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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

CIE Curriculum Guide (V.2.0)

The Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) Curriculum Guide offers a comprehensive framework, guidance, and resources for integrating CIE into university-level engineering programs and related educational activities. The primary goal is to help educators adopt CIE principles into their teaching to produce future engineers and technicians who understand digital risks in modern engineered systems, thereby addressing the nation’s infrastructure resilience needs. This guide outlines practical integration examples, links to resources to accelerate CIE adoption, and shares insights from partner academic institutions on various implementation strategies. CIE is a framework for embedding engineered controls that mitigate the impact of cyber-attacks in any cyber-physical system used in critical energy infrastructure and other sectors. Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), the National Cyber-Informed Engineering Strategy emphasizes embedding CIE into formal education, training, and credentialing. This guide supports this strategic objective by providing examples of integrating CIE concepts into engineering curricula, from class activities to new courses and certificate programs. The importance of educating cyber-informed engineers is underscored by the evolving cybersecurity threats facing engineered systems. As industrial control systems (ICS) increasingly incorporate digital technologies, the responsibility for security extends to both cyber professionals and engineers. CIE addresses critical gaps in designing and protecting physical systems with digital components against cyber risks, ensuring engineers consider digital risk throughout the engineering design lifecycle. Currently, engineering education does not routinely include cyber-informed principles, highlighting a gap in addressing modern engineering system risks. This guide advocates for updating engineering curricula to include digital risk management as a fundamental element. By doing so, future engineers will be equipped to design resilient systems that mitigate digital risks from the outset. Through this guide, engineering faculty can integrate CIE into their curricula, bridging the gap between digital risk and engineering. This approach prepares a cyber-informed workforce capable of safeguarding the cyber-physical systems crucial to national security and public welfare. By embedding CIE into education and training, institutions can produce engineers and technicians who can effectively mitigate cyber impacts throughout the engineering design lifecycle, resulting in more secure critical infrastructures.

42 - ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2012

Expanding Robust HCCI Operation with Advanced Valve and Fuel Control Technologies

Delphi Automotive Systems and ORNL established this CRADA to advance the commercialization potential of the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) advanced combustion strategy for gasoline engine platforms. HCCI combustion has been shown by others to produce high diesel-like efficiency on a gasoline engine platform while simultaneously producing low NOX and particulate matter emissions. However, the commercialization barriers that face HCCI combustion are significant, with requirements for a more active engine control system, likely with next-cycle closed-loop feedback control, and with advanced valve train technologies to enable negative valve overlap conditions. In the partnership between Delphi and ORNL, each organization brought a unique and complementary set of skills to the project. Delphi has made a number of breakthroughs with production-intent valve train technologies and controls in recent years to make a part time production-intent HCCI engine plausible. ORNL has extensive knowledge and expertise with HCCI combustion, and also has a versatile research engine with hydraulic valve actuation (HVA) that is useful for guiding production of a cam-based HCCI system. Partnering these knowledge bases and capabilities was essential towards making progress to better understand HCCI combustion and the commercialization barriers that it faces. ORNL and Delphi maintained strong collaboration throughout the project. Meetings were held regularly, with additional reports, presentations, and meetings as necessary to maintain progress. Delphi provided guidance to ORNL regarding operational strategies to investigate on their single-cylinder research engine with HVA and data from their experimental multi-cylinder engine for modeling. ORNL provided single-cylinder engine data and modeling results.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2019

Dust Control Planning

At the Hanford Site, dust control is required during many activities for health and safety purposes and to prevent contaminant dispersal via atmospheric transport. Water is commonly used to reduce dust dispersal, but can mobilize contaminants and facilitate transport through the vadose zone to groundwater as observed with past activities within the River Corridor. To prevent contaminant mobilization associated with remediation activities in the Central Plateau, alternative approaches for dust suppression are presented considering site-specific requirements at Hanford. There are two high-level categories of approaches to dust control: proactive work strategies to minimize fugitive dust generation and reactive engineered controls to mitigate dust generation and/or capture fugitive dust. Because a variety of activities have the potential to generate fugitive dust at a given site, there is no unique response to dust prevention and control. In fiscal year 2018, an evaluation was completed to identify alternatives, determine limits on surface water additions, and develop information suitable for consideration in feasibility studies. The technical basis detailed in the 2018 evaluation has been condensed into this document that provides a practical Dust Control Plan template and site-specific guidance in the appendices. This Dust Control Plan template specifically provides a workflow to 1) identify key project information, 2) identify fugitive dust sources, 3) assign dust control methods, and 4) determine appropriate monitoring practices to mitigate impacts to groundwater.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2025

IEEE PES GM Poster - Cyber-Informed Engineering Approach to Mitigating BESS Supply Chain Concerns

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are increasingly important to meet the needs of grid resilience and reliability. BESS provide critical grid services, maintaining stability of the grid with increased variable conditions. However, there are significant geopolitical and security concerns regarding their operation in critical infrastructure, due to lack of a domestic supply chain and prevalence of foreign entity of concern (FEOC) components in BESS and associated inverter-based resources. The supply chain challenge is dually exacerbated by a lack of alternative suppliers who can meet the economic targets for energy delivery and a potentially adversarial supply chain. Solutions are needed to secure components, addressing mixed layers of risk and engineering controls. This paper presents a specific application of Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) principles for BESS and recommends an alternative strategy to blocking the supply chain, ensuring that grid modernization targets can be met despite lack of a validated or secure supply chain. This study focuses on the United State (U.S.) use case, but the process can be applied globally to address supply chain security challenges. CIE practices represent the next step in functional assurance and risk mitigation, ensuring optimal resource allocation and enhancing security measures to safeguard the future of energy in the U.S. and beyond.

25 - ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Causal Analysis Report for Thunder Range Block VIII Test - Management Concern

From July 24th -27th, 2018, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) was conducting a series of explosive tests (referred to as Block VIII Tests) at Thunder Range. Thunder Range is an explosive testing range located on Kirtland Air Force Base and operated by SNL. The testing occurred on Range 7, a fragmentation range that is authorized for activities up to a maximum of 2,000 pounds net explosive weight (NEW). The maximum NEW for the Block VIII tests was 114 lbs. The specific management concern is that although the Thunder Range team identified controls to provide protection for essential personnel, those controls were not adequately evaluated before testing occurred. There were several controls in place at Thunder Range when the block VW test was executed. Engineered controls including Fire Control Point (FCP) placement, FCP structure design, and administrative controls involving communications. These controls were in place but not thoroughly evaluated for adequacy in meeting requirements related to sound pressure and fragments before the test was executed. Compliance with the remaining requirements was achieved. The lack of evaluation did not result in harm to personnel, equipment, or structures but was deemed as an opportunity to further understand how compliance with DOE-STD-1212-2012 could be better achieved with defensible evidence. The information provided in the remainder of this report discusses these controls and the deficiencies that contributed to this management concern.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2013

An Optimization Framework for Driver Feedback Systems

Modern vehicles have sophisticated electronic control units that can control engine operation with discretion to balance fuel economy, emissions, and power. These control units are designed for specific driving conditions (e.g., different speed profiles for highway and city driving). However, individual driving styles are different and rarely match the specific driving conditions for which the units were designed. In the research reported here, we investigate driving-style factors that have a major impact on fuel economy and construct an optimization framework to optimize individual driving styles with respect to these driving factors. In this context, we construct a set of polynomial metamodels to reflect the responses produced in fuel economy by changing the driving factors. Then, we compare the optimized driving styles to the original driving styles and evaluate the effectiveness of the optimization framework. Finally, we use this proposed framework to develop a real-time feedback system, including visual instructions, to enable drivers to alter their driving styles in response to actual driving conditions to improve fuel efficiency.

and transportation↗
DOE OSTI2018

Building 1090 Improvements [Poster]

Failure mode analysis/identification of potential process improvements leading to the development of new engineered controls and facility improvements.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development of an Optimal Variable-Pitch Controller for Floating Axial-Flow Marine Hydrokinetic Turbines

This article discusses the development of an optimal variable-pitch controller for floating, axial-flow marine turbines. Recently, OpenFAST, an open-source wind turbine modeling tool, has been extended to model marine turbines. A controller is necessary to simulate marine turbines for different load cases using OpenFAST, which greatly impacts the performance of the energy system. Previous studies have designed controllers using a linearized model of the marine turbine, which can be time-consuming and require the expertise of a control engineer. In this study, we use an automated approach that uses generic models of the marine turbine to identify the controller gains, which can expedite the process of designing a controller. Using an optimizer to identify the control system parameters can additionally improve the controller's performance. The optimal controller tuned using such an approach results in a 20% reduction in the tower-base damage equivalent loading and better tracking of the rated generator speed and power.

axial flow↗
DOE OSTI2018

Rock-welding materials development for deep borehole nuclear waste disposal

We report that various versions of deep borehole nuclear waste disposal have been proposed in the past in which effective sealing of a borehole after waste emplacement is generally required. In a high temperature disposal mode, the sealing function will be fulfilled by melting the ambient granitic rock with waste decay heat or an external heating source, creating a melt that will encapsulate waste containers or plug a portion of the borehole above a stack of the containers. However, there are certain drawbacks associated with natural materials, such as high melting temperatures, inefficient consolidation, slow crystallization kinetics, the resulting sealing materials generally being porous with low mechanical strength, insufficient adhesion to waste container surface, and lack of flexibility for engineering controls. In this study, we showed that natural granitic materials can be purposefully engineered through chemical modifications to enhance the sealing capability of the materials for deep borehole disposal. The present work systematically explores the effect of chemical modification and crystallinity (amorphous vs. crystalline) on the melting and crystallization processes of a granitic rock system. The approach can be applied to modify granites excavated from different geological sites. Several engineered granitic materials have been explored which possess significantly lower processing and densification temperatures than natural granites. Finally, those new materials consolidate more efficiently by viscous flow and accelerated recrystallization without compromising their mechanical integrity and properties.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2012

Optimization of Driving Styles for Fuel Economy Improvement

Modern vehicles have sophisticated electronic control units, particularly to control engine operation with respect to a balance between fuel economy, emissions, and power. These control units are designed for specific driving conditions and testing. However, each individual driving style is different and rarely meets those driving conditions. In the research reported here we investigate those driving style factors that have a major impact on fuel economy. An optimization framework is proposed with the aim of optimizing driving styles with respect to these driving factors. A set of polynomial metamodels are constructed to reflect the responses produced by changes of the driving factors. Then we compare the optimized driving styles to the original ones and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the optimization formulation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Information and Collaboration Levels in Vehicular Strings: A Comparative Study

The potential safety, productivity, and energy benefits of automated vehicles have driven a surge of research interest in their algorithms. Even within single-lane driving, control engineers now have a profusion of approaches available to them. Algorithm classes include classical controllers, receding horizon controllers, and constrained eco-driving formulae based on Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle. Differing connectivity architectures and collaboration levels further differentiate algorithms from one another. This study evaluated six controllers in two drive cycle-based scenarios using an electric powertrain model for energy analysis. Individual-vehicle and string performance were examined, including string stability and length. Algorithms with greater access to information generally performed best. Although collaboration affected energy use only slightly, it made a greater impact on string length.

Dollar, R. Austin↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development and Implementation of a Bag Degradation Predictive Tool at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Nuclear material packaging involves many complex variables derived from the stored material's properties, the storage environment, and the synergistic interaction of said material and its environment on the containment boundary. In the Plutonium Facility (PF-4) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) the typical containment boundary found, starting from the stored material itself to the outermost containment layer, consists of the material contained within a stainless steel (typically 304) slip-lid (or other equivalent stainless steel packaging layer) wrapped in an sPVC bag-out bag contained within a facility approved outer container stored within the boundaries of an approved facility (i.e., a building designed and approved to store nuclear material). This packaging configuration, though occasionally deviated from in the past, represents the current procedurally enforced, expected containment structure for all interim nuclear material containment outside of an engineered control barrier (e.g., a glovebox). Over the life of containerization research at LANL, packaging engineers have become increasingly concerned with the degradation of the sPVC bag-out bag, which can cause corrosion to the outermost packaging layer as well as possible exposure to alpha contamination if the bag-out bag layer is degraded to the point of containment failure. A bag-out bag degradation predictive tool (BDT) is therefore needed to assess the current and future nuclear material inventory for possible bag degradation in order to continue to ensure safe operations for the facility and its workers to deliver on the vital national security mission of 30 PPY.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2016

C-400 and C-409 Criticality Incredible Road Map

Many guides and standards describe a process for evaluating process operations with known quantities of fissile material. The accepted industry guides and standards for performing criticality evaluations for fissile material operations are not well suited for operating systems that may contain residual fissile material. The Paducah Site deactivation activities includes large process components that have unfavorable geometries for the {sup 235}U enrichment levels present. The fissile material holdup in these components can range from negligible residual quantities to significant deposits weighing several hundred pounds. The purpose of this white paper is to outline a methodology that can be used to declare a facility as criticality incredible (CI). For the purpose of this paper, criticality incredible means that the inventory and its form and distribution within the facility does not need Nuclear Criticality Safety Evaluation (NCSE) type (e.g., administrative or engineered) controls. This assumes of course that certain project assumptions are maintained. For example in the facilities that will be discussed within this paper, wet decontamination is not part of the planned demolition and disposal operations. The proposed methodology for deactivation of a facility to the point that criticality incredible can be declared will be applied to the C-400 Chemical Cleaning Building and to the C-409 Decontamination Facility at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP). The purpose and intent of the CI declaration is to release a facility from Nuclear Criticality Safety (NCS) requirements and simplify the demolition of the facility. In practical terms, this means the facility can be re-categorized as < a Hazard Category 3 facility per DOE-STD-1027-92 Hazard Categorization and Accident Analysis Techniques for compliance with DOE Order 5480.23, Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports, NCS controls are not needed, and the Criticality Accident Alarm Systems (CAAS) can be removed from service. The only involvement from the site NCS program following the declaration would be to ensure that the underlying assumptions are not violated through discovered conditions or project changes. This includes the institutional control of preventing new fissile material from being introduced into the facility. (authors)

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Optogenetics and biosensors set the stage for metabolic cybergenetics

We report cybergenetic systems use computer interfaces to enable feed-back controls over biological processes in real time. The complex and dynamic nature of cellular metabolism makes cybergenetics attractive for controlling engineered metabolic pathways in microbial fermentations. Cybergenetics would not only create new avenues of research into cellular metabolism, it would also enable unprecedented strategies for pathway optimization and bioreactor operation and automation. Implementation of metabolic cybergenetics, however, will require new capabilities from actuators, biosensors, and control algorithms. The recent application of optogenetics in metabolic engineering, the expanding role of genetically encoded biosensors in strain development, and continued progress in control algorithms for biological processes suggest that this technology will become available in the not so distant future.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Cyber-Informed Engineering: Incorporating CIE into Engineering Curricula

Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) is an engineering approach that mitigates the consequences of cyber risk to critical infrastructure by integrating engineered controls into system design and operation. CIE-focused education is necessary to prepare future engineers and technicians to understand and mitigate digital risk in modern engineered systems. This session explores how universities can incorporate CIE into their curricula, provides examples of how existing universities are already leveraging CIE in their programs, and highlights resources to support adoption.

99 - GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2025

NEXT Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated On-Road Vehicles (NEXTCAR Phase I & II)

The Ohio State University’s ARPA-E NEXTCAR project was a multi-phase, multi-year research, development, and demonstration program focused on improving the energy efficiency of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). The team developed and validated advanced vehicle motion and powertrain control algorithms that coordinate propulsion and automation systems to optimize energy use. Key technologies included Dynamic Skip Fire engine control, predictive eco-driving functions such as Eco-Approach and Departure (Eco-AND) and Eco-Adaptive Cruise Control (Eco-ACC), and powertrain-agnostic optimization frameworks for hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles. The project successfully demonstrated up to 30% energy-efficiency improvement during real-world testing at the Transportation Research Center and the American Center for Mobility. The outcomes provide a foundation for scalable, cost-effective deployment of energy-optimized CAV technologies across the automotive industry.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2019

Surface-Engineered MXenes: Electric Field Control of Magnetism and Enhanced Magnetic Anisotropy

Controlling magnetism in two-dimensional (2D) materials via electric fields and doping enables robust long-range order by providing an external mechanism to modulate magnetic exchange interactions and anisotropy. Here in this report, we predict that transition metal carbide and nitride MXenes are promising candidates for controllable magnetic 2D materials. The surface terminations introduced during synthesis act as chemical dopants that influence the electronic structure, enabling controllable magnetic order. We show ground-state magnetic ordering in Janus M 2 XO x F 2–x (M is an early transition metal, X is carbon or nitrogen, and x = 0.5, 1, or 1.5) with asymmetric surface functionalization, where local structural and chemical disorder induces magnetic ordering in some systems that are nonmagnetic or weakly magnetic in their pristine form. The resulting magnetic states of these noncentrosymmetric structures can be robustly switched and stabilized by tuning the interlayer exchange couplings with small applied electric fields. Furthermore, bond directionality is enhanced by Janus functionalization, resulting in improved magnetic anisotropy, which is essential to stable 2D magnetic ordering. The mixed termination-induced anisotropy leads to robust Ising ferromagnetism with an out-of-plane easy axis over the full range of relevant termination compositions for Janus Mn 2 N. Janus Cr 2 C, V 2 C, and Ti 2 C were found to be robustly antiferromagnetic. Our results provide a strategy for exploiting asymmetric surface functionalization to achieve room-temperature nanoscale magnetism under ambient conditions in MXenes with currently available synthesis techniques.

2D materials↗
DOE OSTI2012

DOE Project 18546, AOP Task 1.1, Fuel Effects on Advanced Combustion Engines

Research in 2011 was focused on diesel range fuels and diesel combustion and fuels evaluated in 2011 included a series of oxygenated biofuels fuels from University of Maine, oxygenated fuel compounds representing materials which could be made from sewage, oxygenated marine diesel fuels for low emissions, and a new series of FACE fuel surrogates and FACE fuels with detailed exhaust chemistry and particulate size measurements. Fuels obtained in late 2011, which will be evaluated in 2012, include a series of oil shale derived fuels from PNNL, green diesel fuel (hydrotreated vegetable oil) from UOP, University of Maine cellulosic biofuel (levulene), and pyrolysis derived fuels from UOP pyrolysis oil, upgraded at University of Georgia. We were able to demonstrate, through a project with University of Wisconsin, that a hybrid strategy for fuel surrogates provided both accurate and rapid CFD combustion modeling for diesel HCCI. In this strategy, high molecular weight compounds are used to more accurately represent physical processes and smaller molecular weight compounds are used for chemistry to speed chemical calculations. We conducted a small collaboration with sp3H, a French company developing an on-board fuel quality sensor based on near infrared analysis to determine how to use fuel property and chemistry information for engine control. We were able to show that selected outputs from the sensor correlated to both fuel properties and to engine performance. This collaboration leveraged our past statistical analysis work and further work will be done as opportunity permits. We conducted blending experiments to determine characteristics of ethanol blends based on the gasoline characteristics used for blending. Results indicate that much of the octane benefits gained by high level ethanol blending can be negated by use of low octane gasoline blend stocks, as allowed by ASTM D5798. This may limit ability to optimize engines for improved efficiency with ethanol fuels. Extensive data from current and previous years was leveraged into participation with several large proposal teams, as our fuels database covers a very wide range of conventional and emerging fuels and biofuels.

02 PETROLEUM↗