard :

Critical infrastructures, such as electrical power plants and oil refineries, rely on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to control essential processes. State of the art security cannot detect attacks on PLCs at the hardware or firmware level. This renders critical infrastructure control systems vulnerable to costly and dangerous attacks. WeaselBoard is a PLC backplane analysis system that connects directly to the PLC backplane to capture backplane communications between modules. WeaselBoard forwards inter-module traffic to an external analysis system that detects changes to process control settings, sensor values, module configuration information, firmware updates, and process control program (logic) updates. WeaselBoard provides zero-day exploit detection for PLCs by detecting changes in the PLC and the process. This approach to PLC monitoring is protected under U.S. Patent Application 13/947,887.

Mulder, John C.↗

Scheduler software for tracking and data relay satellite system loading analysis: User manual and programmer guide

A user guide and programmer documentation is provided for a system of PRIME 400 minicomputer programs. The system was designed to support loading analyses on the Tracking Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The system is a scheduler for various types of data relays (including tape recorder dumps and real time relays) from orbiting payloads to the TDRSS. Several model options are available to statistically generate data relay requirements. TDRSS time lines (representing resources available for scheduling) and payload/TDRSS acquisition and loss of sight time lines are input to the scheduler from disk. Tabulated output from the interactive system includes a summary of the scheduler activities over time intervals specified by the user and overall summary of scheduler input and output information. A history file, which records every event generated by the scheduler, is written to disk to allow further scheduling on remaining resources and to provide data for graphic displays or additional statistical analysis.

Craft, R.↗

CONDUIT: A New Multidisciplinary Integration Environment for Flight Control Development

A state-of-the-art computational facility for aircraft flight control design, evaluation, and integration called CONDUIT (Control Designer's Unified Interface) has been developed. This paper describes the CONDUIT tool and case study applications to complex rotary- and fixed-wing fly-by-wire flight control problems. Control system analysis and design optimization methods are presented, including definition of design specifications and system models within CONDUIT, and the multi-objective function optimization (CONSOL-OPTCAD) used to tune the selected design parameters. Design examples are based on flight test programs for which extensive data are available for validation. CONDUIT is used to analyze baseline control laws against pertinent military handling qualities and control system specifications. In both case studies, CONDUIT successfully exploits trade-offs between forward loop and feedback dynamics to significantly improve the expected handling, qualities and minimize the required actuator authority. The CONDUIT system provides a new environment for integrated control system analysis and design, and has potential for significantly reducing the time and cost of control system flight test optimization.

Tischler, Mark B.↗

Automated site characterization for robotic sample acquisition systems

A mobile, semi-autonomous vehicle with multiple sensors and on-board intelligence is proposed for performing preliminary scientific investigations on extraterrestrial bodies prior to human exploration. Two technologies, a hybrid optical-digital computer system based on optical correlator technology and an image and instrument data analysis system, provide complementary capabilities which might be part of an instrument package for an intelligent robotic vehicle. The hybrid digital-optical vision system could perform real-time image classification tasks using an optical correlator with programmable matched filters under control of a digital microcomputer. The data analysis system would analyze visible and multiband imagery to extract mineral composition and textural information for geologic characterization. Together these technologies would support the site characterization needs of a robotic vehicle for both navigational and scientific purposes.

Scholl, Marija S.↗

ADAS Update and Maintainability

Since 2000, both the National Weather Service Melbourne (NWS MLB) and the Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) have used a local data integration system (LOIS) as part of their forecast and warning operations. The original LOIS was developed by the Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU) in 1998 (Manobianco and Case 1998) and has undergone subsequent improvements. Each has benefited from three-dimensional (3-D) analyses that are delivered to forecasters every 15 minutes across the peninsula of Florida. The intent is to generate products that enhance short-range weather forecasts issued in support of NWS MLB and SMG operational requirements within East Central Florida. The current LDIS uses the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) Data Analysis System (AD AS) package as its core, which integrates a wide variety of national, regional, and local observational data sets. It assimilates all available real-time data within its domain and is run at a finer spatial and temporal resolution than current national or regional-scale analysis packages. As such, it provides local forecasters with a more comprehensive understanding of evolving fine-scale weather features. Over the years, the LDIS has become problematic to maintain since it depends on AMU-developed shell scripts that were written for an earlier version of the ADAS software. The goals of this task were to update the NWS MLB/SMG LDIS with the latest version of ADAS, incorporate new sources of observational data, and upgrade and modify the AMU-developed shell scripts written to govern the system. In addition, the previously developed ADAS graphical user interface (GUI) was updated. Operationally, these upgrades will result in more accurate depictions of the current local environment to help with short-range weather forecasting applications, while also offering an improved initialization for local versions of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model used by both groups.

Watson, Leela R.↗

Quality Guideline for Energy System Studies: Process Modeling Design Parameters

The purpose of this section of the Quality Guidelines is to document the assumptions most commonly used in systems analysis studies and the basis for those assumptions. The large number of assumptions required for a thorough systems analysis make it impractical to document the entire set in each report. This document will serve as a comprehensive reference for these assumptions as well as their justification.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Strategy for Multi-Scale Single-Phase Flow Coupling

For practical nuclear engineering applications, multi-scale analysis by adopting the combined use of different scale computational tools, such as system thermal-hydraulics and CFD codes is vital when three-dimensional effects play an important role in the evolution of a given transient or accident scenario. The feasibility of coupling low-fidelity systems codes with higher fidelity CFD tools was demonstrated previously under NEAMS by coupling SAS4A/SASSYS-1 with the commercial CFD code STAR-CD and STAR-CCM+. An “adhoc” coupling strategy was implemented. With the advances in numerical techniques and software engineering, such as the availability of PETSc and MOOSE, modernization of existing systems codes or the development of new system code becomes more compelling. MOOSE (Multi-physics Object Oriented Simulation Environment) is a parallel computational framework developed at INL for enabling the solution of complex, fully-implicit multiphysics systems. It has been utilized in many nuclear applications including the system analysis codes RELAP-7 and the SFR module under current NEAMS Reactor Product Line (RPL). This motivates the development of a coupled scheme for MOOSE-based system analysis code and the commercial CFD code STAR-CCM+. STAR-CCM+ is a generalpurpose commercial CFD code using finite volume formulation for the analysis of compressible and incompressible flows and heat transfer, and it is being included in the toolkit of the NEAMS RPL. This investigation is important for the integration between the MOOSE-based system codes and the high-fidelity advanced simulation capabilities developed under the NEAMS RPL.

Hu, R.↗

Power Solitons in Inverter-based Electric Energy Systems: Observation, Analysis and Implications

The discovery of an unfamiliar class of nonlinear energy waves in electric energy systems with dominating coupled inverter-based energy resources has been reported in a recent research project. Whenever there are slight but persistent differences among the reference signals used by inverters in pulse-width modulation, i.e., a weak group modulation instability condition, the unfamiliar energy waves appear, which contain not only the familiar frequency components present in electric power systems but also self-organized components in the ultra-high frequency region of the energy spectrum. These components are found to be exploding solitary waves with concentrated energy masses, hence we call them power solitons. This paper explains the work of the discovery reported, and the implications of the presence of power solitons for grid integration of inverter-based resources and power system protection.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

A Benchmark Case for the Grid Survivability Analysis

Among current priorities of the power system analysis is the development of metrics and computational tools for the resilience analysis during catastrophic events. New methods and tools are required for such an analysis and they have to be validated prior application to real systems. However, benchmark problems are not readily available due to the analysis novelty. The current paper presents a case based on the IEEE 14-bus system for this purpose. The grid is simplified to a graph with nodes representing generators, loads, and buses. Power inputs are imported from real-time simulations of the IEEE 14-bus system. Outcomes of all possible combinations of failed elements are presented in terms of probabilities for the grid to survive, partially survive, or fail. Only the power grid's ability to withstand adverse events (survivability) is analyzed. The grid's recoverability, the other part of the resilience analysis, is not considered.

power system↗

Maintaining a Local Data Integration System in Support of Weather Forecast Operations

Since 2000, both the National Weather Service in Melbourne, FL (NWS MLB) and the Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX have used a local data integration system (LDIS) as part of their forecast and warning operations. The original LDIS was developed by NASA's Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU; Bauman et ai, 2004) in 1998 (Manobianco and Case 1998) and has undergone subsequent improvements. Each has benefited from three-dimensional (3-D) analyses that are delivered to forecasters every 15 minutes across the peninsula of Florida. The intent is to generate products that enhance short-range weather forecasts issued in support of NWS MLB and SMG operational requirements within East Central Florida. The current LDIS uses the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) Data Analysis System (ADAS) package as its core, which integrates a wide variety of national, regional, and local observational data sets. It assimilates all available real-time data within its domain and is run at a finer spatial and temporal resolution than current national- or regional-scale analysis packages. As such, it provides local forecasters with a more comprehensive understanding of evolving fine-scale weather features

Watson, Leela R.↗

Analysis of System Margins on Missions Utilizing Solar Electric Propulsion

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has conducted a study focused on the analysis of appropriate margins for deep space missions using solar electric propulsion (SEP). The purpose of this study is to understand the links between disparate system margins (power, mass, thermal, etc.) and their impact on overall mission performance and robustness. It is determined that the various sources of uncertainty and risk associated with electric propulsion mission design can be summarized into three relatively independent parameters 1) EP Power Margin, 2) Propellant Margin and 3) Duty Cycle Margin. The overall relationship between these parameters and other major sources of uncertainty is presented. A detailed trajectory analysis is conducted to examine the impact that various assumptions related to power, duty cycle, destination, and thruster performance including missed thrust periods have on overall performance. Recommendations are presented for system margins for deep space missions utilizing solar electric propulsion.

Systems Engineering↗

A Perspective on DSN System Performance Analysis

This paper discusses the performance analysis effort being carried out in the NASA Deep Space Network. The activity involves root cause analysis of failures and assessment of key performance metrics. The root cause analysis helps pinpoint the true cause of observed problems so that proper correction can be effected. The assessment currently focuses on three aspects: (1) data delivery metrics such as Quantity, Quality, Continuity, and Latency; (2) link-performance metrics such as antenna pointing, system noise temperature, Doppler noise, frequency and time synchronization, wide-area-network loading, link-configuration setup time; and (3) reliability, maintainability, availability metrics. The analysis establishes whether the current system is meeting its specifications and if so, how much margin is available. The findings help identify the weak points in the system and direct attention of programmatic investment for performance improvement.

Deep Space Network (DSN)↗