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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 1,495 records · Page 83

Mixed quantum-classical methods for polaron spectral functions

In this work, using two distinct semiclassical approaches—namely, the mean-field Ehrenfest method and the mapping approach to surface hopping—we investigate the spectral function of a single charge interacting with phonons on a lattice. This quantity is relevant for the description of angle-resolved photoemission experiments. Focusing on the one-dimensional Holstein model, we compare the performance of these approaches across a range of coupling strengths and lattice sizes, exposing the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. We demonstrate that these approaches can be efficiently applied with reasonable accuracy to ab initio polaron models. Furthermore, our work provides a route to the calculation of spectral properties in realistic electron–phonon-coupled systems in a computationally inexpensive manner with encouraging accuracy.

Atomic and molecular spectra↗

The effect of metastable atomic levels in neutral tungsten for erosion and impurity transport applications

Long-lived metastable states in neutral tungsten are shown to potentially impact measurements of tungsten erosion from plasma facing components. Time-dependent collisional radiative modeling of neutral tungsten is used to analyze the role of these states in tungsten emission and ionization. The large number of non-quasistatic atomic states in neutral tungsten can take on the order of milliseconds to reach equilibrium, depending on plasma conditions, causing erosion measurements to be affected by the metastable populations. Previous measurements using the 400.88 nm tungsten emission line could be affected by these non-quasistatic metastable effects. Therefore, a scheme for measuring the relative metastable fractions is proposed through simultaneous observation of multiple ultraviolet spectral lines of neutral W. The accuracy of gross erosion measurements could potentially be increased by inclusion of these previously unconsidered metastable effects.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Side-by-Side Comparison of Subhourly Clipping Models

Over the past several years there have been numerous attempts at quantifying the inherent power clipping of inverters due to subhourly irradiance variability that is not captured in hourly PV performance models. Different models have been proposed to correct for these clipping losses in PV performance estimates, including matrix lookup models, distribution modeling of the PV power performance within a given hour, and machine learning methods. To date, there have been few comprehensive quantitative comparisons of these inverter clipping correction modeling approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in predicting the actual behavior of PV system inverter clipping. In this study, we perform such a comparison, evaluating the Allen and Walker correction loss modeling approaches recently implemented in the System Advisor Model (SAM) against clipping losses modeled with 1-minute climate data. These comparisons were performed across a variety of climate locations and inverter loading ratios to thoroughly analyze the effectiveness of these modeling approaches relative to each other. Results from this analysis reveal that both clipping correction approaches improve annual energy accuracy to within 2% of 1-minute modeled energy yield. The two models predict annual clipping loss more accurately than simple hourly power limit clipping, with the Allen method typically being slightly more accurate at typical ILR values and the Walker method often being slightly more accurate at high ILR values The models can improve accuracy over the status quo clipping approach up to 3 percentage points in systems with ILR of 2.0, showing the importance of this modeling factor in energy yield estimates.

accuracy↗

Applying Infrared Thermography as a Method for Online Monitoring of Turbine Blade Coolant Flow

As gas turbine engine manufacturers strive to implement condition-based operation and maintenance, there is a need for blade monitoring strategies capable of early fault detection and root-cause determination. Given the importance of blade cooling flows to turbine blade health and longevity, there is a distinct lack of methodologies for coolant flowrate monitoring. The present study addresses this identified opportunity by applying an infrared thermography system on an engine-representative research turbine to generate data-driven models for prediction of blade coolant flowrate. Thermal images were used as inputs to a linear regression and regularization algorithm to relate blade surface temperature distribution with blade coolant flowrate. Additionally, this study investigates how coolant flowrate prediction accuracy is influenced by the number and breadth of diagnostic measurements. Here, the results of this study indicate that a source of high-fidelity training data can be used to predict blade coolant flowrate within about six percent error. Furthermore, identification of prioritized sensor placement supports application of this technique across multiple sensor technologies capable of measuring blade surface temperature in operating gas turbine engines, including spatially resolved and point-based measurement techniques.

42 ENGINEERING↗

ARM Data-Oriented Metrics and Diagnostics Package for Climate Model Evaluation

A Python-based metrics and diagnostics package is currently being developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Infrastructure Team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to facilitate the use of long-term, high-frequency measurements from the ARM Facility in evaluating the regional climate simulation of clouds, radiation, and precipitation. This metrics and diagnostics package computes climatological means of targeted climate model simulation and generates tables and plots for comparing the model simulation with ARM observational data. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model data sets are also included in the package to enable model intercomparison as demonstrated in Zhang et al. (2017). The mean of the CMIP model can serve as a reference for individual models. Basic performance metrics are computed to measure the accuracy of mean state and variability of climate models. The evaluated physical quantities include cloud fraction, temperature, relative humidity, cloud liquid water path, total column water vapor, precipitation, sensible and latent heat fluxes, and radiative fluxes, with plan to extend to more fields, such as aerosol and microphysics properties. Process-oriented diagnostics focusing on individual cloud- and precipitation-related phenomena are also being developed for the evaluation and development of specific model physical parameterizations. The version 1.0 package is designed based on data collected at ARM’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) Research Facility, with the plan to extend to other ARM sites. The metrics and diagnostics package is currently built upon standard Python libraries and additional Python packages developed by DOE (such as CDMS and CDAT). The ARM metrics and diagnostic package is available publicly with the hope that it can serve as an easy entry point for climate modelers to compare their models with ARM data. In this report, we first present the input data, which constitutes the core content of the metrics and diagnostics package in section 2, and a user's guide documenting the workflow/structure of the version 1.0 codes, and including step-by-step instruction for running the package in section 3.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Enter Gaussian Mixture Modeling Extensions for Improved False Discovery Rate Estimation in GC-MS Metabolomics

Identifying small molecules (e.g., metabolites) is key towards driving scientific advancement in metabolomics, and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is an analytic method that may be applied to facilitate this process. The typical GC-MS identification workflow involves quantifying the similarity of an observed sample spectrum and other features (e.g. retention index) to that of several references, noting the compound of the best-matching reference spectrum as the identified metabolite. While a deluge of similarity metrics exists, none characterize the error rate of generated identifications, thereby presenting an unknown risk of false identification or discovery. To quantify this unknown risk, we propose a model-based framework for estimating the false discovery rate (FDR) among a set of identifications. Extending the traditional mixture modeling framework, our method incorporates both similarity score and experimental information in estimating the FDR. We apply these models to identification lists derived from across 548 samples of varying complexity and sample type (e.g., fungal species, standard mixtures, etc.), comparing their performance to that of the traditional Gaussian mixture model (GMM). Through simulation, we additionally assess the impact of reference library size on the accuracy of FDR estimates. In comparing the best performing model extensions to the GMM, our results indicate relative decreases in median absolute estimation error (MAE) ranging from 12% to 70%, based on comparisons of the median MAEs across all hit-lists. Results indicate that these relative performance improvements generally hold despite library size, however FDR estimation error typically worsens as the set of reference compounds diminishes.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

ARM data-oriented metrics and diagnostics package for climate model evaluation (ARM-DIAGS-V3) version 3

A Python-based metrics and diagnostics package is currently being developed by the ARM Infrastructure Team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to facilitate the use of long-term high frequency measurements from the ARM program in evaluating the regional climate simulation of clouds, radiation, precipitation, and aerosols. This metrics and diagnostics package computes climatological means of targeted climate model simulation and generates tables and plots for comparing the model simulation with ARM observational data. The CMIP model data sets are also included in the package to enable model inter-comparison as demonstrated in Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhang et al. (2020). The mean of the CMIP model can be served as a reference for individual models. Basic performance metrics are computed to measure the accuracy of mean state and variability of climate models. The evaluated physical quantities include cloud fraction, temperature, relative humidity, cloud liquid water path, total column water vapor, precipitation, sensible and latent heat fluxes, aerosol optical depth, and radiative fluxes, with plan to extend to more fields, such as the evaluation of model simulated aerosol physicochemical properties and cloud microphysics properties. Process-oriented diagnostics focusing on aerosol, cloud, and precipitation-related phenomena are also being developed for the evaluation and development of specific model physical parameterizations. In addition to the Southern Great Plains (SGP), North Slope of Alaska (NSA) and Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) atmospheric observatories in the ARMDIAGS version 2.0, the version 3.0 package have extended to the data collected at the ARM Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) atmospheric observatory and the Observation and Modeling of the Green Ocean Amazon (GOAMAZON) field campaign. The metrics and diagnostics package are currently built upon standard Python libraries and additional Python packages developed by DOE (CDAT). The ARM metrics and diagnostic package is available publicly with the hope that it can serve as an easy entry point for climate modelers to compare their models with ARM data. In this report, we first provide an overview of major metrics in section 2. The input data, which constitutes the core content of the metrics and diagnostics package, is summarized in section 3. A user's guide documenting the workflow/structure of the version 3.0 codes and including step-by-step instruction for running the package is described in section 4.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Timestamp Error Detection and Estimation for PMU Data based on Linear Correlation between Relative Phase Angle and Frequency

Time synchronization is essential to synchro-phasor-based applications. However, Timestamp Error (TE) in synchrophasor data can result in application failures. This paper proposes a method for TE detection based on the linear correlation between frequency and relative phase angle. The TE converts the short-term relative phase angle from noise-like signal to one that linear with the frequency. Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) is applied to measure the linear correlation and then detect the timestamp error. The time error is estimated based on the variation of frequency and relative phase angle. Case studies with actual synchrophasor data demonstrate the effectiveness of TE detection and excellent accuracy of TE estimation.

Yu, Wenpeng↗

An Overview of Wind Energy Production Prediction Bias, Losses, and Uncertainties

The financing of a wind farm directly relates to the preconstruction energy yield assessments which estimate the annual energy production for the farm. The accuracy and the precision of the preconstruction energy estimates can dictate the profitability of the wind project. Historically, the wind industry tended to overpredict the annual energy production of wind farms. Experts have been dedicated to eliminating such prediction errors in the past decade, and recently the industry is recording near-zero average energy prediction bias. Herein, we present an overview of the energy yield assessment errors across the global wind energy industry. We identify a long-term trend of reduction in the overprediction bias, whereas the uncertainty associated with the prediction error is prominent. We also summarize the recent advancements of the wind resource assessment process that justify the bias reduction, including the improvements in modeling and measurement techniques. Additionally, because the energy losses and uncertainties substantially influence the prediction error, we document and examine the estimated and observed loss and uncertainty values from the literature, according to the proposed framework in the International Electrotechnical Commission 61400-15 wind resource assessment standard. From our findings, we highlight the opportunities for the industry to move forward, such as the validation and reduction of prediction uncertainty, and the prevention of energy losses caused by wake effect and environmental events. Overall, this study provides a summary on how the wind energy industry has been quantifying and reducing prediction errors, energy losses, and production uncertainties. Finally, for this work to be as reproducible as possible, we include all of the data used in the analysis in appendices to the manuscript.

literature review↗

Guidance and navigation requirements for unmanned flyby and swingby missions to the outer planets. Volume 4: High thrust mission, part 2, phase C

The guidance and navigation requirements for a set of impulsive thrust missions involving one or more outer planets or comets. Specific missions considered include two Jupiter entry missions of 800 and 1200 day duration, two multiple swingby missions with the sequences Jupiter-Uranus-Neptune and Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto, and two comets rendezvous missions involving the short period comets P/Tempel 2 and P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak. Results show the relative utility of onboard and Earth-based DSN navigation. The effects of parametric variations in navigation accuracy, measurement rate, and miscellaneous constraints are determined. The utility of a TV type onboard navigation sensor - sighting on planetary satellites and comets - is examined. Velocity corrections required for the nominal and parametrically varied cases are tabulated.

Source record↗

The parabolic approximation for sound propagation in a stratified moving medium

Propagation of sound in a stratified moving medium is discussed through an extension of the parabolic approximation to the acoustic equations of motion for short wavelengths. The parabolic approximation is related to the theory of geometric acoustics, and it is shown that it yields an improvement in accuracy over geometric theory. Also, the approximation corrects cumulative failures of geometric theory which occur when sound propagates many wavelengths from its source. The theory is illustrated by application to simple examples of quasi-plane wave propagation.

Myers, M. K.↗

Orbit IMU alinement interpretation of onboard display data

The space shuttle inertial measurement unit (IMU) alinement algorith was examined to determine the most important alinement starpair selection criterion. Three crew displayed parameters were considered: (1) the results of the separation angle difference (SAD) check for each starpair; (2) the separation angle of each starpair; and (3) the age of each star measurement. It was determined that the SAD for each pair cannot be used to predict the IMu alinement accuracy. If the age of each star measurement is less than approximately 30 minutes, time is a relatively unimportant factor and the most important alinement pair selection criterion is the starpair separation angle. Therefore, when there are three available alinement starpairs and all measurements were taken within the last 30 minutes, the pair with the separation angle closest to 90 degrees should be selected for IMU alinement.

Corson, R.↗

Cartridge firing device designed for attachment, release and ejection of a satellite

The device functions were performed by a one-piece unit with resulting performances which were of interest regarding the satellite attachment and the accuracies of the path and velocity during separation and ejection. A gain in weight may be obtained relative to the conventional device used, i.e. maintenance belt, belt unlocking device, pusher spring, and cartridge fired pusher.

Pierron, L.↗

Vortex development on slender missiles at supersonic speeds

A theoretical and experimental effort has been made to develop a vortex-prediction capability on circular and noncircular missiles at supersonic speeds. Predicted vortex patterns are computed by two linear-theory computer codes. One calculates the strengths and initial locations of the vortices, and the other calculates their trajectories. A short color motion picture has been produced from the calculations to illustrate the predicted vortex patterns on a typical missile. Experimental vapor-screen photographs are presented to show the longitudinal development of the vortices on a fin-control missile. Comparisons are made between these data and the predicted vortices to assess the accuracy of the theory. The theory appears to be fairly accurate in predicting the number, locations, and relative strengths of individual vortices which develop over the missile, but cannot predict vortex sheets or diffuse vorticity whenever they occur.

Allen, J. M.↗

A piloted simulator investigation of helicopter precision decelerating approaches to hover to determine single-pilot IFR /SPIFR/ requirements

The results of single-pilot instrument flight rules (SPIFR) experiments conducted on the NASA-Ames V/STOLAND simulator are presented. Several factors having a significant impact on requirements for helicopter SPIFR decelerating, steep approaches to landing are considered: (1) approach weather conditions, (2) flight path geometry, (3) deceleration guidance law, (4) level of stability and command augmentation, (5) cockpit display sophistication, (6) accuracy of navigation aids, and (7) helipad lighting and visual aids. Particular emphasis is placed on the relative effects of deceleration profile, control augmentation, and flight director parameters on pilot performance, workload, and opinion rating. Problems associated with the development of a pilot acceptance analytical methodology are outlined.

Phatak, A. V.↗

System for use in conducting wake investigation for a wing in flight

A system supported by a wing in flight is described which has a reference total pressure port in spaced relation with a wake as the wake is generated by the wing, a reference static pressure port supported in spaced relation with the wake, and a probe adapted to be displaced along an accurate path through the wake including a total pressure port and static pressure ports. A differential pressure transducer and a pressure switching device are interposed between the ports and the transducer is provided for selectively connecting pairs of the ports to the transducer in opposed relation, whereby a single transducer is utilized to obtain differential pressure measurement for the wake with enhanced accuracy.

Bikle, P. F.↗

Magnetic field satellite /MAGSAT/ spacecraft vector magnetometer calibration

The low-flying MAGSAT spacecraft, launched October 30, 1979, included a Vector Magnetometer to accurately map the magnitude and direction of the magnetic field of the earth. Calibration of the magnetometer included arc-second precision determination of the relative orientations of the three sensor axes in a coordinate system defined by optical references. This determination began with laboratory measurements of the relative alignments of optical components mounted with the magnetometer. The actual calibration procedure then consisted basically of accurate and repeatable positioning of the Vector Magnetometer within a unique magnetic test facility which nulls the earth's magnetic field, then generates magnetic fields of various orientations and strengths. Analysis of the magnetometer sensor outputs together with the position and alignment data then gave the axes orientations. We used precision theodolites and methods related to surveying techniques to achieve the accurate positioning and optical component alignment measurements. The final calibration accuracy exceeded results previously achieved in the facility.

Hinkal, S. W.↗

Surface measurement system development

The development of an optical system designed to satisfy the requirements of early deployable concepts such as the LMSC offset wrap rib antenna is reported. The system is relatively lightweight, will measure distance to several targets, and provide data in engineering units in real time. Accuracy of measurements is such that use of the system will permit evaluation of surface quality of large parabolic antenna dishes. Operation of the system was conceptually proven.

Berdahl, M.↗