Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “sparse”

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 1,495 records · Page 83

AmeriFlux CA-RSB Resolute Bay Polar Desert

This is the AmeriFlux version of the carbon flux data for the site CA-RSB Resolute Bay Polar Desert. Site Description - Polar desert on a gentle slope. Sparse grases and forbs in lower lying areas between microtopography in ice wedge polygon formations.

Arndt, Kyle [Woodwell Climate Research Center]↗

AmeriFlux CA-LU2 Lutose

This is the AmeriFlux version of the carbon flux data for the site CA-LU2 Lutose. Site Description - Lutose is a peat plateau that burned from a moderate forest fire in June 2007. Prior to the fire the site was likley an open canopy of stunted black spruce and a ground layer of Labrador tea shurbs and lichen or sphagnum. No black spruce survived the fire and lichens were still completely absent during this study. By 2019, most charred tree boles has fallen over and vegetation recovery was dominated by dense Labrador tea shrubs and sparse regenerating black spruce with around >150cm of peat.

Schulze, Christopher [University of Alberta]↗

AmeriFlux FLUXNET-1F CA-SF3 Saskatchewan - Western Boreal, forest burned in 1998

This is the AmeriFlux Management Project (AMP) created FLUXNET-1F version of the carbon flux data for the site CA-SF3 Saskatchewan - Western Boreal, forest burned in 1998. This is the FLUXNET version of the carbon flux data for the site CA-SF3 Saskatchewan - Western Boreal, forest burned in 1998 produced by applying the standard ONEFlux (1F) software. Site Description - The 1998 burn site (F98) was in the east part of Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, in the Waskesiu Fire, ignited by lightning that burned about 1700 ha in July 1998. The pre-fire forest consisted of jack pine and black spruce stands, with some intermixed aspen. The fire was severe, consuming much of the top layer of organic soil and killing all trees. In 2001, much of the regenerating vegetation consisted of aspen saplings about 1 m tall and shorter jack pine and black spruce seedlings. An overstory of dead, leafless jack pine trees dominated at a height of 18 m. Sparse grass and herbs, such as fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium L.) covered the ground. There were a large number of fallen dead trees, mostly perched above the ground and not decomposing quickly.

Amiro, Brian [University of Manitoba; Canadian For↗

AmeriFlux FLUXNET-1F US-TLR Timberlake Observatory for Wetland Restoration (TOWeR)

This is the AmeriFlux Management Project (AMP) created FLUXNET-1F version of the carbon flux data for the site US-TLR Timberlake Observatory for Wetland Restoration (TOWeR). This is the FLUXNET version of the carbon flux data for the site US-TLR Timberlake Observatory for Wetland Restoration (TOWeR) produced by applying the standard ONEFlux (1F) software. Site Description - This tower is located in Timberlake Forest, a restored forested wetland located 4 km from Albermarle Sound on the North Carolina coast. The forest to the south of the tower had historically been ditched, drained and converted to agricultural land, and subsequently reforested with Black Gum and Cypress trees and naturally re-wetted in 2006. This southern region has a bottomland forest ecosystem which saw a large-scale succession event of pine trees following the reforestation efforts. The northern part of the forest had been ditched, but never drained or converted for other land uses. It is much wetter and more sparsely vegetated when compared to the southern region, and has a mixed bottomland forest and swamp ecosystem.

Rey-Sanchez, Camilo [North Carolina State Universi↗

AmeriFlux FLUXNET-1F CA-LU2 Lutose

This is the AmeriFlux Management Project (AMP) created FLUXNET-1F version of the carbon flux data for the site CA-LU2 Lutose. This is the FLUXNET version of the carbon flux data for the site CA-LU2 Lutose produced by applying the standard ONEFlux (1F) software. Site Description - Lutose is a peat plateau that burned from a moderate forest fire in June 2007. Prior to the fire the site was likley an open canopy of stunted black spruce and a ground layer of Labrador tea shurbs and lichen or sphagnum. No black spruce survived the fire and lichens were still completely absent during this study. By 2019, most charred tree boles has fallen over and vegetation recovery was dominated by dense Labrador tea shrubs and sparse regenerating black spruce with around >150cm of peat.

Schulze, Christopher [University of Alberta]↗

Conditioned Simulation of Ground-Motion Time Series at Uninstrumented Sites Using Gaussian Process Regression

Ground-motion time series are essential input data in seismic analysis and performance assessment of the built environment. Because instruments to record free-field ground motions are generally sparse, methods are needed to estimate motions at locations with no available ground-motion recording instrumentation. In this study, given a set of observed motions, ground-motion time series at target sites are constructed using a Gaussian process regression (GPR) approach, which treats the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier spectrum as random Gaussian variables. Model training, verification, and applicability studies are carried out using the physics-based simulated ground motions of the 1906 Mw 7.9 San Francisco earthquake and Mw 7.0 Hayward fault scenario earthquake in northern California. Additionally, the method’s performance is further evaluated using the 2019 Mw 7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake ground motions recorded by the Community Seismic Network stations located in southern California. These evaluations indicate that the trained GPR model is able to adequately estimate the ground-motion time series for frequency ranges that are pertinent for most earthquake engineering applications. The trained GPR model exhibits proper performance in predicting the long-period content of the ground motions as well as directivity pulses.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Validation of Fault Displacements from Dynamic Rupture Simulations against the Observations from the 1992 Landers Earthquake

ABSTRACT Coseismic fault displacements in large earthquakes have caused significant damage to structures and lifelines on and near fault lines. Coseismic displacements represent a real threat, especially to distributed infrastructure systems. For infrastructure systems that can not avoid active faults, engineering displacement demands are defined using probabilistic fault-displacement hazard analyses (PFDHA). However, PFDHA models are sparse and poorly constrained partly due to the scarcity of detailed fault-displacement observations. Advancements in dynamic rupture simulation methods make them an attractive approach to address this important issue. Because fault displacements can be simulated for various geologic conditions as constrained by current knowledge about earthquake processes, they can be used to supplement the observation datasets. In addition to providing on-fault displacements, when used with appropriate constitutive models for the bulk medium, they can capture off-fault distributed inelastic deformations as well. For viable extrapolation, simulations must first be validated against data. In this article, we summarize the calibration and validation of the dynamic rupture model against the observations of the well-documented 1992 Landers earthquake. We defined a preferred model that reproduces several first-order fault-displacement metrics such as the on-fault partition of the total displacement, the mean fault-zone width, and the location of the peak displacement. Simulated ground motions consistent with the observations ensure that all physics important to modeling have been properly parameterized. For the extrapolation, we generated a suite of dynamic rupture models to quantify expected fault-displacement metrics, their intercorrelations, and magnitude dependencies, which are in part supported by the Landers and other recent earthquakes. Our validation and extrapolation exercise paves the way for using dynamic rupture modeling to quantitatively address fault-displacement hazard on a broader scale. The results are promising and are expected to be useful to inform PFDHA model development.

Geochemistry & Geophysics↗

Inferring the Focal Depths of Small Earthquakes in Southern California Using Physics-Based Waveform Features

Determining the depths of small crustal earthquakes is challenging in many regions of the world, because most seismic networks are too sparse to resolve trade-offs between depth and origin time with conventional arrival-time methods. Precise and accurate depth estimation is important, because it can help seismologists discriminate between earthquakes and explosions, which is relevant to monitoring nuclear test ban treaties and producing earthquake catalogs that are uncontaminated by mining blasts. Here, we examine the depth sensitivity of several physics-based waveform features for ~8000 earthquakes in southern California that have well-resolved depths from arrival-time inversion. We focus on small earthquakes (2 < M L < 4) recorded at local distances (<150 km), for which depth estimation is especially challenging. We find that differential magnitudes (M w /M L –M c ) are positively correlated with focal depth, implying that coda wave excitation decreases with focal depth. We analyze a simple proxy for relative frequency content, Φ≡log 10 (M 0 )+3log 10 (f c ), and find that source spectra are preferentially enriched in high frequencies, or “blue-shifted,” as focal depth increases. Here, we also find that two spectral amplitude ratios Rg 0.5–2 Hz/Sg 0.5–8 Hz and Pg/Sg at 3–8 Hz decrease as focal depth increases. Using multilinear regression with these features as predictor variables, we develop models that can explain 11%–59% of the variance in depths within 10 subregions and 25% of the depth variance across southern California as a whole. We suggest that incorporating these features into a machine learning workflow could help resolve focal depths in regions that are poorly instrumented and lack large databases of well-located events. Some of the waveform features we evaluate in this study have previously been used as source discriminants, and our results imply that their effectiveness in discrimination is partially because explosions generally occur at shallower depths than earthquakes.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

A Comparison of Machine Learning Methods of Association Tested on Dense Nodal Arrays

The association of phase picks to form events is one of the fundamental components of seismology. Large and dense sensor networks, such as >1000 geophone arrays (and distributed acoustic sensing), offer unique challenges in association due to the vast numbers of observations and high likelihood of errant picks. In addition, the large number of stations can greatly increase the time it takes to perform the association. For this reason, machine learning (ML) methods might provide a more optimal method of association for such networks. In this work, we examine how well ML methods (e.g., Gaussian mixture model association, PhaseLink, and Graph Earthquake Neural Interpretation Engine) can incorporate dense seismic arrays into regional networks and how well they handle the increasing numbers of stations. Here, we test their capabilities on two dense seismic deployments, one within Rock Valley Nevada (52 nodes and a 9-station sparse local network), and the LArge-n Seismic Survey in Oklahoma dense nodal array (>1800 vertical-component geophones). Processing data from these two different styles of dense seismic deployments allows testing of how the ML algorithms can merge array data with a broader regional network, how they deal with poorly picked phases, and how they handle anthropogenic noise. We compare the ML-associated bulletins to those obtained using the Rapid Earthquake Association and Location algorithm, a more traditional method of association. We find that there are very small differences in results between the methods for small networks (<100 stations) with low pick rates. For large networks (>1000), there are enough errant picks that some of the ML methods start to create false events out of noise. We also find that the ML methods vary in computation time significantly but are all faster than the traditional method tested here.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Seafloor Seismic Noise Patterns Across the Pacific Basin

Seismic hazard monitoring and global tomography efforts are improved by recording signals at a variety of distances and azimuths to maximize subsurface sampling. Although seismic networks provide good to excellent coverage on land, seafloor stations are still sparse. Inclusion of ocean-based data would greatly improve the global coverage of seismic networks, but the use of seafloor seismic data to complement land-based detection and characterization of events is complicated by the generally much higher ambient noise level in the ocean compared to that observed on land. This noise is driven primarily by sea surface waves and tides, but how seismic noise levels vary with location in the oceans is not well described. Here, in this work, we analyze the relationship between ocean surface wave height and seismic noise in the 0.4–4 Hz frequency band at ocean-bottom seismometer deployments across the Pacific basin. We find that a noise-to-responsiveness ratio (NRR)—the median noise level at a station divided by its sea surface wave height responsiveness—correlates negatively with detection success for large teleseismic earthquakes. Stations that are close to land, with relatively shallow ocean and low wind speed, often have lower NRR than open-ocean stations, but the connection between geographic location and earthquake detection success is imperfect.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Evaluation of Station Performance of the Idaho National Laboratory Seismic Monitoring Network Using Network Detection Thresholds

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Seismic Monitoring Network is located in eastern Idaho and monitors a portion of the intermountain seismic belt. It has been in place for 50 yr and has undergone several major changes, the most recent of which has been the transition to the Antelope real‐time acquisition system and the implementation of automatic phase picking algorithms to aid in analysis. This study discusses the efforts to evaluate the performance of the INL seismic monitoring network (and other surrounding stations) using the new real‐time acquisition system. The method outlined by Wilson et al. (2021) is used to develop an empirical relationship between the observability of local earthquakes as a function of magnitude and distance. This relationship is used to produce detection thresholds for Pwaves for all stations of interest. The INL seismic network has two main goals: monitor tectonic‐and volcanic‐related events and measure ground motions for input into seismic hazard analysis. Because of these two overall objectives, several seismic stations have been installed near critical facilities and, therefore, are not as quiet as stations that are used primarily for earthquake detection. This is reflected in their detection thresholds, which are much smaller for stations away from facilities. This study shows that the INL Seismic Monitoring Network is able to detect earthquakes near INL facilities with M L > 1.2, with redundancies built in to ensure this sensitivity even if data became unavailable from some stations. This study also shows “holes” in the monitoring network where the detection of smaller earthquakes is highly dependent on sparsely placed seismic stations. In conclusion, the results of this study will be used to govern plans for expansion of earthquake monitoring in Idaho and the surrounding region and to fine‐tune the detection thresholds for individual stations.

58 - GEOSCIENCES↗

Deployment of ADTimePix3 areaDetector Driver at Neutron and X-ray User Facilities

TimePix3 is a 65k hybrid pixel readout chip with simultaneous Time-of-Arrival (ToA) and Time-over-Threshold (ToT) recording in each pixel*. The chip operates without a trigger signal with a sparse readout where only pixels containing events are read out. The flexible architecture allows 40 MHits/s/cm² readout throughput, using simultaneous readout and acquisition by sharing readout logic with transport logic of superpixel matrix formed using 2x4 structure. The chip ToA records 1.5625 ns time resolution. The X-ray and charged particle events are counted directly. However, indirect neutron counts use 6Li fission in a scintillator matrix, such as ZnS(Ag). The fission space-charge region is limited to 5-9 um. A photon from scintillator material excites a photocathode electron, which is further multiplied in dual-stack MCP. The neutron count event is a cluster of electron events at the chip. We report on the EPICS areaDetector** ADTimePix3 driver that controls Serval*** using json commands. The driver directs data to storage and to a real-time processing pipeline and configures the chip. The time-stamped data are stored in raw .tpx3 file format and passed through a socket where the clustering software identifies individual neutron events. The conventional 2D images are available as images for each exposure frame, and a preview is useful for sample alignment. The areaDetector driver allows integration of time-enhanced capabilities of this detector into SNS beamlines controls and unprecedented time resolution.

Gofron, Kaz↗

The Generalized Green’s function Cluster Expansion: A Python package for simulating polarons

We present an efficient implementation of the Generalized Green’s function Cluster Expansion (GGCE), which is a new method for computing the ground-state properties and dynamics of polarons (single electrons coupled to lattice vibrations) in model electron-phonon systems. The GGCE works at arbitrary temperature and is well suited for a variety of electron-phonon couplings, including, but not limited to, site and bond Holstein and Peierls (Su-SchriefferHeeger) couplings, and couplings to multiple phonon modes with different energy scales and coupling strengths. Quick calculations can be performed efficiently on a laptop using solvers from NumPy and SciPy, or in parallel at scale using the PETSc sparse linear solver engine.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

The ITensor Software Library for Tensor Network Calculations

ITensor is a system for programming tensor network calculations with an interface modeled on tensor diagrams, allowing users to focus on the connectivity of a tensor network without manually bookkeeping tensor indices. The ITensor interface rules out common programming errors and enables rapid prototyping of algorithms. After discussing the philosophy behind the ITensor approach, we show examples of each part of the interface including Index objects, the ITensor product operator, tensor factorizations, tensor storage types, algorithms for matrix product state (MPS) and matrix product operator (MPO) tensor networks, quantum number conserving block sparse tensors, and the NDTensors library. We also review publications that have used ITensor for quantum many-body physics and for other areas where tensor networks are increasingly applied. To conclude we discuss promising features and optimizations to be added in the future.

Fishman, Matthew↗

Codebase release 0.3 for ITensor

ITensor is a system for programming tensor network calculations with an interface modeled on tensor diagrams, allowing users to focus on the connectivity of a tensor network without manually bookkeeping tensor indices. The ITensor interface rules out common programming errors and enables rapid prototyping of algorithms. After discussing the philosophy behind the ITensor approach, we show examples of each part of the interface including Index objects, the ITensor product operator, tensor factorizations, tensor storage types, algorithms for matrix product state (MPS) and matrix product operator (MPO) tensor networks, quantum number conserving block sparse tensors, and the NDTensors library. We also review publications that have used ITensor for quantum many-body physics and for other areas where tensor networks are increasingly applied. To conclude we discuss promising features and optimizations to be added in the future.

Fishman, Matthew↗

Evidence for a Single Holocene Paleoseismic Event on the Pajarito Fault, Northern New Mexico

Low-slip rate fault systems tend to be less studied than their high-slip rate counterparts, and paleoseismic techniques used to study them may pose challenges in interpretation that differ from high-slip rate systems. A good example of this is the Pajarito fault system (PFS), a normal fault complex within the Rio Grande rift. Despite numerous previous paleoseismic trenching studies conducted on the PFS between 1990 and 2003, considerable uncertainty remains regarding its Holocene paleoseismic history, particularly for the primary Pajarito fault (PF). To further clarify the PF paleoseismic history, we present data from paleoseismic investigations of 6 trenches at 3 distinct locations along the PF. Though the totality of the age and structural data obtained in this study is complex and not entirely consistent with any one interpretation, a single Holocene paleoearthquake occurring younger than ∼1,600 to 2,300 kcal yr BP is the simplest interpretation. It is possible that the PF records two Holocene events, with a penultimate event 6.9–2.4 kcal yr BP event and the aforementioned most recent event (MRE) between 2.3 and 1.6 kcal yr BP. However, only a single wall of one trench, out of a total of 12 walls in our 6 trenches, provides evidence supporting that interpretation. This study finds evidence of a single late Holocene paleoseismic event on the PF and sparse evidence for 2 Holocene paleoseismic events on the PF and highlights the benefits of logging multiple trench walls to better understand the complexity that results from this low-slip rate, low-deposition-rate fault system.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

UQTk User Manual (V.3.1.0)

The UQ Toolkit (UQTk) is a collection of libraries and tools for the quantification of uncertainty in numerical model predictions. Version 3.1.0 offers intrusive and non-intrusive methods for propagating input uncertainties through computational models, tools for sensitivity analysis, methods for sparse surrogate construction, and Bayesian inference tools for inferring parameters from experimental data. This manual discusses the download and installation process for UQTk, provides pointers to the UQ methods used in the toolkit, and describes some of the examples provided with the toolkit.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

nPINNs: nonlocal Physics-Informed Neural Networks for a parametrized nonlocal universal Laplacian operator. Algorithms and Applications

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are effective in solving inverse problems based on differential and integro-differential equations with sparse, noisy, unstructured, and multifidelity data. PINNs incorporate all available information, including governing equations (reflecting physical laws), initial-boundary conditions, and observations of quantities of interest, into a loss function to be minimized, thus recasting the original problem into an optimization problem. In this paper, we extend PINNs to parameter and function inference for integral equations such as nonlocal Poisson and nonlocal turbulence models, and we refer to them as nonlocal PINNs (nPINNs). The contribution of the paper is three-fold. First, we propose a unified nonlocal Laplace operator, which converges to the classical Laplacian as one of the operator parameters, the nonlocal interaction radius δ goes to zero, and to the fractional Laplacian as δ goes to infinity. This universal operator forms a super-set of classical Laplacian and fractional Laplacian operators and, thus, has the potential to fit a broad spectrum of data sets. We provide theoretical convergence rates with respect to δ and verify them via numerical experiments. Second, we use nPINNs to estimate the two parameters, δ and α, characterizing the kernel of the unified operator. The strong non-convexity of the loss function yielding multiple (good) local minima reveals the occurrence of the operator mimicking phenomenon, that is, different pairs of estimated parameters could produce multiple solutions of comparable accuracy. Third, we propose another nonlocal operator with spatially variable order α(γ), which is more suitable for modeling turbulent Couette flow. Our results show that nPINNs can jointly infer this function as well as δ. More importantly, these parameters exhibit a universal behavior with respect to the Reynolds number, a finding that contributes to our understanding of nonlocal interactions in wall-bounded turbulence.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗